Craftsman style cottage

Finally, I am here with before and after pictures of the house.  There were so many times I wished you all were here standing in the front yard with me when I had to make quick decisions.

Like when the day came to build the portico over the door.  How high should it be?  How wide?  I wasn't exactly sure. 

The Moravian light hanging in the portico was my first choice but Mr. 65th wasn't so sure about it.  We ended up ordering it when our flush mount light wasn't going to fit since the roof is curved.  Funny that neither one of us thought about that.  Mr. 65th likes the star pendant now that it's up.

The days leading up to building the trellis for the front of the house had me freaking out a bit.  How big should it be?  Will there be too many brackets on our little house?  (There are seven)  Will it all come together the way I envisioned it or will I hate it?  So many questions and uncertainty even though there was a plan in place.  I even chickened out for a day or two and told our contractor to just build the trellis over the garage door instead.

Our plan didn't include exact measurements of everything, we were just kind of winging it.  Taking inspiration from a variety of different places and seeing how things would fit together as we went.  You can see my inspiration here.

I'm glad I went for it.  I think it adds the dimension the house so badly needed and helps to balance the uncovered porch.

Here is a picture of a picture right after we bought our house and took all the metal awnings down.

Remember the story about us almost driving away when we first saw our house?  Now you know what I was talking about right?   And why would someone put a section of vertical siding on the front of the house and make it a different color so it would stand out even more? 

Here is a picture years later after adding some trim around the door and windows, building a new porch, changing the landscape and replacing the door and storm door.  Oh, and I painted the vertical siding to match the rest of the house.

And here we are today.  I'm calling it a craftsman style cottage.  What do you think?  Does it say that to you?  The soffits were extended and two new windows are in place of the lonely one above.  We still need to finish a few things like changing out a piece of lattice that doesn't match because it used to be covered by bushes.  And the guys need to come back to fix a few pieces of siding by the portico brackets...but that's another story. 

Another before....

You can see by the landscape that we have been planning this for a long time.  Everything was just starting to grow in when I took these before pictures.  Now everything is already on its way out for the season.

I'm thinking three black rocking chairs will be a nice addition to the porch next year.

Did you notice we are going storm door-less?  I made our contractor promise he would come back in January to hang it if we are freezing our butts off.  I hope we can make it without.  Now I just need to figure out which mailbox to order and what to do about house numbers. 

For anyone looking for paint colors, the exterior is Crownsville Gray HC-106 by Benjamin Moore and the siding is cement board by Nichiha.  I remember how helpful it was to see different colors on actual houses when I was looking.