Paint, Landscaping, and Paving Ideas for the Farmhouse Exterior
THE FARMHOUSE
Since the very first real estate listing photo I saw of the Farmhouse back in 2016, I’ve dreamed of painting the exterior. And replacing the cracked front walkway…and doing something with the landscaping and… Well there’s plenty of work to do on the exterior of this beautiful home. It hasn’t been a priority in the past because the interior needed way more work. But this month we finally started on the exterior!
Why would you start an exterior project in October? Eek you probably shouldn’t. But it was one of those I-mentioned-to-Garrett-that-we-needed-to-replace-the-front-walkway-because-it-had-become-a-tripping-hazard-and-within-hours-he-was-pulling-it-out type situations. And once it was out, we had no choice but to start work on the exterior. So we’re going to get as much done as we can before the snow hits and today I wanted to share some ‘before’ photos and our ideas for the space.
Here’s what the house looked like back when we bought it in 2016.
Those are pics from the day we moved into the house. And honestly nothing has changed in 4 years except our family has grown and Garrett limbed the large elm tree.
I really do think the house is lovely as is, except for the walkway anyway. But a few small changes would go a long way. Here are our three main goals to accomplish with the exterior…
Paint
I think this historic 1912 farmhouse would look dreamy in a classic white or light-neutral color. Can you see it? The house needs to be painted in the next few years so we brought out a couple of contractors to bid the exterior paint this summer. One bid came in at $15,000 and the other contractor won’t call me back. That’s such a large number and I think we’re still digesting it and debating if we have the energy to do it ourselves. Of course digesting and debating has brought us to fall so at this point we’ll have to wait until next year. But I thought I’d share a little about the paint inspiration since we’re talking exterior.
Here are a couple of historic country homes that are similarly painted to what I’m imagining for ours…
Via Southern Living | PHOTO BY LAUREY W. GLENN
Via Southern Living | Photo: Laurey W. Glenn
I’ve spent a lot of time analyzing old photos of our home trying to assess what color it used to be painted (we’re lucky enough to know the granddaughter of the original builder of our Farmhouse and she shared a lot of photos with us). I love the idea of recreating or at least getting close to the historic color of the home. Of course the old photos we have are all in black and white so that doesn’t help much with the color other than to tell us the house was light. But…I discovered this website (via my friend Ashley at the Gold Hive), which allows you to colorize old photos online. Have a look:
Isn’t that fun?! I’m not sure how accurate the colorizing is, but if we assume it’s at least semi-accurate, then the Farmhouse used to be a warm white or cream. It’s hard to tell if the trim was different than the body color, but I think it’s the same.
Let’s look at a few more colorized photos…
These photos span a few decades so they could actually be different colors, but for the most part, it seems like the house was a warm white. The trim appears to be the same color as the body color in most of the photos and the windows were painted dark or stained wood (except for the screens in the upstairs bedroom windows, which look to be painted the same as the trim color).
So my idea for a white or light-neutral for the house color feels just right. I’m not 100% sure if we’ll do a different trim color, but for ease of application and maintenance, I’m guessing not. We will paint the wood windows dark (probably black) as they’re already painted a dark green color.
Goodness I cannot wait to paint this house! Hoping that will happen in 2021.
Front walk
Our front walk was poured concrete and badly cracked and generally in rough shape. We have a large elm tree within 10’ of the walkway, so the roots surely played a role in the state of the walkway.
Earlier this month, I told Garrett that the walkway was a trip hazard and needed replaced, thinking we’d do it next year, but he was ripping it out a few hours later. I didn’t get a chance to take any photos of the front walk before it was dug up, but afterwards it looked like this.
With the walkway gone, it became a pretty big priority to get a new one in before the fall rain and snow. So let’s talk about our plans for the new walkway…
My first thought was to lay large stone slabs in the grass, kind of like the McGees did at their home. It feels classic and a tad modern too and I like how seamless it would look with grass growing up to all 4 sides of the pavers.
But large pavers like that are hard to find (especially on short notice) and Garrett didn’t like the idea of shoveling something like this in the winter (would the grass get torn up with the shovel?).
A new poured concrete walk was an option, but with our elm tree so close to the walkway, it felt like we’d just be asking for more cracks in the future. Plus we had no idea if we could even find someone to pour concrete this late in the year.
That brought us to a gravel or smaller pavers laid continuously, both of which we could do ourselves and would look beautiful. In the end, we liked the idea of something more substantial than gravel, so we started looking for pavers!
We went to our local lumber supply store and found these pavers from Mutual Materials. They’re 7”x9” and have a cobblestone feel. So we purchased every single last paver they had at the store. It turns out when you’re looking to buy pavers in October, no one seems to have enough in stock, so we had to make a trip to Home Depot to buy them out of pavers too. We have enough to do the front walk and possiblly enough to extend the walkway to the garage, but it’ll be close. Here’s what those pavers look like in action in a stock photo from Mutual Materials.
Landscaping
Our south-facing front yard gets a healthy dose of shade due to the old elm tree. So I’ve struggled with what to plant up here. I wanted a flowering bush that would line the front of the house and get big but not too big. After lots of online research and calling around to local nurseries, I settled on Blushing Bride hydrangeas. We’re going for a simple, uniform look, and I think it will be beautiful. Here’s an example of the Blushing Bride hydrangea.
via Country Living | Photo: Susan Heeger
Alright, that’s all the inspiration I have for you today. I can’t wait to share more of this project soon!
