For as long as I can remember, the exterior of the house has been painted white.

 

After we bought the house and started studying its style, we realized that some of its charm was lost in the sea of white.  Case in point, the wooden corbels. These brackets under the eaves are part of what make the house a bungalow, and because they’re the same color as the siding they’re hardly seen to the untrained eye.

 

More white on white (I wonder why only part of the brick was painted)

We thought about highlighting the corbels and trim with a complimenting cream/tan color, and keeping the body of the house a bright shade of white.

 

Our second, and ultimately final decision, was to use a cool blue tone on the siding and leave the corbels and trim white for contrast.

 

 

We were drawn to the cool tones found here:

 

And here:

When I was working in California in 2012 or 2013, I saw this house. The rich navy color with crisp white trim was enough to prompt me to snap a pic.

Cali house that caught my eye as I walked by

Back in Harrisburg, IL, there are some other pretty navy houses too…

Pretty Victorian with clipped boxwood

Another pretty Victorian This beauty is for sale here

I love the deep navy, brick accents, and white trim.

But, our house would need more than just a fresh coat of paint…

Steel siding had been added on top of the original wooden clapboards… gasp!   There was also a thin layer of cardboard-wrapped-styrofoam (installation?) between the two siding layers.

Unfortunately, the original wood clapboard is rotten in some areas, and termites have been munching it in others. So… it’s all going to come off so we’ll take the outside down to the bones too.

For the new house covering, we chose to use James Hardie siding.  We’re using their product with ColorPlus® Technology, so the color will hopefully last a long time.

 

Blaine was wanting to do a dual-tone, dual-texture look, sort of like this:

Navy shakes on top, light blue lap on bottom

But I vetoed it!!!

I thought for such a simple house, it needed a simple solid siding color. Like these examples:

Single tone, two textures (lap and shakes)

(Also notice the windows on these top two examples are the same 3-over-1 style that we installed)

Sorry, I lost the source links for these

So, we compromised and agreed on two textures, but one color.

Source

We’ll do cedar shakes on the gables and 4″ lap siding (similar to the original siding) on all the rest of the house.  Product is ordered and due to arrive this summer!