Super late post but better than never! I started writing this during and after the project but felt a bit of burnout from the project so it’s taken me MONTHS to revisit it because the entire thing took months. I’ll keep it short and sweet since the photos tell the story… let’s begin…

REMOVING THE CARPORT

First thing we had to do to prep for the paint was remove the carport. I have always hated this thing. It’s aluminum, dented, noisy, mossy in the wrong way, and just flat out ugly. So the day came and with the help of some friends, we got it in down in just over two hours! Bonus: we even made money off this. I listed the pieces on FB Marketplace and got over 40+ people interested it. So someone paid US to take it away. Win win.

RE-SIDING THE STUDIO

Danny’s studio was also in dire need to be re-sided as it was all T1-11 and literally growing mushrooms in some spots. The siding on the house is cedar but since it doesn’t touch the house, we could get away with residing it in Hardy Plank, which has become less expensive than cedar and will last forever. Again, Danny and I did the demo and let the professionals do the rest.

Unfortunately once the old siding was off we found rot around the foundation, which honestly was not surprising. Luckily it wasn’t a huge issue to fix though it did cost more than we would’ve liked, but what are you going to do? You have to fix it and now it’s properly sealed.

Lastly, since the entire structure was two separate structures that had been frankensteined together and was wonky looking, our contractors were able to shore up the differences on the side and now the studio look like one solid building.

DENTIL SHELF

One of the things I appreciate the most about the old homes in Portland is the attention to detail on the exterior. Ornante gables to thought out siding patterns and funky designs. Our house lacks a lot of these since we do believe it was a Sears home. When we re-did the porch I was interested in adding in corbels to give it more umpf but our roof line didn’t extend far enough out so it wouldn’t have looked appropriate so we decided to move forward with the dentil shelf which turned out to be incredibly easy. We already had the wood on hand so Danny and I picked an appropriate size, made the cuts and had the crew install it. It was 100% the right choice and really added additional charm on top of the new porch.

THE PAINT

The fun part! As posted earlier LAST year, Danny and I went back and forth on exact paint colors and then color schemes. Well ta-da, we picked Option 2, the darkest of them all… no surprise there. Picking our painter was actually surprisingly pretty painless. We received a few quotes but went with New Era after Powell Paint’s high recommendation. New Era also provided us with a list of homes he has paint in Portland so we spent an afternoon checking out people’s exteriors. We were even able to talk to one homeowner and he also gave a standing ovation review so we were sold.

The house needed a TON of prep before the paint could actually start. Including power washing and about 6 full days of just scrapping and taking care of the lead abatement. Once that was done, everything went quick and they were finished before we knew it.

We did decide to paint the brick both in the back and the chimney since it was not in great looking and someone had previously painted the chimney up to the roof line. After some back and forth we went with the dark black-green we did for our trim and LOOOOOVE the way it turned out. I think it’s my favorite color of the entire scheme. Then Danny decide it would be fun to had a stripe on both to help break things up. 100% was on board.

We absolutely love the way it turned out and love how unique it made our house in the neighborhood.

Getting close to the exterior home stretch: SIDING & PAINT!

We have been patiently waiting for this and now summer can’t come soon enough to get started.
Danny and I have been going back and forth about paint colors for yeeeears. I originally wanted to do green but then both houses to either side are now a navy blue… along with like 3 other houses on our block, so we figured it would blend in too much and decided we wanted to be different, bold, but traditional.

Over a year ago while we were on Whidbey Island we walked by this book store and we really liked their paint scheme, sans the teal trim. After doing more walking and biking around Portland we can across other homes that were similar and we were sold. But… finding the correct tones that worked for both of us proved a little more challenging.

At first we thought we could to color combination on our own especially with Danny’s history in color theory but this color combo had proved to much more challenging than we thought. Danny would mix colors on his own and we would paint samples and still nothing “WOWed” me. It came down to the question: Do you want people say to “the purple house” or “the red house”? ANSWER: RED.

So finally when schedules aligned, we headed over to Powell Paint in SE Portland to meet with their Color Coordinator, Mary. After describing our vision she very quickly, and VERY excitingly, started pulling swatches. And let me tell you: she was spot on. She helped us narrow down the exact historic shades we both wanted. Red-brown but rich with a gold trim and a green-almost-black highlight. In addition to the giant paper swatches she gave us, we also got decent size samples to paint large portions to confirm this is what we want. But it still being winter in Portland, we have not been able to just yet.

SO once again, here comes Danny with his skills and photoshopped four different variations of paint schemes. The very first option at the top of this post seems to be our favorite with the others following in order. We will also be painting the chimney likely in Waller Green. Excited to test out these colors in real life in a few weeks!

But before the paint can happen: we are also re-siding the entire studio as well replacing some boards on the house. The studio will be completely re-done in Hardy Plank which will hopefully last for as long as we are living here. This will also help with the paint because there will be almost zero prep involved. Other items we are considering adding is maybe a Dentil Shelf on both the front door and across the horizontal beam above the porch and a cupola on top of the studio where we will install our Pomeranian weathervane. Silly, I know but it’s Portland and it’s normal to be weird. Stay tuned!