Exterior updates complete: Roof, siding and soffiting

Guess what I got for Christmas! Just a new roof. And siding. And soffiting. And fascia. And gutters. And gutter screens! The roofing company we hired finished up all the work a couple of days before Christmas and now our house is looking mighty fresh.

And strangely quiet now that all the birds and other wildlife can't get into the soffiting. I'll spare you all the disgusting details, but the workers found old bird nests around nearly the entire perimeter of the house. Many of the trim boards were rotted out and had holes for birds and squirrels to come and go (and stay). Our wild animal hotel is now closed for business.

And the sea of brown is no more! Now our house has some actual definition between the brick and the roof and the second story. It's all grown up!

The shingle color is Oxford Grey, which has a greenish tint to it. In the sunlight it looks... well, gray, but on cloudy days it takes on a mossy green hue that I love.

And you'd never know that weird boarded-up window was ever there. Everything looks so neat and tidy.

Yeah, this is still the ugly side of the house with all the utilities, satellite dish, a/c unit and trash cans. But now the siding on the dormers matches the siding on the back side of the house, making everything look a bit more cohesive.

I also had them put brown downspouts where they fell on the brick so they would blend in better. (The gutters and downspouts on the sided parts of the house are white.)

It's fun to see how our house has changed since we bought it in 2008. I didn't realize how shabby the outside really was until we polished it up this year. (Excuse the poor image quality above. That's actually from the real estate listing when we bought the house.)

We've got things left to tackle: the walkways, the landscaping, but we are so far beyond what what we purchased 3.5 years ago.

See more of this year's curb appeal improvements >>

New roof: A few photos

Our new roof is done, and, I have to say, it's kind of awesome. Is it weird that I'm so excited about this? I really love the color (good because we'll be stuck with it for 20+ years!), and it will only look better once the new white fascia and gutters go up.

The brown shingles still on the dormers stick out quite a bit (especially from farther away than the perspective of this photo), but the new siding should be here in a couple of weeks.

Mini roof update

The work on our roof has started! And when I say "work," I mean complete and total replacement.

This is what it looked like about midday yesterday, and the roofing crew should be finishing up sometime this morning. Already, I'm loving the way the green/gray of the roof is playing off the red brick. (I'm also loving how they are protecting my junky landscaping with that blue tarp.)

The rest of the work (siding, soffiting, etc.) is still a couple of weeks out. Hopefully they'll be able to squeak it in before the end of the year!

A whole new look: Exterior color choices

Although the decision to replace our roof, soffiting, and gutters sort of snuck up on us, I have to confess I've been thinking about exterior colors for months. In fact, I had everything so planned out in my head, it took me all of two minutes to pick our new shingle, siding and soffiting colors.

Right now, the brick, the trim and the roof all kind of just melt into one another into a big blob of brown. Bleh. I knew that I didn't want it to stay this way forever. So months ago, I came up with a loose long-term color plan to follow.

Knowing what colors I wanted the roof and trim to be someday helped me choose colors when I was painting the porch, refinishing the front door, painting the railing...

Of course, I didn't realize the opportunity replace everything else and execute the full plan would come quite so soon.

The biggest change will be the color of the roof. It might seem like we're jumping the gun a bit on replacing it, maybe because I've never talked about it here. And actually, between Dan and I, we've only briefly mentioned replacing the roof a few times in the past three years.

But when we bought the house, the inspector estimated the roof to be about 15 years old -- and that was three years ago. It's at the end of its life and the roofing company we chose rated it a 4 on a scale from 0 to 20. That less-than-stellar rating combined with the small leak in the living room means there really was no arm twisting involved in the decision.

Anyway, I chose these architectural shingles in a greenish gray. They will contrast with the red brick so much better than the current sandy brown shingles. I've seen a few houses in person with this combo and it will look great with the style of our house.

And then there's the second story dormers, which are currently faced in roofing shingles. They are starting to flake off and really, shingles aren't the best material for vertical surfaces. We're getting the dormers re-surfaced in vinyl siding, and I settled on this beige tone called "Pebble Clay." Honestly, there aren't that many colors of vinyl siding available, so really my choice came down to a few shades of brown, beige and white.

White would make the dormers super noticeable, and since they are an addition to the original house, I thought it best to downplay them. This beige shouldn't draw attention to itself. Plus it happens to be the exact same color of the siding on the back of the house, so it made sense to match that.

The new soffiting, facsia and gutters will all go white, providing better definition for the lines of the roof. The white will also tie in the white windows and balance the light gray stonework of the foundation.

Here's my quick photoshop rendering of what the house will look like once all this work is done. Excuse the lack of texture; I didn't want to pour hours into this.

Yes, it's a very traditional color combo, and maybe even expected, but this is a very traditional-style house. If I fight that with some crazy colors, it's just going to look stupid. This is going to turn the cottagey cuteness factor way up.

I'll save you from having to scroll back up to compare. Here's the current/before work photo.

Can't wait to get rid of that brown roof. Seriously, why did someone think that was a good combination with the red brick? There are multiple better choices commonly available (black, gray, green, etc.). Ah, well. Hold on little house, makeover help is on the way! Cross your fingers for a warm winter.

Ugly, embarrassing things I've never showed you

I never pretend that our house is a perfect place, inside or out. There are usually toys all over the floor, a thin layer of dust on nearly everything, and an ever-growing list of repairs and improvements to be made. We've lived here for about three and a half years, and while the house was completely livable, I've slowly discovered there were many points of deferred maintenance, mostly on the exterior.

I've been tackling them one by one (like the front door and the porch), but some things are beyond my capabilities. Thus they have not been dealt with yet and continue to be embarrassing and ugly.

The upstairs dormers are covered in roof shingling. Very simply, this is not the right material for vertical surfaces such as these. Not only does it look cheap, the shingles don't necessarily hold up to the weather as they do on roofs and they are starting to peel off one by one.

There's also this crazy boarded up window on the other dormer that I honestly did not notice until we were already living in the house.

And we have a minor leak near the ceiling in the living room that seems to be getting worse. This was disguised when we bought the house because there was a giant plate glass mirror over the mantel. It's not dripping water into the room, and it's not wet to the touch. The plaster is soaking all of it up and slowly bulging out. It's a growing problem, literally.

We've had some recurring minor animal invasions due to cracks and crevices in our soffiting and fascia. There are currently two bird nests underneath the soffit, possibly more. Nothing has gotten into the living areas of the house, but I've heard birds and other (larger) creatures in our ceilings from time to time.

Just a few weeks ago, what I suspect was a squirrel was making a ruckus in the kitchen ceiling. When I knocked on the ceiling, it knocked back. No lie.

I'm so done with wondering when the next animal will show up and worrying about whether it might actually get into the living space or cause real damage.

So why am I showing you all of this?

We are finally taking care of all of it.

We got a handful of estimates from companies that do everything (gutters, siding, soffiting, roofing). This is not going to be cheap (like, the price of a new car... yeesh!). But all these smaller problems are adding up to be a big problem. We plan to be in this house for a while, so we need to take care of it.

Although it's a large upfront cost, it makes sense to us to have it all done by one company all at once instead of piecemeal. (In the event of a problem, I don't want company A who did the roof blaming company B who did the gutters.) All of these things sort of go together. Plus we got a little bit of a multi-project discount.

So that's the big news around these parts. More details and color selections in another post soon!