As you know I'm back in the Bible Belt and instead of collecting tar balls on the beach I've been tooling around in the Green Manatee (family minivan) and checking out real estate. It's sort of my favorite pastime.
Okay, freebasing Chick Fil-A nuggets is my true fave but playing the "What would I do differently?" game, neighborhood by neighborhood, ranks a close second. And I'm finally ready to broach a subject that's bothered me since birth ... probably a touchy one but I know I'm not alone here, so let's just rip the Band-Aid off the hairy arm:
If you own a home and that home has shutters (traditional, plantation or otherwise) and those shutters aren't operational, kindly remove them and take them to the landfill.
For serious! Make your own shutter/shudder joke here, but they're meant to swing on hinges and cover the entire (non-picture) window, and are usually found on
house styles that predate WWII. This looks ridiculous:
Neo-colonial door surrounds, I'm talking to you too. Why not embrace the ranch-iness of your house and go shutter-free, like these folks did:
Maybe this is a good time to talk about ranch style houses in general. I used to hate 'em but, then again, I used to hate the color purple ("YOU told Mugatu to beat me!") and coffee. But
Paul Rudolph changed my mind:
Above is a house the mid-century master designed in my old Pcola neighborhood. Horizontally, asymmetrically chic, right? Here's its unpedigreed cousin across town:
A bit more 'Brady Bunch' meets Methodist day care center, but I still love! But neither of these examples have the stock, side-by-side windows many ranch owners are stuck with. Entire
blogs are devoted to this topic but here's my fairly cheap and straightforward approach to houses like Goldenbrick (third from the top which I think has great potential):
Paint all exterior walls -- brick, stucco, cement block, shingles, siding -- off-white. Benjamin Moore's Atrium White or the slightly darker China White are nice options for avoiding the blinding brightness of Home Depot primer. Tempted to go darker? Don't, because let's be real: "greige" looks as dreary as it sounds. If you have nice, wood-framed or steel casement windows, paint those high-gloss black. Fat aluminum/vinyl-clad versions should stay off-white.
Ditch any aforementioned door surrounds, classical columns rendered in plastic, balustrades and swirly wrought iron supports or railings. Replace with simple square wood posts (no trim on base or capital) or round metal as in Ranch #2's overhang entry.
Replace low-pitched roofing materials with
galvanized metal. Too spendy? (I honestly wouldn't know; I rent.) Dark grey or black asphalt shingles will do.
Paint the front door a bright, pure color like kelly green, tulip red, lemon yellow, or electric blue in oil-based high gloss ... also do you have a screen door? Take that to the landfill along with the vinyl shutters. They may actually serve a purpose but can't you get an insect-free breeze going by opening a screened window? Screen doors always look rickety and dirty, and they annihilate a pretty entry. Front-facing garage doors stay off-white.
Rip out ALL landscaping elements save mature trees (did I mention this is a minimalist makeover?) and replace with a
single row of crisp boxwood hedge along the facade, with maybe another single row on one side of a front walk. No fountains, birdfeeders, sago palms, evergreen topiaries ... just straight horizontal lines. Keep sod trimmed to golf course height.
I can already hear the cries: "Painted brick takes maintenance!" Well, I really don't mind paint chipping off colored brick; just pressure wash every now and then and let it age naturally. Same for rust on galvanized roofing.
Of course this is all take-it-or-leave-it unsolicited advice, but please take it and be finished by next week. And send photos!
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