Craftsman Curb Appeal- BEFORE & AFTER!!!!

From the time we drove by this house the first time, my husband said we needed to change the paint colors.  We argued back and forth about what to change exactly.  He called it the 'Hansel and Gretel' house.  We both agreed that SOMETHING needed to change.

Here is what we started with, and what we ended up with.  My husband seriously hated this house on the outside when we first looked at it.  And every time thereafter, until we made some changes.

So initially, it was obvious to us we needed to make changes to make it look like the style that we are attracted to.  But, the plus factor was that it is a craftsman style home with my favorite finish of river rock.

We started by walking around the house and making a list of the changes we wanted to make.

1. Change out all gold hardware ( doorbell, front door hardware, house numbers)
2. Change all the lighting out for craftsman lighting
3. Change the paint somehow.  (We chose to change only the trim, upper peaks and add shutters)
4. Landscaping (change the orange type bark to a more contemporary dirt/bark)
5. Garage Door Hardware update?

So, that's where we started!

1.  Gold Hardware

BEFORE:

 And the after pictures:

2.  We then decided to move forward with changing out the lighting.  Here's the before and after.

Finally, we just had to paint.  And you will see in the before and after pictures that we had already started painting.

3.  We chose to paint out only the trim in a creamy white.  Then the upper peaks in a darker color to accent the house.  And finally we added shutters in black and painted the front door to match!

Here are several pictures to update!

Before Garage:

 After!

4. Landscaping!  Check out the before and after.  The only real change here is in the orange bark versus the black bark.

5. Our final touch, as you can see in the above picture is the carriage hardware on the garage.  We really love the detailed look that provided!

Here's the official AFTER!

Yes, my husband is in the after picture, I'm just noticing that.  But you can still see the BIG changes and curb appeal of the changes we made.  I love to drive up to my home.  All these little changes made such a HUGE difference!

We later added black shutters on all the windows up front that you can see in the very first photo of this post.  They match the door that was painted black.

Thank you for coming by my blog and let me know if you have any ideas, pointers or thoughts!  You are so appreciated!