Home Renovation and Repair Guide: Home Exterior Makeover

Our summer project has officially come to an end! That’s right, we finally completed our exterior. Insert all the happy face emojis here!

As you may recall, this project initially started due to a number of exterior repairs that we could no longer ignore. We needed to do something fast and this was the year to do it BUT I couldn’t wrap my head around doing all this work and not seeing any visual difference. So I added a mini facelift to the mix!

It’s kind of amazing to watch how a few tweaks and lots of paint, can easily revive your curb appeal. We managed to get a lot done in between our busy summer schedule. For the most part, some projects worked out great, some didn’t go as planned and some were added last minute. I’ll go through all the details in just a minute.

So without further ado, I’m thrilled to present to you our before and after shots.

What do you think? It looks totally refreshed, right!?!

This project consisted of many small projects like repairing our crumbling concrete walls and re-painting the wood trim around our home.

Then we had some larger projects like replacing our garage doors, which of course, we left to the pros. Not only has this made the biggest impact visually but it’s such a relief to know that we installed one of the most durable garage doors on the market.

And did you notice our brand new driveway?

Just kidding.

We sealed it and it looks fantastic. Our driveway is actually pretty old with a ton of cracks. This new coat of paint just makes your eyes skim right over it all.

Our once pink concrete curbs are magically grey now. This was definitely another painting project worth all the sweat—well my husband’s sweat—he had to move them all to the garage since it was raining non-stop at the time.

I’ll be posting all the details about both these projects very shortly and why we added it to the list last minute.

Our landscaping is as bare and minimal as it gets—I know. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve heard our parents say, “why don’t you plant something out front?”.

But here’s the deal, I’ve got a black thumb and an surface area way too large for a beginner to mess around with.

I’m ~~slightly~~ overwhelmed.

For now, we filled it with black mulch and I will revisit this once I master the art of flowers and shrubbery.

I had some big plans to build a new and improved gate system but this project didn’t happen this summer so we just stained the gates black.

We’ve also got new light fixtures! These fancy outdoor wall lantern make me extremely happy every time I see them on.

Our stone pathway is looking sharp, thanks to one of our repairs (view all the details here). The stones on the right side were literally sloping away from the path. Even with all this rain this summer, we still have no movement (yay!).

Lit pathways are a must! Our friends at Deelat sent us these amazing solar powdered LED lights. Did I mention, they are three-in-one? They can be used as lawn lights (as shown here), they can float in water or be hung and and used as a pendant. Oh yes, I’m going to have fun with these!

Remember our existing exterior entrance?

We made a few tweaks to update the look of the molding and repair some of water damage we had. I just love how this turned out and it was such a cheap fix. You can read all about this project in my previous post.

The front door is original to the home, although it does need to be replaced, we made some minor repairs and cosmetic changes to it in the meantime.

We painting, adding new weather stripping, changed out the insert glass, added a mirrored privacy film and installed new door hardware (<—which has basically changed my life!).

I can’t wait to go into more detail about what we did in an upcoming post.