Home Reveal! White Painted Brick for the Win [Exterior Home Photography]
As some of you may know (or have seen on my Pinterest board "Saratoga Curbside), it's always been my dream to live in a white house. I've always had these notions of this perfectly classic, timeless home, a la Father of the Bride. I've spent many days driving through Highland Park in Dallas ooh'ing and ahh'ing at all the GORGEOUS painted brick homes and thinking to myself "one day."
When we bought our forever home 3 years ago, I wasn't too impressed with much of the design of it. Inside or out. But much like other women, we see past design, focus on the bones, and start making plans. We spend hours on Pinterest, scour home design magazines, and dream of all the additions, upgrades and changes that our little brains can handle. My husband and I always joked that our house was "Carroll Dragon Green" (the school mascot where we live). I told Nick, not soon, but one day, I'm going to make my white house a reality. I'm going to save up my monies, and turn this orangey/pink brick into my dream home. Just so I knew what uphill battle I had ahead of me, right after we moved in I got a quote from a painting company for the project. Just as I suspected, the price was steep, and not by any means crucial. So on the back burner it went and filed into my "5 year plan."
If you followed any of my posts about my interior projects, you would see that the inside of the home was in a total state of disconnect from the outside. I took my time, went room by room and transformed the dated home into a transitional modern style (and having a ball doing it). I take great pride when people come over and tell me "your house looks like a Pinterest board." Mission, accomplished.
Still I kept thinking "I wish I could have the exterior compliment the interior." Enter mother nature. At the beginning of the summer, Dallas was graced by a historical amount of rain and storms leaving most of the city under water and with residual damage. Our home was no exception. The hail and winds left sizable damage to our roof which affected some of our interior walls. So we contacted insurance and got claim filing underway. We soon realized among the repairs included a new roof, new gutters and some paint staining and touch ups. Which..... if you give a mouse a cookie, she's going to ask the painters to just keep painting. We soon realized our original painting quote was a lot higher because it included painting gutters, fixing damaged wood, etc. And now that insurance was helping with those items, it made our paint estimate come down to just enough of a level that it could be done. Granted, it's still a whopper of a bill, and I'm definitely going to be on a spending freeze for some time, but COME ON. When would you get another opportunity like this? So off we went, picking out paint swatches, roofing swatches and watching the dream unfold before our eyes.
As the weeks went by, and my project was about to begin, I thought of all the other tweaks I could do to give our house that finished look. I took all of the security lights down and spray painted them black.
I didn't mind our front door *too* much, I originally planned to just give it a good paint job. But when a brand new floor model door came across my Facebook Garage Sale feed for $200? I jumped on that. I gave this puppy a fresh coat of paint and a door knob to match the interior pulls. Add to that a new light fixture, (eliminating one of the LAST brass fixtures for good) and I had my new entry.
Then came the days of demo!!! First the gutters came down, then the roof went up, painters came in and worked their magic, and the new gutters went back on. In the process we lost some landscaping. Bushes died, flowers had to be ripped out, so this is a fun new project that will happen TBD. Still on the to do list is hanging our house numbers (husband duty) and paint the bricks on the walkway (also husband duty).
I'm going to just let the pictures speak for themselves, and if you have any interest in the details of paint colors, etc. I'll finish the post about it all at the bottom (Some of my "before" pictures were taking after the gutters came off, so sorry for that).
Here is my perdy new WHITE HOUSE!
My poor "Breathe" sign went through the ringer. Between birds stealing the moss and all the movement from demos, it took quite a beating. Alas, I'll have to redo most of them, but I put them back up in the interim as is.
Here are some of the pictures on their own.
Alas! Cohesion among the house. A fun note about the blue paint color, it's the same color in my kitchen, entry bathroom, & laundry room. I love that it welcomes you at the front door, is a theme throughout the home, and is the back door as well. It really ties it all together. You can see these other images of the interior. Here, here and here.
Kitchen walls:
Brick - Sherwin William's "Pure White"
Siding & Wood - Sherwin William's "Sealskin"
Garage Door, Eaves & Keystones - Sherwin Williams "Tricorn Black"
Roof done by Super Roofman out of Keller - Silver Birch
Gutters & Downspouts - Black
Haint Ceilings, front door & back door - Sherwin Williams "Watery"
Security Lights - Rustoleum Black Matte
Front Light Fixture - Modern Forms
Door Handleset - Kwikset Tavaris
Painting done by CertaPro Painters Southlake