It’s been quite a while since I’ve blogged & y’all! I must say…I have missed it! As crazy as it sounds, blogging has kept me “on track” with my weekly to-do list…so when I wasn’t blogging…I felt like I wasn’t being AS productive! I had to take a few days weeks off from blogging because there was just SO much going on in our life! I just couldn’t keep up & life was definitely getting in the way..which was a good thing, in this case! From getting a new puppy (more on her later! 😉 ) to taking a week long (& much needed!) vacation that turned into a staycation (…you guess it! More on that later!) plus, on top of all that…it’s been a CRAZY-BUSY wedding season for me (I’ve had weddings every weekend since August! Phew!)

Even through ALL of that…we DID manage to get our house painted…FINALLY…and y’all…It’s been like Christmas morning for me ever since!! We are just in LOVE with our newly painted brick house! So if you can’t remember…here’s what our house looked like BEFORE:  By no means was it awful…Don’t get me wrong…we liked the exterior of our house just fine…but it was…well…just drab. I didn’t like the color of our brick.  To me, the brick was too orange and looked like it had a very badly done spray tan.  Shutters were rotting and it needed a fresh coat of paint on the front door.  Let’s face it…our house needed some curb appeal!

While we had completely re-done & updated everything on the inside….the outside still looked as if it was stuck in 1969! The outside of the house didn’t fit us or the inside of the house at all…so we changed that.  Plus, my dreams of a painted brick house were FINALLY coming true! I absolutely LOVE the look of painted brick, so when Phillip finally agreed to paint the brick with all new shutters and a cute door…I was on cloud nine!!! Our house exterior was going to be getting the facelift it deserved!

Everyone (even some neighbors!) were calling us CRAZY for wanting to paint the brick saying it was too much upkeep or it wouldn’t look good and asked us why we’d want to change something about our house when it looked good as it is.  Ever heard of the the phrase “in one ear, and out the other?” That’s exactly what I did! It didn’t matter what people thought about our decision to paint our brick…it was getting painted!!

Believe me, I knew we had proved them all wrong once that first coat of primer went on….the house looks SO GOOD!!! We couldn’t be any happier! Here’s our house AFTER:

We still have got lots of work to do to get it in top notch shape…but I just couldn’t keep the house a “secret” anymore! I just had to share because we truly are SO happy with it! Painting our brick has made us feel as if we have a brand new home!! The house, both inside and out looks completely updated and we can’t stop staring at our home! I’ve been known to take Darcy out even when she doesn’t have to go JUST to look at the house! Speaking of our to-do list…we’ve got the following to do before the house is complete:

• Landscaping–We pulled out EVERYTHING in order to start fresh! Why does landscaping seem like such a daunting task?!
• Shutter Dogs–We’re ordering those fancy-smancy shutter dogs so our house can feel like it belongs in Charleston! 🙂 
• Window Boxes–We still need to order & install window boxes on the 2 windows by the garage door. 
• House Numbers & Door Knocker–On the look out for house numbers and a door knocker that is both cute and updated but with some character! 
• New Lights! We HAVE to get new lights….but we have to admit…they do look better than they used to now that they POP against the brick! It’s just so hard finding a pair of lights that we love without paying an arm or a leg! 😉 

Phillip made all of the shutters & I couldn’t be more proud of him! (He made them all in a weekend y’all! He’s amazing!) We painted and installed them just last week and even painted the door a bright welcoming blue. 

I absolutely love how the colors look together! I don’t think we could’ve picked better colors!  Here’s what we used:

• Brick Color – “Canvas Tan” by Sherwin Williams.  It’s a creamy white/beige that looks good with our shingles on our roof.
• Shutter Color- “Brainstorm Bronze” by Sherwin Williams. We were going to go with “Keystone Grey” but thought the “Brainstorm” had a little bit more red hue in it to match the roof. 
• Door Color- “Blue Sky” by Sherwin Williams.  I knew I wanted something bluish-teal…the name itself was good enough for me.  

During the entire painting process, we were overwhelmed with happiness at the quality of work and the time the pros with Tri County Painting LLC put in for us.  They never rushed to just finish the job because they wanted to take their time to get it done the RIGHT way…which made ALL the difference in the world!  With bad weather in the forecast, they kept their eyes on the skies and made sure not to paint when there was rain heading our way (which we had a lot of! Could you IMAGINE if they would’ve finished it in a day?! It would’ve been ruined!) They even worked around our schedule and made sure that the job was completed before we left for the beach…a HUGE stress relief for us! We were SO impressed with their work & we look forward to working with Tri County Painting LLC again in the future! To contact Tri County Painting LLC, contact Keith (704-589-0988) or Wayne (803-984-2368).  

I STILL can’t get over the change! Check out our front porch before…And now, AFTER…Here’s what the back of our house looked like BEFORE: And AFTER:

We changed the ENTIRE look of the outside of our house for under $3,000! Shutters, paint, labor, and all…we can’t believe it. So if you’re thinking about painting your house…DO IT. I’m just upset we didn’t do it earlier!!  Even some neighbors we haven’t even met yet (& we’ve lived here for over a year now!) have been stopping by and saying how great it looks!! It makes us feel so good that we’ve brought new life to our house and we’ve fallen more in love with our home!