RED

It is finished. (Well, the exterior painting anyway!) I'm thinking it's a vast improvement, or at the very least a drastic change, over where we started 4.5 years ago...

I think it makes a huge difference, and the painters did a very nice job. In pictures it's hard to get past the scrubby grass and long list of projects still to be completed (i.e. building a porch roof and railing, cleaning/repointing the stone foundation, bricking the Arxx block kitchen foundation, serious landscaping work, cleaning the gunk off the stairs, other general cleanup, etc.) but in person the new paint just looks so good, so crisp and so finished that, at the moment, everything else fades into the background for a change. Besides, the before picture is so bad I can't help but be thrilled with how far it's come.

I admit painting the gable above the front door red maybe wasn't quite the right choice, but I don't think I'd like other options either. A porch roof will help soften that contrast a lot, I think, though it's not terribly high on the priority list right now.


 And here's a similar angle a few months after we bought the house and decided to relocate the main entrance. What a nightmare this place used to be. While it's not perfect now, it feels pretty good to look back at these old photos and compare.

I really love the detail of the board and batten siding now that it's painted. It's hard to tell in the photos, but the fascia is color-matched to the chinking. I think it looks fantastic. I originally wanted to avoid a contrasting trim color and just do red all the way around, but we realized red fascia would look strange on the one section of the house that is entirely log.

The back door is now my favorite spot. I think we'll paint the door itself the same color as the chinking and fascia. (The current color is just primer.) I guess it's also time to peel the stickers off the windows. After 4+ years, the glue should be nice and easy to remove right? (Gulp.)