Garage Doors...

I am totally in love with houses that have  "character".  

We are slowly trying to add elements to our house that add some charm.  

We've changed our lighting, painted the exterior & added wood shutters. I think all of the changes have made a huge difference.
You can see the first set of changes HERE.
I've been wanting to add some hardware to our garage doors for a while now.
Our doors are actually kind of old & when we were at Home Depot the other night, we decided to get some pricing for new ones. 

I am totally in LOVE with the carriage garage doors!
Unfortunately, they are not in our budget right now & they can be REALLY expensive! 

Here are a few inspiration photos...

 

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Aren't they charming??

Well considering we have plenty of other projects that I'd like to save our money for (Like a white kitchen!) 

We decided to just buy the hardware and at $12.50 a package, It's a cheap way to add some charm!  

We had to buy two packages to fit both of our doors.

My husband & boys started on the third car garage & I was SO excited with how it was looking...

Charming wouldn't you say?

It was just the look I was hoping for!

Then we got to the main garage door & there was a problem...it actually had a thinner width in the middle part of the door for the handles.
They both wouldn't fit side by side like the other door!!
 The only choice we had was to place them spaced apart & we couldn't change the 3rd car garage door to match because we had already drilled the holes in the middle.

My husband says it's fine because they are two different sized doors.

I'm still not sure.

Do you think it is OK to have them a little different?
Any suggestions on how we could fix it?

I think they are a terrific & cheap way to add some character, but if you have two doors always make sure they are actually the same size before you start!

****UPDATE
It drove me crazy to have the doors look so different!
It's only a year later, but I did figure out how to fix my doors!
I bought one more package of door hardware & moved the handles in.
 I decided to place two sets of double handles closer together like the other door.  We filled the holes in with screws & painted them white...you hardly notice them at all.
They definitely match better now!

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Organize & Decorate Everything

Exterior Paint {Reveal}

We hired a company to paint our house & after a complete nightmare it is FINALLY over!  

This was such a frustrating process & it took over 2 months for them to finish.

We started out with this...

Which I actually loved, but we had some stucco cracks in the back & decided it was time to fill them in & paint.

Then  the nightmare began & we went to this...

Not only was the door ruined there was paint over spray EVERYWHERE...on the brick, porch, eves, fence, & the back deck.  It was overwhelming. Needless to say, the first crew was fired by the company and we had over $500.00 of reimbursement at the end for the door & the tiles they cracked on my patio furniture. 

Here is the AFTER...

The paint was from Kwal Paints & it is a liquid vinyl paint.  The color is called Wicket.

It was SO hard to pick a color! 

It seems like a lot of them can turn a really purple or green hue...we kept changing our minds right up until the morning they started painting.

We really like how it turned out & were thankful the next crew of painters knew what they were doing & finished it up nicely!

We kept our trim white & painted the shutters and front door black.

They even repainted my deck...

Now that summer is almost over, we feel like we have our house back again!

If you'd like to see some of the changes we've made over the years, you can find it HERE.

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Home Stories A to Z

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Painting Nightmare...

My last post was on front door love...

Unfortunately,

We've encountered a front door 

NIGHTMARE!!

This is why we usually just do things ourselves...

Don't you hate it when hire someone to do a project to eliminate the headache of doing it yourself, but then you are left with a much larger problem?
I know every time we start a project there is a good chance of a few problems, but the painters we hired were so MESSY!
It's kind of a nightmare!

They will be back to fix quite a few of the problems, but just to give you an idea of what we are dealing with: They ruined both doors, paint is all over the porch, on my door hardware, on my deck (that I had already stained for the summer), on our light fixtures, they put all of their equipment on our outdoor furniture & cracked the tiles in the table & the list goes on & on...

The paint job itself looks great from the road, it's just a few of the little things that seem to add up to quite a lot when it comes to fixing them!

Here is my house...

Before

After

Not exactly the after I'd hoped for :(

I'll keep you posted & hope this painting nightmare will soon end!

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The Sasse Life 

Decisions...What Color Should I Paint My House?

We are going to be having the exterior of our house painted next month.
A few years ago we painted the trim & added shutters, but now the stucco on the main portion of the house has some cracking, especially on the back of the house & could use some freshening up.

 I'm so excited, but also so confused... I don't know what color to pick!  We have been driving around looking at different houses & I've been searching the internet for ideas.

When we first moved into our home, this is what it looked like...

October 2004

This is what it looks like when we painted the trim & added black wood shutters...

May 2012 

It's amazing what painting the trim did!

You can see all the changes we've made  HERE.

I definitely want to keep the black shutters, but I can't decide if I want grey & white or a tan & white color.

Here are a few of my inspiration photos...
I LOVE the color, hardie board & the porch on this one! 

traditional exterior design by minneapolis general contractor Stonewood, LLC

source

Here is more of a grey color with the black door...love the porch too!

source

Here is a brown color, with white trim & the black shutters.

source

This is kind of a mix of tan & grey...

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What do you think would look best?

I keep changing my mind...I'm not sure which would look best with our red brick.

Would you paint the brick?  Decisions...Decisions!  I'm not very good at them!!

Here it is Now...

 Click Here to see our EXTERIOR HOUSE REVEAL.

I'm sharing with these blogs:

Savvy Southern Style

52 Mantels

Kristen's Creations

At The Picket Fence

Finding Fabulous

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Curb Alert

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The 36th Avenue