House Update: New Roofing + Siding

2020 was the year of house projects! With the pandemic wiping out our social activities, I was so grateful to have our home and plenty of projects to keep us busy, especially in the first months of lockdown. We started in March with tilling up and re-seeding our backyard to encourage grass to grow, adding a firepit and other necessary landscape cleanup. We ended the year with re-roofing and re-siding the house and garage, which took 2 1/2 months start to finish (woof).

Chris did all of the work himself, with a lot of help from generous family and friends! We saved a ton of money doing it this way, but it definitely takes longer and the process was stressful for Chris, between measuring and doing the math to figure out what materials we needed, getting the inspections done, requesting a dumpster and actually doing all the work. It consumed our weekends between August and October, and it was a huge to relief to finally get (almost) everything done at the beginning of this month. I’m excited to spend the winter cozied up in our “new” house—see below for before and after!

BEFORE: 8/13/20
*Not a TRUE “before,” because the porch had already been updated when I took this photo. It was previously all screens, and we added the windows and stone paneling to get yearround use out of it (we still need to insulate and finish the inside). The new windows, edging around the house, stone pathway and deck in this photo are also updates/additions we made since buying the home in 2018. The roof and siding on the house weren’t terrible (although the roof was old), but our detached garage was in rough shape, and that was the bigger incentive behind this project!

AFTER: 10/21/20
Goodbye yellow! The new color scheme and textures remind me of something you would find nestled in the Northwoods, so I like to think of this as our little cabin in the city. We originally wanted to do navy/dark blue siding, but we couldn’t find the right shade, and this green feels a little more unique! We still need to buy a new front door, mailbox (black to match the house numbers) and gutters, and stain the deck, but the “hard stuff” is done! Chris did an amazing job with the cedar shakes, and actually—this whole design (shakes, stone accents and copper roof) was his plan! It’s so nice to have a garage and house that now match, and I’m proud to call it ours! Next spring, we’ll add some trees and bushes to fill in the front of the house.