Our Exterior Before & After, How We Chose the Paint Colors We Used, & How We’re Liking our “Remote” Garage Door Opener App
Since our front exterior is the first thing that’s “officially” finished (I think), this is our first official before and after post of our renovation! I linked everything we used at the bottom of the post as well!
Entry:
We replaced the door completely with one from Home Depot that isn’t available anymore, but I found a similar one here from the same brand and same price. It is SUCH a steal (usually these doors are around $1,500), but it doesn’t come pre-hung so we had to get our friend who used to install doors to help shave out the hinges and drill for the door handle. We stained it with three coats of Varathane Red Mahogany, and I like their water-pased poly for a top coat because it looks like a natural finish, but still wipes off well. I love using water-based because it doesn’t dry with a yellow tint.
We got this door handle from Home Depot – it comes with with the app that you can see all the activity on, assign people their own pins, and lock and unlock it remotely! I believe you can hook it up to Alexa too so you can let anyone inside in case you’re in the bathroom or something, but we haven’t hooked it up yet.
I wanted a more traditional look mixed with some crisp, modern touches. For the house numbers, I went a little more traditional. These are the Rejuvenation house numbers we used.
We also replaced the super old (probably original?) lighting with these gooseneck lights!
We also got two of the Ring cameras – one for the entry and one for the garage. It’s been so great – we can talk to the mailman when we’re gone, ha! And gives us huge peace of mind when we’re at the cabin. We got the battery ones and they only last about a month which isn’t ideal, but didn’t want to deal with the headache of hard-wiring them.
Garage:
I originally wanted a wood craftsman door like the below photo, but we wanted to allocate that ~$3,000 somewhere else, so I settled for a little paint and some hardware! This hardware is probably the best secret ever… it’s magnetic and only $19 on Amazon Prime!! We replaced the lighting with these farmhouse lights and added a Ring camera.
Oh and my FAVORITE part of our garage…is the Nexx door opener! It comes with an app that you can see all the activity on and who opened it at what times (very nice for when we’re up at the cabin), and you can give other people access to it as well! It’s also Alexa enabled, so when I have a bunch of stuff in my hands leaving for the day I just ask her to open the garage. It’s so great. Super easy to install (well, ask Danny if it was lol) and so worth it for me…we both really love it.
Paint:
How we picked our perfect paint color:
Paint AT LEAST an 18”x24” rectangle on EACH side of the house (including each side of the fence if you’re doing fence too!) Then look at it at least TWICE each during the morning, afternoon, and evening. It will look different and pull different colors in every area because of the lighting and the surrounding area. The last thing you want is for your grey to look blue or purple because of the light in the afternoon!
We ended up going with White Heron by Benjamin Moore for the white, and Onyx by Benjamin Moore for the Black trim. We used the Behr Premium Plus Ultra Exterior Paint Formula because it’s gotten the best reviews for durability over the years, and I use the formula for interiors always because it’s very easy to work with and coats really well which was important over that poop brown color!
Shop the Outside:
