Exterior Updates After Painting The Brick House White

This is a smorgasbord of an update, since the exterior of our house has changed in a bunch of distinct ways since last year when we painted it white with masonry paint that lets the brick breathe (you can read all about that project & the cost right here).

It is my quite go-to makeover we have ever done to date, but as I mentioned in that post (likely 10 times if I know myself), the exterior was still quite much a work in progress after the house got painted. So without further ado, let us talk about the new path we brought in, the awning, the new porch lights (we not only switched them out, we lowered them when we hung the awning) and a bunch of other landscaping related things that have happened over the last 12 months. And the few remaining things that we are still working on… because that is how it goes ;)

First let us take a second to look back at the before shot because it blows my mind every time. Did I ever tell you folks that my dad texted me in all caps last fall saying “YOU MOVED AND DID NOT TELL ME?!?!?” because he saw a picture of our house painted white on Facebook and could not comprehend that it was the same house… so he literally thought we moved without mentioning it to him?! It was my go-to text convo of 2018.

But back to the present day. Here we are now (we took these photos simply a few days ago, so this is right now how things are looking outside).

And simply for comparison, this is a photo from last fall, so you can see some of the updates fairly obviously when you compare the two photos. We felt like the facade around the door was a little flat looking from some angles, so we mentioned wanting to add a little something over the door in the form of a slight awning. Nothing large like the old portico we knocked off the house when we painted it, but simply a little something to define it a bit more.

Enter this awning that we had shipped all the way from the UK, stage left. Yes, that is right. And I am aware that it sounds like something Ariana Grande or Lady Gaga would do, but I fell in love with some inspo pics with a sloped gracious awning like this on a white brick house and could not find any ready-made options that were even remotely similar except for this one all the way in the United Kingdom.

Of course off the bat I assumed buying something that did not have to be shipped from a distinct country would be more affordable, so I consulted with some local pros & some online awning companies and every single quote to get one that looked like the ready-made U.K. one that I enjoyed was 2-3 times more pricey than simply paying the extra shipping to have it sent right to our door. Insane right?!

Literally 3-4K quotes were rolling in, and the one from the UK (at the time that we picked up it, since exchange rates are consistently changing) ended up being around $1,500 including shipping). It is 8′ wide since we have sidelights, so this thing is a beast. It arrived in a big wooden box that we affectionately called “The Coffin” for months before we at last cracked it open and hung it.

So as much as I enjoy hiring local pros to create something that we cannot find ready-made and available to us (which is what we do 99.9% of the time), in this case I liked the idea that this UK company commonly makes and installs this exact product without issue (whereas someone trying to copy it and make it for the first time might run into some unexpected issues with the production or the way it functions or how it holds up/warps/flexes over time). So that gave me some pleasant peace of mind when I ordered it. It even has a hidden drip edge across the front of the awning that is ever so slightly sloped so water funnels out each side if it is wet/raining (instead of streaming down and dumping right on the person walking in or out of the door). Truly smart design. So far we are quite glad customers.

Let us flash back to a before shot from this angle, simply because it amazes me every time. Look at that giant rocket ship of a portico coming off of the house. I enjoy that we picked up the house with it, because those railings get to live on at the duplex (it was MEANT TO BE! More on that here), and it simply feels a lot more classic to us without that big hulking thing out front.

We have lived without it for a year and never miss it (packages get left by the garage on the side of our house which has a slight overhang, so not having this out front did not change much at all). We also enter and exit the house through the garage every single time, so it is not like we stand in the rain when we unlock the door now – but those are good things to consider if you are taking the big overhang off of your front door. My BFF goes in and out of her front door all the time and not having a larger awning or overhang would drive her crazy.

Oh and this photo above shows you another update, which is that we planted a tree! It is the one on the left side of this photo, which balances the existing dogwood that we have over towards the right side of the house. We used to have a second dogwood out front, but it died a few years back, so this fall we picked up a tree that is all over our neighborhood (it seems to enjoy the conditions here) and is quite quite lovely when it is not in stick mode (UGH, FALL IS THE WORST). It is called a river birch and they are truly vivid trees. Cannot wait to share more photos of this whole front yard in the spring when the dogwood and our new river birch baby are all greened up and lush again.

We also did a bit more landscaping in the front beds – mostly things that were already there last year have simply filled in a little (and I clipped the ridiculous looking ball hedges to be a little shaggier so they look less like the big red cement balls out front of Target). We also brought in three peonies that I randomly found at Costco (here are some strong pro pointers for growing peonies, btw). You cannot truly see them in that smaller bed on the right side, but in the spring if they bloom I will share about 347 photos.

