The madness continues here as we strip the 1950s aluminum siding off the house and reveal the original pine clapboards underneath. The idea is to do the back, which is mostly what we see on a daily basis, and the front, which is mostly what everybody else sees, first, THEN do the sides. The back is actually the bulk of the work because of the very tall gable.
It looks horrible now, very rough, but the next step is priming. My hardest job right now in addition to yanking the siding off the front, is to choose paint colors. This gal needs some color!
Yes, I changed the photo to black and white so it would be easier to see the details. I printed out a few copies, and will play around with colored pencils, trying out colors. Right now, though, my inclinations are sage green, dark purple, some yellow or orange accents. I'm sure I'll change my mind.
Researching paint colors online, I finally decided that our home really was built in a bungalow style. It has the porch corbels, it has rafter tails, and it has the double front gable. It's a bit simplified, though. I'm not going for a period restoration by any means, but finding houses similar to ours (although, I've still to find one exactly like ours) has helped me with color choices.
Today while I was pondering the beauty of being able to reach the top of my front porch using just a step stool, I remembered the problems we had with painting one of our former homes, a custom ranch house we built back in the '90s. The home was gorgeous, but the maintenance was a killer and to be honest, it never felt right to me. It was just too large. Our current 1700 square foot home feels just about right (maybe even still a little large for the two of us and six cats).
Once again, I'm thankful we don't have a huge 3,000 square foot house like we used to have. Somebody else has that painting headache now!
Some other day I'll talk about the whole concept of downsizing. :-)
happy trails,
bobbi c.
http://bobbichukran.com
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