I’m in the midst of finalizing the plans for our upcoming home reno (yippee!), and I would love to give the outside of our house more flavour.
This is the front of our house (well, the bushes look worse now, but you get the idea):
I really like the wood cladding you see on a lot of modern houses, and i’m trying to figure out some ways to incorporate it onto our house. The trick is to do it without it looking too weird, or plonked on. Here are some of the photos I’m using for inspiration:
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September 13, 2008 at 10:04 am
ourfriendben
Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, Zora. We love wood siding. I grew up in a clapboard-sided Colonial home, and out little cottage, Hawk’s Haven, has wood siding. But geez, it requires a ton of maintenance! Given your stucco exterior, I wonder if you should try to capture the beautiful autumnal color of the wood-sided houses in your photos by painting the stucco instead of covering it? You could get some fabulous adobe effects, and if you still weren’t satisfied, no harm done: You could always side it another year.
this is an excellent point. see – this is the kind of stuff i know nothing about! what kind of maintenance are we talking? maintenance sounds bad…
September 13, 2008 at 1:07 pm
greenwalks
Or you could get your wood fix with a trellis, maybe? And put an evergreen clematis or a wisteria or any number of deciduous vines, depending on your taste and climate? Just a thought. Good luck with your decision!
- Karen
http://greenwalks.wordpress.com
another excellent suggestion. i have a few clematis just starting up around the house, but it would be nice to train them properly.
September 14, 2008 at 12:34 am
emma mani
Hi Zora, You’ve got similar ideas to me, I love the wood and stone effect. The 117 shot is lovely! Have a look at this house, it’s a funny link so you have to click HABITACIONAL, then ‘Casa no Sertão de Juquehy’…
http://www.gruposp.arq.br/
I love the use of wood here in a simple, practical, but beautiful house. The effect of the light and shadows is stunning, maybe you could incorporate a sunscreen/arbour type construction as greenwalks says using these ideas.
You have a beautiful house anyway…
thanks for the link – the slatted screen/stone facade is beautiful. i especially liked how it looked in the night shot…
September 14, 2008 at 3:10 am
ourfriendben
Ah, yes, maintenance. The joys of wood-sided houses! I grew up in a wood-sided Colonial home and then was stupid enough to buy a wood-sided cottage as an adult, since they’re, after all, so beautiful. Both these are painted, but I also have a two-storey stained wood studio and a stained wood greenhouse, not to mention a wooden deck, so I can tell you all about ‘em. First, if you paint: Paint peels off, chips off, flakes off, especially today’s latex paint. (That’s why they used to put lead in paint, to make it adhere better.) You typically have to repaint every 3 to (if you’re lucky) 5 years, which of course involves the horrors of stripping off the existing paint before applying primer and new paint. If you try to patch-paint yourself to avoid the work and expense or repainting, your house will soon look like it has leprosy, or at least, a really bad case of eczema. (Trust me on this.) Stains, mercifully, don’t peel off, but they do wear off and need to be renewed. (This can require a stripping technique prior to restaining if you’re using a wood-colored stain and it’s darkened rather than fading.) If you use a, for lack of a better term, paint-colored stain like white or grey, you’ll never get the level of color brighness and saturation with a stain that you would with paint. They are, however, definitely the way to go in my opinion due to relative ease of maintenance. Then there are the other wood-related issues, like rotting and molding and being attacked by woodpeckers and/or carpenter bees. Voice of experience here! Wood is really lovely, though…
ack! i think you’ve convinced me. i just saw the wood and thought, “i would like some of that please!”. home maintenance is not one of my stronger skills (although i’m learning!), so i will definitely reconsider.