Exterior Remodel: 5 Years in the Making!

Five years ago, I designed a whole new facade for our house as well as a new siding layout and roofline.  I spent the last five years trying to find a contractor brave enough to take on the project.  I finally found one!  Shane Chunning, owner of SC Built in Cedar City, has been working on wrapping up all my unfinished projects that I haven't found the time to finish myself and has begun our Exterior Remodel that I designed all those years ago.  He has been wonderful to work with, shares my attention to detail and works well with women (having all daughters himself), which is super helpful since, although I have 6 sons and only one daughter, I myself come from a family of 7 sisters.  

The house originally was in very bad shape, figuratively and literally.  The condition was bad, with the entire front porch rotting out, holes all over the cheap vinyl siding, and no house- or window-wrap anywhere to be found.  But the "shape" of the house was also very poor:  the scale was all off, with puny little dormer windows, too shallow roof pitches, no architectural interest or detail with casings or mouldings or eyelines, terrible attention to light and how to bring more into the house, and just a generally ugly aesthetic overall:

When we bought the house....

....The progress we've made so far. 

Front Elevation BEFORE

Adding plants helps but only goes so far.  The house was just ugly.

Back Elevation BEFORE

Side Elevations BEFORE

There were significant design challenges with this house:  while it appears as if it is symmetrical, it isn't actually symmetrical and making it appear symmetrical and balanced took some very tricky fandagling with measurements and layout.  But, I think I managed with my design while adding significant architectural interest to the design and giving the house a much more welcoming personality:

Shane, the amazing contractor, and Rulon Barlow, his immensely talented framer, knocked this out in a couple days while we were on vacation for Spring break.  You can imagine the excitement as we drove up to our house a couple days ago and saw the significant change that took place while we were away.  They made difficult decisions on layout choices to give the house a more symmetrical appearance, despite the difficulties I mentioned above without even interrupting my vacation.  While their solutions differed from mine, I feel like they did an excellent job problem-solving the design problems.  They are awesome!

I am super excited to see it finished.  I am now working with the siding guy while Shane prepares for the brickwork that will be done.  We will replace the front door with a 3/4 lite door, but even with the existing door, vaulting the elliptical arch ceiling over the doorway already brings significantly more light into the entryway from inside.

Shane extended the depth of the porch gable to better match my design plans this week.  Much better!

Siding is finally going on.  The gables were framed a bit differently than I drew them which presented a few problems.  First, the left gable was framed nearly a foot wider than the right.  Second, both gables were framed in such a way that the windows aren't centered.  These are significant problems considering that The siding plan for the gables is board and batten, which emphasizes both the significant difference between the widths of the two gables and the fact that the windows are off center.  That means I needed to spend a couple days doing some fancy math to create illusions that the gables are the same size and the windows are centered.  This was NOT easy, but I think I managed pretty well.

I am now exploring front door designs to commission a millworker to build me a new front door.

Coming along VERY slowly. 

Progress is still incredibly slow. It has been over a year since we started the exterior remodel. We had a guy start forming some retaining walls for the front and side yards but he hasn't been back for weeks. 😞 We really haven't made any progress over the last several months but spring at least has things looking a bit more like home. 

We've started staining, painting, adding details. Still have alot more to do, but we are making progress again....I had my front door built and installed, we are in the process of undertaking the awnings over the windows and garage door, the new garage door should be here soon, and we are getting since of the detail work installed. 

For whatever reason, I can't upload these photos in the right order. Here's the door before we oiled and installed it. 

Testing out a template for the gable bracket detail

Installing the garage awning

Window awnings going up

Post bracket details and window awnings installed

Putting up garage awning

Post bracket details under porch gable

Post bracket details on the double posts

Siding details going on porch gable and post bracket details on. Front door (solid walnut) installed and oiled. 

Tongue and groove eves and porch ceiling stained (everything is stained darker than I wanted but I'm hoping it will lighten up a little in the sun over time)

Front door installed

Our awesome finish carpenter, Kelsom, came up with some rigging and harnesses to keep everyone safe as they work on installing the gable arches. 

We finally got the brick filled in over the front door. It was very tricky because the arch didn't get centered properly over the door so we have to try and camouflage the offset. It will be less noticeable once it is painted. Don't mind the Halloween decorations. 

The wood details are starting to go in on the porch gable. My nephew, Kolby, who is an excellent wood turner, is currently making the ball finials for all the wood details on both the twin gables and the porch gable. Once he finishes those, they will get installed

Window boxes and ball finials are made and ready to get stained and installed. Kelsom (finish carpenter) and Kolby (wood turner) are both beautiful craftsmen. 

The white bracket side details are installed.

I don't have the skill or program to do a real rendering, but here is my amateur attempt at getting an idea of what the new garage door will look like in the house. I can't wait for the garage door to come! 

We are in the process of installing the false beam ends. We still need to install them on the front twin gables, but my finish carpenter had an urgent personal matter that has called him away, so we are waiting on him. He put the weather vane up though, which is exciting. It is still such shiny copper and brass that it looks cheap and artificial, but once it ages to the degree of tarnish I want, I will clear coat it with lacquer.

The lower half of the house is painted. I'm still agonizing over the color of white. Sherwin Williams apparently doesn't have any exterior paint with the color of base I need to get the right color white. 😡  We decided to live with it for a bit while we shop around for the better tone of white

I added the house numbers over the front door. 

We are trying to decide what to do now with the hideous old concrete floor. 🤔 🤦‍♀️

I added some insulation and trim above the windows.

The post bases are finally getting built! They will have gorgeous basalt caps.

The brick retaining walls and steps are going in! The wall cap and treads will all be the same gorgeous basalt. The landings will all be grass. 

I believe they plan to add the brick to the chimneys today. The chimneys will also have basalt caps. 

The lighting is bad in this picture but the corbels below the fireplace bump out are in. 

Brickwork on the chimneys and post bases is done! 

Finials and beam ends are installed! 

We are getting very close! 

The new garage door is finally in!  

We added some planters along the side steps against the house with the leftover brick. I can't wait to get the basalt capstone and treads in!

We will add basalt capstones to the brick post bases and the landscape walls and basalt treads on the landscape steps. We still need to add copper-look roofing to the awnings over the windows and garage and install copper-look gutters. I can't afford real copper so it has been difficult tracking down faux copper that I like. Then, we need to get the landscaping back in....