Overview of the Exterior

Yesterday I posted about the exterior paint colors, which brought up some questions about what the exterior of the house will look like.  So, I thought I'd write a post about it.

The easiest way to do this, is to show you some of the pictures on my pinterest board entitled, "Alabama House - Exterior."

First of all, the overall look is craftsman style.  According to wikipedia, here are some common themes with craftsman style homes:

• Low-pitched roof lines, gabled or hipped roof
• Deeply overhanging eaves,
• Exposed rafters or decorative brackets under eaves
• Front porch beneath extension of main roof
• Tapered, square columns supporting roof
• 4-over-1 or 6-over-1 double-hung windows
• Frank Lloyd Wright design motifs
• Hand-crafted stone or woodwork
• Mixed materials throughout structure

Here are pictures of the examples I am going off of:

I love how there are no shutters, like traditional homes have.  I love the natural stone.  I love how the brown makes the white pop, and visa versa.  It looks clean and organized, while still warm and homey.  (Michael likes them too, but I use the word "I" because I feel more strongly about things than he does.  We know this by now, right?)  :-)

Even though I don't like brown, I kept coming back to these houses.  I wanted something that would look nice against a wooded backdrop, yet would feel fresh and clean because it's on the lake.  These pictures just really fit the bill.

AND, I saw this post on pinterest and decided maybe I like brown...sometimes:

Isn't that beautiful?!  I just love the brown with the white.

Michael decided we wouldn't use brick anywhere, he wanted to go straight to stone.  We could have saved some money and used brick along the back of the house or something, but he felt strongly (stronger than me on this one!) that if we're going to build our dream house, we were going to do it right.  So you'll find real, solid stone on all four sides of our house and separate boat garage.

I looked at all the possible ways you can do stone (fake stone, different shapes, different colors, etc) and this is what I came up with as my favorite.  I love the gray and brown mixture.  I love that it's real stone.  I love that it's rectangular, yet each piece is different.  Hand cut, hand applied.  It will take forever, but the attention to detail is absolutely stunning.

As far as other materials, we chose Hardie siding, at the recommendation of our builder.  According to google, hardie siding is:

1. Fiber cement siding

Fiber cement siding (or "fibre cement cladding" in the UK and Australasia) is a building material used to cover the exterior of a building in both commercial and domestic applications. Fiber cement is a composite material made of sand, cement and cellulose fibers.

Not only is it very solid (90% sand and cement - pros and cons), the boards come very wide, which I like, and you paint them.  I loved the cedar shakes from the picture above, but without yearly maintenance (no thank you), they look yucky fast.  So, we have faux shakes that we will paint brown to look like cedar.  And the siding will be painted too.  I'm told it needs painted every 5-10 years, which I'm sure we will hire someone to do.  (Keep that in the budget!)

So, I wanted no shutters, craftsman style, white windows, and brown that makes it pop.  Oh, and we wanted stone.

That's how we came up with our decision!

I'm not done yet, though.

I feel very strongly about the porches.  We have the covered, open front porch with pillars, the backyard screened in porch, and the back patio (open and uncovered).

Covered, open front porch:
I really wanted those classically craftsman pillars.  Stone on bottom and white on top.  (Scroll back up to the 4 houses I'm using as my inspiration - all have those pillars.)  Very square, very chunky, feels woodsy to me.  Here is a picture that inspired me for the lighting and planters:

The problem is, I'm horrible with plants.  I'm thinking if I have two big planters I can open the door, lean outside, and water, they might stand a chance.  We will see!  Anyway, I love the ceiling, I love the lantern style lights on either side of the door, and I love the large hanging lantern in the middle.

I LOVE this:

But, Michael reminded me I have to sweep/clean all of that.  Not to mention bugs, spiders, (and whatever else!) will be around and I'm going to want very simple things on the front porch.  I'm going to save all this pretty stuff for the backyard screened in porch.  The front porch will have simple decorations that will include rocking chairs for Michael and I to sit on and rock and watch the boats in the lake.

Oh!  And this is what I love for the front steps - 6+ feet wide, only ours will be stone:

Screened in back porch:

This is a big room right off the family room that I plan to spend a lot of time in.  The view is to the woods, so I'm hoping to see a lot of birds and butterflies and hear the lovely hum of the crickets and toads in the evening.  This is the room that is screened in, so the furniture can be a little more comfy, but it's still outside, so I will keep that in mind.

The floor will be concrete, but it will be stamped to look like stone:

Back patio:

This is next to the screened in porch and is where the built in grill will go and where the fire pit will go.  It will also have the same stamped concrete.

The last thing to talk about is the garage doors.  I have several ideas for the garage doors, but the theme is square/rectangle details, black hardware (maybe to make it look like barn doors).  I just wanted something white that is more interesting than the basic door.  Oh, and they definitely need windows - it's the only natural light this big room will have.

So, that's the exterior!

And this is where my brown paint samples are heading.