Exterior Home Makeover Farmhouse Renovation

Our home got a major facelift at the end of this summer and now that the details are mostly finished up, I’m able to show it off to you all! Since we moved in last year, we’ve been spending our renovating budget on adding a bathroom, taking out walls on the interior, updates to the kitchen, and more. But the majority of the budget was spent outside where we hired out new siding, soffits, facia, gutters, and cement walkways. We also flipped the entire garage backwards and had a new driveway put in to change the front of our house to the opposite side coming off a cul-de-sac. Read on for more details of our exterior home makeover.

Disclosure: this post contains sponsored products. Read my policies here.

Before

When we moved in, this was the front of the house. We had gray siding in poor condition on the house likely from the 80’s and white trim. The two garage doors were set pretty far back from the road. The front door wasn’t centered on the porch and it entered right into the kitchen (awkward).

In the back, there was a chainlink fence and a lean-to shed off the back of the garage. The house had another darling porch on this side as well as a roofed pass through between the garage and house where there was an awkward patio area. The windows and roof were rather new, but the soffits and facia were rotting, the gutters were broken and rusting, and the cement was all cracked as well as sloping in towards the house.

Siding

Up until the siding got done in mid-August, I had been putting all my efforts towards the inside of our home. Before siding got done, however, we did have our handyman move the patio door to a new location off the porch and install our new front door where the patio door was. Since what was the back would now become the front of our house, the weird pass through area was going to be our main entrance.

Then the large crew of nine guys came to side our house in the span of only one week! I chose a board and batten vinyl siding because I love the look of vertical lines. We went with traditional lap horizontal vinyl on the two tall sides of the house to save money. Black is for the soffits and facia to trim out the house nicely and provide contrast. Our gutters were installed to match!

One cool thing is when the siding crew tore off the gray, we were able to see the old wood siding painted sunny yellow from long ago.

It has to look worse before it looks better, right?

Garage Makeover

My dad came to help me after the siding was done take down the lean-to shed on the garage. It was the back, but now this would be the front and we needed to prepare for our new garage door. It took us 4 days and luckily it all fit in our dumpster!

Next our handyman came to install the 16 ft header for our new double garage door.

Then the excavation company came to rip up the cement slab where the shed was and grade a new driveway. We put down asphalt bits because the trees growing on either side of our driveway had roots which would compromise anything poured solid. In the future hopefully we will do concrete!

At this time the excavation company also removed our old asphalt driveway on the other side of the house (now our backyard). Then they leveled black dirt there and I planted grass.

I was planning to reuse the plywood siding on the garage and just paint it to save money, but unfortunately it was rotted where the shed met the garage. Instead of spending time to reside the garage with cheap plywood again, I decided to pay the handyman who was creating the header extra to side the front of the garage face as well.

During this process, I worked on installing a new service door on the side of the garage and painting the other three sides of the garage white.

We left the old garage doors so we can have a pass through garage if we like. We also left the slab of cement near the garage on this side as a spot to play basketball. Our exterior home makeover was nearing completion…

New Cement

At this point in the process I thought we were ready to install the garage door and be done. But alas, I was informed we needed a cement apron to install the garage door. So I was referred to a cement guy who actually gave us a really inexpensive quote. We decided to go all the way and removed the cracked and sloped cement around the house and front door entrance as well as pour a new apron.

Because we were doing the cement, our electrician was also able to run a wire to the garage and get all of our exterior lights hooked into one switch! This was a bonus I was happy about and wasn’t expecting.

New Garage Door

Finally it was time to put in the new garage door! At this point in the exterior home makeover, we were almost done with September. A lot had changed in six weeks, but we were excited to be completely done and enjoying our new house!

Augusta Garage Door helped us with installation and Wayne Dalton sponsored the door. I love the style of the door – black that won’t fade, flat panels that have a modern style, and windows which tie into our front door design and let light into the garage.

Wayne Dalton doors are really lightweight and well made giving them lasting quality. I feel like our garage door makes the house 100% more stylish and sleek. It made all the difference!

Finishing Touches

There were a few finishing steps like painting the garage service door as well as the front door black. I also ripped the carpet off the old wooden steps and painted those black, too. Hopefully we can build better, bigger steps in the near future!

Oh and of course I made a new mailbox since we have a new address off the cul-de-sac.

Exterior Home Makeover After

Here are the incredible after photos and some side by side comparisons!

Now obviously it’s fall and so the house is littered with leaves, but I still think it’s pretty amazing, don’t you!? Here are some photos showing the other side which is now the back of the house.

In that last picture you can the baby hedge bushes I’m trying to grow which will give our yard more privacy to the road. Please excuse the blotchy photos (it was raining when I took them!).

I’m making these images just for you to pin them, hint hint. 😉

If you’re feeling surprised, like this whole renovation happened and you didn’t even realize I was doing this, then you must not be following me on my social media channels. I invite you to follow my Facebook page where I add a weekly video and my Instagram where I’ve been showing lots of behind the scenes renovation stuff in my stories.

And lastly, here’s my beautiful home lit up at night.

Thank you to our sponsors Wayne Dalton, Augusta Garage Door, Ville Doors, and DecoArt.

This exterior home makeover has been radical and so rewarding. I love driving up to my house now! Don’t forget to leave your thoughts of how it all turned out below in the comments! Did you love this post?? If you did and you want to check out more of my outdoor projects, my blog post How to Build a Retaining Wall in One Day is a great place to start!