The Craftsman Cottage Exterior

Now that the weather is finally warming up, the guys have moved outside to ready the house for painting. 

 

They began on the back of the house, where we had made quite a few changes.  

We started a deck last fall (foolishly thinking it would be warm until the holidays, but the cold temperatures and snow stopped that project in its tracks) and that will get completed soon.  For the deck to be accessed, we added a patio door (because, remember this house didn’t ever have a back door), that also brings lots of light into the house.  The rest of the changes included moving 2 windows and adding a 3^rd.  All of this necessitated repairing siding and replacing trim work.  

 

Fall 2025 - starting the deck

But look at the difference it makes!  The thing that really stands out to me is the addition of window trim.  A pet peeve of mine is vinyl siding that hacks off the original window trim and covers it up.  We’re going back and recreating all of the trim to give the house a much nicer look.

Window trim makes a huge difference!

Look at those curved rafter tails on the roofline - a Craftsman classic!

We also need to replace the Craftsman decorative brackets on this side of the house.  This is a great example of just how much damage water can do to wood.  Look at this hollowed out mess!

It's just a shell of a bracket with all the wood rotted out in the center.

 

Craftsman Cottage - Before

Traditional skirting finishes off the sunporch

But the front of the house got the biggest updates.  The enclosed sunporch is getting trimmed out to reflect the original porch architecture with the walls mirroring the original porch railing.  We’ve added traditional skirting below – I wasn’t a fan of clapboards all the way to the ground.  

And Kyle recreated the original Craftsman posts that were on the house when we started.  Those posts and the amazing curved rafter tails are such classic Craftsman features.  

Don't you love the replicated tapered posts?

The stairs are getting finished and will provide a gracious entry to the house.  They’re also much safer than the crumbling concrete steps and wobbly railing that we started with.

 

And last, but not least, we’re having the house painted.  Deciding on paint colors took me a long time with lots of color swatches to test colors in various light conditions.  The driving force for the colors was the stained glass that’s next to the front door.  It has a lot of gold and cream (which explains why the house has been various shades of dark gold for decades - first clapboards and then gold vinyl on top of that) and a rather brilliant emerald green (I keep thinking about the yellow brick road to Emerald City!). 

 

But I don't want to do dark gold again!!!   As much as I would have loved to go with deep earthy Craftsman colors, my dream of sage green won't work.  The stained glass green is not a color I would consider.

So after lots and lots of samples, I settled on a soft, buttery gold.  The trim will be a soft creamy white, mimicking the white glass in the window.

Evaluating paint samples

So many paint samples.  None of these made the cut!

I liked the big sample I painted on the newly enclosed porch (I was so eager to try this color, I didn't wait for the guys to finish the front of the house!).

Front porch siding is getting finished

With the paint color determined, they've started painting from the back of the housse as the rest of the carpentry gets finished on the front.  Can't wait to see it all come together!

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