Progress!

We haven't had many updates lately, but that's because I wanted something drastic to show you on the house. We started working on fixing our garage before we moved in. Of the ten-page code violations that came with this house, fixing the garage was the most urgent since it was falling over and had holes in the roof. People looked at this and said, "Tear it down." But we didn't have a ton of money and we like old things, so we decided to restore it, one small step at a time, with lots of help along the way.

As purchased. It came with the tarp (and raccoon) and everything. 

The first step was to protect our neighbors. We hired our friend from church (Shawn Gray of Home Elements) to get it structurally sound. He does great, beautiful work (check out the pictures on his website). I don't think our project made the cut for his website because it was still an eyesore, but guess what?! It wasn't going to fall over and the holes in the roof were gone. Shawn and Edy (you'll see more of him) also ripped off the garage extension. At the end of that project, it looked like this:

Straight as an arrow and new cedar siding where the extension once protruded.

Lots of peeling paint to scrape on the backside. 

This version was luxurious. We could actually store things in the garage. Shawn even fixed the broken window and the raccoon had been relocated. We operated with this lovely version for over a year. To prepare for the monumental task of painting the entire house, we decided to use this little garage as our testing ground. It was our chance to work on our prepping skills - scraping, stripping, sanding, caulking, puttying, and priming. This was labor-intensive and we couldn't have done it without Edy's help. Here we are at work:

Man of my dreams and the hardest worker I know. That window behind him is on its way to amazing. 

He makes me laugh too, which is a good thing because when I'm hot, I get cranky.

Don't be deceived. Most of the work was done by Paul and Edy.
I included this picture to show you the true state of that 100 year old siding. 

Poor Edy. He did a ton of work, and we did not do a good job of documenting him at work. I will correct that in the future (as there is still an entire house to prep for paint). I'm especially disappointed because Edy looks so handsome in his work suspenders.

This is a cheat; he's actually working on our house. But those are the suspenders. Also,
Paul informed me that it's hard to get a picture of Edy because he moves so fast. 

Edy primed the whole garage. Look at this. It's so pretty.

We didn't get a picture of it, but those windows got a lot of love an attention, stripped down to the bare wood.

I was tempted to paint the whole thing white and be done - it was such a drastic improvement, but I'm glad I didn't.

Now to an insecurity confession: I was incredibly nervous about picking paint colors. I love, love design - reading design blogs and books, looking at magazine pictures, drawing sketches, pinning images on pinterest - but choosing exterior paint colors FREAKED me out. There were tears. What if I hated it? What if we had to do it all over again? What if? What if?

So I turned to one of my real talents: research. I narrowed it down to about nine potential base and trim colors. Then I bought samples in rounds (I forgot to take a picture of this stage). Here's the crazy thing, I ended up loving the very first base and trim color I chose. The rest of the samples just confirmed that they were my favorite. All that was left was the accent color. I did another round of samples and ended up choosing my neighbor's suggestion (thank you, Susan!), which I absolutely love. Here are the color winners:

Base color.

Main trim color - to match the gutters.

Additional trim color.

Susan's pick and our "pop" color.

After getting the garage ready to go (did I already mention how labor-intensive that was?), we had another church friend (Dave Lano of Lano Services) do the painting. This is fresh in my mind because it happened today. We absolutely can't stop staring at the finished project - AND - he and Mike did this in about six hours. It's perfect in every way. The garage is done.

Action shot. Paul turned around after taking this picture and they were done.

Look at that beauty! It reminds me of a doll house, a sophisticated one, of course. Props to Mr. Lano for suggesting that the amber color trim the inside of the windows. It is so cheerful.

A much prettier backside now. You can see the dovetail color under the eaves. It didn't get a lot of play on the garage because it doesn't have the same kind of Victorian detail the house has. Don't worry, it will get to show off soon.

Freshly painted garage door too - looks brand new.

One more for good measure. Plus, this is a little truer to the actual color,
which is darker than some of the other pictures show.

This post got kind of long. Let's just remember what the before looked like:

BEFORE

AFTER

Now for a day off - to sip a drink from the deck and admire our garage.