Exterior - Not quite what I thought it would be.

So, what we had drawn up in the beginning was a farm house.  One that I envisioned would have hardy board siding with a nice big porch along the back and a fairly roomy front porch that would comfortably hold 2 rocking chairs and a table.  The porches were going to be made of reclaimed cedar beams with shingled gables.  I was thinking bright colors, maybe a yellow with a cream trim and black doors with shiny chrome handles. 

We did a lot of the work ourselves on the house, which meant we were there from the time we got off from working M-F and hit the ground running to see the progress of the day crew and put our nightly work in.  There were days I fell asleep in a snow suit in a rocking chair on the front porch while Tim installed tongue & groove pine ceiling boards.  I tried to hang in there most nights, but he always outlasted me!  We have a horse trailer with a camper up front, many times the kids would fall asleep in there.  A lot of dynamics were in play during the construction of this house.  Our last home sold before this house was finished, so all 5 of us lived in a 2 bedroom house in the next town over.  With 3 kids, a 2 bedroom can get pretty cramped REAL quick!  What we did find is that we grew closer.  Enjoyed dinner in the living room when it wasn't on the run out the door.  We ate outside a lot at the construction site, so it was like a picnic daily!  We found fun in the little things and looking back, in some ways, I miss the small quarters.  (then I snap back to reality). :)

Fast forward....

With being at the construction site daily, we met a lot of people.  People from the neighborhood walking would stop and introduce themselves and they would ask to take a tour. Other people we met were construction guys looking for work.  When the fall & winter comes around these guys get slow and are always looking to get some more work.  This is where our project took a quick turn!

We were approached by a crew that did stucco.  I have always loved stucco homes, but knew that was way out of our budget, or so I thought.  The crew that stopped by one day was from a town about an hour away looking to get on a job in Tri-Cities.  They gave us a bid and it came in way under what the lap siding would be.  Wooo hoo...stucco it is!

Stucco farm house?  Hmmmm...Interesting.  Stucco and cedar?  Not so sure.

Here we go.....Let's get in the car, don't forget to grab the laptop & camera....mission: find stucco homes with cedar.  I found out quickly that the cedar doesn't hold up too well in our climate, especially when facing the west.  Sunsets of over 100 degrees are not uncommon.  We found homes worth much more than ours that seemed to look dated or sadly aged when it came to natural wood doors and beams.  I started to really re-think the rustic farm house look.  I am sure we would care for the wood upfront.  Make sure it is sealed and treated yearly, but what about when we get older?  Is that something we will want to do, or pay to have done?  I'm not so sure.  I would also be so sad if we sold the home & I drove by one day many years down the road only to see the unloved beams that I hand chose and loved so much.  I think I better stick to a cedar gazebo!

Stonework

I spent some time using Paint and drew some rock on the house.  I like being able to quickly see the results of the different placement right away.  I chose Option 5.  In the opinions of others, it was too much rock.  I say....NEVER too much rock!  I love it!




Option 1: Do we do rock on 3rd stall only and half way up on the double bay? 
Do we put rock up top on the entrance?




Option 2: Do we do rock only half way up all bays & pillars with rock over entrance?




Option 3:  How about no rock up top at all?




Option 4: Really save $$$ and just have some stone on pillars & entrance?




Option 5: Lots of stone, a little more money but a huge improvement on curb appeal?

 Color of Stucco

Picking out stucco colors is so much more difficult that I could have ever imagined.  There are so many different colors and the little samples they give you...they are quite different once on the walls!  I am so thankful our guys did a "sample" mixture of the color I had chose, and the put it on a 2x2 section of a wall so I could see it in the shade & then later in the day...in the sun & sun set.  Very thoughtful & saved an ocean of tears!  Had I went with the color I thought was "tan"...I would have had a giant peach house.  It was terrible! 

So here we go again....next mission: drive around until we find THE COLOR scheme we want! *YAY*  Once you have accomplished the task of finding "the one"...what next?  How do you find out what color it is that they used?  We went to the assessors page, found the name of the person owned the property & looked them up in the white pages.  They were very happy to share the information with us.  They actually had just completed construction & had not moved yet.  We had tried going by a couple times and no one was ever around.  We even brought our samples and compared them to their wall.  It's crazy, about 5 different colors were "close" but not "perfect".  They actually ordered their color from the same company we were getting ours from, so we were able to get the exact color mix from the same company.  The paint store looked up their address and it had their mixes right there for us!  We live miles and miles away from the house we found, so having the exact same color scheme wasn't a big deal.  We decided on the main color to be brown & the trim around the house & windows to be dark brown...almost black.  The trim on the wood fascia does not quite match, but the paint store was willing to give us another color for free since it didn't exactly match the stucco trim.  Great store, great guarantee that they honor!  Local small businesses rock!  The exterior doors would remain white and sport chrome handles.  The front would be covered in stonework.  I wanted the stone to be placed randomly and not be framed in.  I like the look of natural stone and love it even more when it looks like patchwork on a quilt.  The guys did an absolutely amazing job.

I'm extremely happy with the way it turned out!



The two front windows were not completely framed in with the trim so that I can have wrought iron shutters installed.  The window above the door will also have wrought iron work.  To tie it all together, each side of the house will have a stucco wall with iron gates.  It truly is a castle on the farm...The Henn Haus.