New Shutters and House Update

The paint on our front door has been peeling for a while. I have been trying to maintain it by using an acrylic craft paint that I mixed to be a similar enough color that your eye doesn't catch on the peeling pieces, but finally it's gotten so bad that I knew something needed to be done. As I've been talking to my mom about her house updates, we learned that black doors are the trendiest thing in exterior design right now. I love the look and decided that I was going to repaint our door the trendiest "Tricorn Black".  It took a bit to get David on board because he loves the navy blue that we picked when we first built our house (almost 12 years ago!). But I was feeling determined. 

I got a little stumped when I realized that I can't just paint my door, I would have to take off the shutters and paint those, too. No problem, I thought, until I then realized that one/two of our shutters are on the second floor with no way to access them. I came up against another obstacle when I realized that I would have to get permission from the HOA. 

My urgent motivation for getting the project done was starting to wane, but thankfully I got permission from the HOA after waiting only 2 of the 6 possible weeks for approval and after exploring a lot of options (paying a handyman to come remove the shutters, asking my dad to bring a tractor to my house) I found a friend who had a giant ladder that would allow me to get to the top window to remove the shutter. I purchased the paint and then it was go time! 




I painted the door and shutters and with the help of our neighbors Cade and Leah Ward - I got them hung back up while David was out of town. We decided to do a full makeover and I replaced the exterior garage lights with some really beautiful lanterns, and even replaced the house number with a sans serif number font (something that I have been wanting to do for years). 

The project escalated when I discovered some cracks in the stucco around the garage. I bought some repair stucco so that the cracks wouldn't get worse, but then I also had to buy stucco paint to cover the repair spots. Then because some of that stucco paint dripped on the border right around the garage, I had to go buy the lighter color of stucco paint to repaint the border. It felt like the project just kept escalating but I am SO so happy with the result. 

As always, what I thought was going to be a pretty cheap project (just $50 or so for paint) ended up requiring much more money - almost $600 after all of the paint supplies/brushes, new drill bits for removing stripped screws, new beautiful lamps, updated house numbers, stucco repair, and several gallons of stucco paint. We had some "home improvement" money budgeted for stepping stones in the garden but I wanted this project so badly that I used most of my personal money that I've been saving up to cover the rest of the project. 

This is the first project that was basically 100% me. I wanted it so I made it happen. David helped me hold the lanterns while I installed them because I couldn't do it by myself and I was grateful for his support through the project. I feel like the house looks so nice, and if we aren't going to move anytime soon - we should do the updates to make our house feel nice for us while we are here.