Before & After Home Makeover: Philip Atkins of Lima, Ohio “Shake it Up” Exterior Color Contest Finalist

Even a good idea can sometimes go wrong. Matching your roof color to your brick is certainly a good idea. Trying to match the color too closely is a good idea gone wrong. While the roofing color might have seemed like the right choice, it overwhelms this home and is keeping the homeowners from showing their true colors. Time to get the red out!

Shake it Up Color contest

These homeowners wanted to create a storybook cottage starting from the top down with a DaVinci Roofscapes Multi-Width Slate in the standard color blend Aberdeen. They liked the variety of subtle colors and could begin to imagine the look of a home in the English countryside with all of the technological improvements of American-made products.

Their essay pulled me into the dream and I knew that I could make it come true. First I crowned this cute home with the DaVinci Roofscapes slate tiles they desired … and that was just the beginning.

Next I added an updated front door. I chose a Therma-Tru Classic-Craft Canvas Collection door with Lucerna glass doorlite. A full doorlite or solid door could also be nice choices. For the color on this smooth, paintable fiberglass door I picked out a color from the roof tiles and turned up the intensity just enough to stand out but not fight with the color of the brick.

The windows on each side of the door were the same but not symmetrical on the facade. Rather than seeing this as a problem I considered this an opportunity to add a bay window on the left to balance the front of the home and add an element that I thought would fit with the homeowners vision of their remodeled home. Both picture windows were replaced with Simonton vinyl windows with white frames and colonial grids added to the double hung windows on each side.

I replaced the windows on the dormers with similar Simonton casement windows that also had the colonial grids. To give the dormers more presence I added the Fypon dormer kit to each of the dormer windows. Around the entry door, Fypon pilasters enhance the appeal of the entryway to the home.

The colors I chose for this home need to be subtle and blend with both the brick and roof tiles. A neutral color is the perfect background when you want to have other features take center stage as I did with this home. A neutral color can also downplay a feature you don't want to have stand out as much, like the chimney. In white it drew too much attention away from the facade of the home. In a neutral hue that blends with the darker tones in the roof it adds to the look rather than distracting from it.

This was the same reasoning behind painting the garage door neutral to match the body of the home rather than the trim. The bright white big door was competing for attention from the front entrance. Plus, to continue the storybook look I added a Fypon Smooth White Trellis System over garage and this stands out much more now that the garage door isn’t white.

Another finishing touch was to place a white garden trellis against the left side of the home. I can already imagine it covered with beautiful, colorful blossoms.

I'm enjoying the results of this renovation. Isn’t it the perfect happy ending to the homeowner's dream for a storybook cottage?

Paint colors from Sherwin-Williams:
SW6973-Perfect Greige
SW6070-Heron Plume
SW6027-Cordovan
SW6005-Folkstone

Come back tomorrow to get the inside story on another of the makeovers of the “Shake it Up” Exterior Color Contest Finalist.