Another Outside Improvement

 So the latest project in the remodeling saga is a pretty expensive one.  We replaced all the soffits around the whole house.  They were rotten in a bunch of places (Beaumont is WET!) and had been painted over.  My DH reached up and poked his fingers through some places.  The thick layer of paint was the only thing holding some of the boards together.

We had a company replace it all with engineered wood that is guaranteed for 50 years.  Which is way longer than I will ever care...

The guys worked industriously and the weather held.  They were able to get the old soffits down and the new boards up in just a couple of days.

Once the soffits were up, it was time to pick a paint color.  They could have matched the old orange paint, but where's the fun in that?

I wanted a color that would contrast with the bricks and stone flower beds, not blend into them like the current color did.  I picked a couple of grays and then the guys painted the whole house.

Probably, I went too dark.

 I like how the gray looks with the brick.

I even like how it looks with that blonde stonework on the front flower bed.

The turquoise door now makes a lot more sense.

Next project was replacing those old jalousie windows.  They were single pane and most of them were inoperable.

I tried to price having them fixed and the glass re-glazed but no one wants to do that any more.

The original beams that 'support' the roof arches had long since rotted away.  The previous owners had them wrapped in sheet metal and painted to match the house.

We had the guys peel off the metal and build beams from the engineered wood.  Then we painted them a slightly darker gray than the rest of the house.  I don't have a picture with the beams painted out, but suffice it to say, I went either too dark on the house, or too light on the beams or a little of both.  It's not quite the contrast I was hoping for.

The new windows are framed in white and have only two panes per window frame instead of the three horizontal panes per jalousie opening.

I don't have a good picture of the new windows, but I will add one when I take a few pictures.

The windows made a real improvement on the overall looks of this house.

We took down all the guttering around the house.  I don't think we are going to put up new gutters.  I think we are going to do a drip line drainage project and make some dry stream bed looking areas to get the water to flow away from the house.  But that's a project for another day.

--  Sandee Wagner