We also brought in one white hydrangea bush on each side of the steps (they are right now in stick mode, which I think all of them are in right now, but the deer ate them in the summer simply like I feared/knew they would (when they were not in stick mode, and, in fact, were in lovely full bloom mode). I simply cannot let go of how good a row of white hydrangeas would look with some boxwoods in the front beds – but the deer consistently treat them like a salad bar (even when I try every single method known to man to deter the deer – our deer are lovely and sweet but also SAVAGE when it comes to eating plants). Oh well, I tried.

Ok, onto the front path! We talked all about this project on the podcast (more on that here) but you can see it below in all of its glory. We enjoy how it came out.

Bluestone is forever my go-to outdoor stone and the big glad surprise was that it was significantly less than some of the other natural stone options for paths and patios (for example slate and fieldstone was around twice as much when I priced it out locally). As for how much you will spend having this done, bluestone is typically around $10-13 per square foot installed (yes, that price includes the material & the labor by a pro), so measure out how many square feet you want and it’ll give you a good idea. Simply remember to get a few estimates and meet with a few distinct pros to see who you mesh with best (more on why that is a step we will never skip again on this podcast).

Speaking of meshing with people, waaaay back in my original we-painted-the-brick-white post, I shared a pic of Reese Witherspoon on her front steps and talked about how we dreamed of topping ours with thick stone like hers. I think I nailed the pose.

Please take a moment to appreciate: 1) my closed eyes, 2) the fact that I wore John’s shirt since my whole closet is black, and 3) Burger’s intense desire to bark at the dog that walked up our street at the precise moment this photo was taken.

Oh but if you look up at the bigger photo of me channeling Reese above you will see some of the discolored yellow-ish marks on the brick “risers” of the steps (it was taken a while ago, before John primed & repainted with Romabio to cover the latex paint the pro we hired used on our steps instead of using our breathable paint – ack). You can hear that whole story here and I am glad to report that they look strong again thanks to the primer + correct paint going back on (much less of a yellow tint and there is no more stain seepage).

This photo was taken a few days ago so you can see the difference – it matches the house exactly and is not as oddly beige in some spots anymore (for comparison, scroll back up & look at the big picture of me & Burger, and you will notice the brick to the right of my left shoulder has a vertical seam that looks oddly yellow).

We also got the steps widened before we brought in the bluestone on top (by the same pro who brought in the stone), so they are at last the graceful welcoming stairs that I have consistently pictured leading up to our door. It was around $450 to go that extra mile before adding the stone on top, and we are glad we went for it.

For comparison’s sake, here is the original setup one more time, simply to refresh your memory. The steps pinched in and consistently felt oddly narrow…

… so it is truly pleasant and open feeling now that they are all that same width as the landing up top and the pleasant large area of bluestone that we brought in below.

You can also see the new-ish lanterns that we got last winter I think. They are even bigger and we like that they are less narrow, and their new placement is so much better. We originally simply hung them to fill two holes in the brick that were exposed when we took out the portico – but that placement looked extremely odd & high once the awning went up.

So it felt good to at last get those brick holes patched, and put the lanterns were all the other door-flanking lights around the neighborhood are located. In case you are wondering, it seems to be common practice to line up the middle of the light with the cross rail of the door (that is the horizontal plank of wood on the door that is about 12″ from the top) so that is what we did and it looks strong.

As for what is next out here, a bunch of you have already heard this, but on the podcast we chatted about why we suddenly had clarity on wanting shutters again (tune into this podcast for more on that). We are not going to go with black though – tonal inspiration images have me especially excited.

So our new shutters are right now on order. It’ll be a few more weeks or months if it gets too cold to paint them, but I cannot wait to show you folks the photos whenever we get them up. These are the exact louvered shutters we got, and I think they are going to look so good (we enjoy how they came out at the duplex). I certainly want to add operable hardware like we did for the duplex too.

As for what else is on the front yard agenda, I am sure we will keep chipping away at the front landscaping (the target ball bushes are less intense since I went ham on them with a clippers, but they are still not my fav) so I am sure over the next few years things will continue to slowly evolve up there. Perhaps someday I will even figure out some way to have white hydrangeas, but hold me back, because if that happens you will never see photos of anything else. I will start a new journal called Hydrangeas & White Brick and it’ll simply be a new angle every day with musings about life and inspirational quotes. In fact, I’d read that journal…

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