Replacing an old garage door with a wall

Our garage door to wall transformation is nearly complete. Complete enough to show you some progress shots anyway.

We initially planned to hire this job out, but after asking my dad what kind of contractor I should call, he sort of just took the job on himself. Yes, he's great. No, I'm not sharing him.

He started by ripping out the old door, door frame and the flimsy insulation, leaving a giant hole in the house. That hanging plastic was there just to block the wind some and keep the debris outside.

The end of day one was looking a lot like this.

We decided to do a wood frame wall rather than a stone or masonry wall for one main reason: weight. The weight of cinder blocks or poured concrete would have demanded busting up the floor plus part of the driveway and pouring deep concrete footings to support it all. More work, more money, more trouble. Nope, a stud frame wall will do just fine.

But one thing we could not do without was adding a window. It's what I wanted most out of this project: natural light in a dark and dingy basement. I'm hoping to turn this space into a work area, so it was a necessity. The long and skinny 2 x 6 foot window was special order from Lowe's for $160; I was surprised it didn't cost more.

I wasn't completely sold on the idea of having a small patch of siding on the house, but there are not a lot of options for weatherproof exterior materials. Plus introducing a fourth material to the existing stone/brick/siding combo would probably have looked just as weird. So we used the same approximate color and style as the top and the back of our house.

The clay color also blends into the stone foundation color so from far away, it doesn't really draw attention to itself.

After some calling around to various to-the-trade siding distributors, I finally located the same(ish) siding in stock at Home Depot. Imagine that. (FYI, not all Home Depots carry the same siding color or profile in-stock, so if you can't find what you're looking for at one location, try another or check stock online. There's a good chance it's different.)

We still have to add some trim around the edges of the opening and then paint the wood the same tone as the siding, but with everything already weatherproof enough for winter, those jobs will probably have to wait until next spring.

And the inside?

The inside is still not complete, but that's OK. It tells you how bad it was that I can look at this unfinished wall and think it looks great.

If this photo is looking a bit wonky to you: the window is level, and the floor is not. The floor is actually far far from level. But that's an issue for another day (or never).

The view is nothing amazing, but look at that light! It's not a dungeon anymore! The natural light still catches me off guard when I go down the steps.

I mentally budgeted between $1000 and $2000 for this project, so I'm excited it only added up to about $420 with DIY labor. More money to spend on something else!

See the before pics >>

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 >>

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!