Fall 2005 - Driveway Paved, House Nearly Painted

The house is all painted in this photo, only the garage and shed are left to paint. I've begun putting some shrubs and perennias into the side gardens.

Driveway excavation- 2004

This photo shows more of what I had painted so far. The front porch took the most time since there was a lot of surface area. Scrapping the peeling paint was the most difficult part of job. The original color the the cedar shingles on the porch was a warm dark brown which clashed horribly with the golden mustard and olive colors. A black solid stain brought the look together and helped bring emphasis to the original stonework foundation, porch columns and exterior chimney (west side of house). We also decided to solve the muddy driveway problems. Aaron rented an excavator from PLT in Pittsfield and prepared the driveway for a basecoat of asphalt. He also increased the driveway area so that we would be able to have room for turning around and parking several vehicles.

Exterior photo October 2004

The very first part of the house that I started to paint was this south-east corner. It was late September and the peeling paint was driving me crazy. Since this is the entrance that we use most often it was important to me to make it feel a tiny bit nicer so I quickly scraped the worst sections around the door, scrubbed it and put some white primer up. That made it feel a bit better... I was trying to decide what color I wanted to use once springtime arrived so I experimented with a golden mustardy color for the siding and a bluish olive color for the trim and painted the inside of the small enclosed porch. I wanted to see if I would get sick of the color combination as the winter months passed by. By the time spring came I was sure that I loved the colors and started to tackle the big job of painting the house!
The photo to the left was taken in the fall of 2004. My son was in the middle of replacing the rotten stairs (see previous photo) with sturdy pressure treated ones. You can see the portion of the house that I painted... I had the entire east side of the house painted to the level of the top of the downstairs windows since that was as far as I could reach on the ladder. I knew that one should start at the top and work down but reality sometimes makes one bend the rules! By the fall of 2004 I had this side and the front porch all painted.