the exterior

 

We have more of a love-hate relationship with the exterior of the house, we think, than any other single aspect of the entire house and property. On the one hand, it's painted a shade of blue that hasn't been seen since Papa Smurf hit the airwaves of Saturday morning TV:

     

  

What, you thought we were kidding about Papa Smurf and his dream house?

 

Hey...

vs.

You decide.

On the huge plus-side, the house is a massive, full three stories encompassing somewhere over 4000 square feet, with some wonderful architectural features:

  

According to legend, the house spent many a happy year from its birth until the mid-1970's painted either a respectable white, or a sunny farmhouse yellow. Once the great renovation apocalypse of the 1970's was completed, our developer friend sold the house, at that particular point in time still yellow, and moved on. The new lady of the house was from California, and never forgave her husband for relocating her to the cold, blustery East Coast. She decided, therefore, that her mid-century Victorian would share the same color as her beloved Monterey cottage on the coastal bluffs of the Pacific, and painted it blue. According to one of the neighbors, the house was painted while she was on vacation and when she came back, she took one look at the place and screamed-- the house had been painted a shade of blue that was "utterly. . . indescribable."

Mind you, the current Smurf-blue is thirty years faded from the original color...

So what's a body to do, assuming that these are two particular bodies who love old houses but hate cheesy 80's cartoons? Well, Plan A involved Hawaiian shirts, black RayBans, and an entire pitcher of margaritas on the front lawn while blasting Jimmy Buffet music and pretending we had bought some old beach shack in Key West. While we had fun, and our neighbors were undeniably amused, we found it only solved the problem on a temporary basis... we sobered up, and the house was still unacceptably blue.

So now we're contemplating Plan B, which involves tearing off the 1930-40's cement asbestos shingles and tar paper underlayment to expose the original clapboards. We know they're there, because we unearthed them when we gutted the powder room.

This summer and fall, post-pool area renovation, we'll cover the house in scaffolding, remove all the asbestos shingles, and sand, fill, prime and paint the clapboards. There's some trimwork, soffits and fascia that need some attention, too. Our first ideas for house color look somewhat like these:

Scanner colors are inexact, of course, but they're all varying shades of a medium grey-- some with green undertones, some more brownish.

Though we haven't had the opportunity to do much with the exterior of the house itself, we did remove the six foot high bushes around the foundation that were growing halfway up the windows:

(roll your mouse arrow over the photo above for before and after)

Removing the evergreen beasts flanking the doorway left us with a functional but not particularly attractive cement stairway and landing pad, so we're considering some form of overhang to protect our guests from the weather, and then there's the even larger issue of figuring out how to actually get people to the front door. Meanwhile, we're busy mixing paint colors for this summer...

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