When we bought the house last April, the first thing you noticed inside and outside was that the color tan threw up everywhere. We are so not tan paint people, give us cool neutrals, like grey and white, and pops of color like an orange front door and a dark blue house. The mid century modern style is our vibe (if you hadn't noticed yet), so we wanted to bring that to our not so mid century modern looking house. We originally had wanted to do a grey color, but when our neighbors beat us to it, and also installed a horizontal fence (that's next in our plans), we decided against "copying" them. So dark blue was our choice, and I'm super happy we did that because we are the only dark blue house in our neighborhood! Before we painted though, Adam put up new siding on our house. Before it was vertical, older style siding, so we wanted to modernize it. We also built the little front fence for our address to go, dug up 2 areas near the porch and behind the small fence, and put in grey decomposed granite along with large rocks and drought resistant plants, including some succulents from our wedding. The final decorative touches were hanging orange macrame plant holders, getting a new large white mailbox (bye bye black mailbox), modern lights, a mid century doorbell, and a simple screen door. Up next is doing the front deck and the fences like I mentioned early. Always more projects to do haha.
The last thing I want to mention about these projects we've been doing, just as an overall comment on this house, is that we don't plan on this being our "forever house." Meaning the projects we do to this house add value and are our taste, but we did cheaper options on a lot of things compared to if we were going to live in this house forever. Our money saving items were repainting our front door orange instead of buying an amazing mid century modern door, finding $30 outdoor lights instead of the super nice, sleek ones we wanted, and for the backyard we kept it super simple for future renters of this house when we decide for it to be a rental.
Pots: Plant & Pottery Outlet // White mailbox: Amazon // Porch lights: Orchard Supply Hardware // Macrame plant holders: Home Depot // Mid century modern doorbell: Rejuvenation // House numbers: Target // Front doormat: West Elm // Paint colors: Naval, Fundamental White //
Front yard detail photos by me, portraits of us by Jessica Burke.
Picking the perfect blue color was harder then we thought! We knew we wanted an orange front door and a cool white trim, so we tested out different blues against that combo.
Here is our house before, tan, tan, and more tan.
Before/In progress photos:
Inspiration:
