Update on the exterior – the front

We are still listening to saws and hammers here at the Napa Project household. I have just come back from a photography workshop in New Mexico so I hope my photo taking is getting better!

The front deck which is off of the guest room was completely dismantled and replaced with a new ipe deck.
This was what it looked like originally:

And this is what it looks like now – quite a change, huh!:

Another angle:

We used cable railing to give it a nice modern look.

Here is a view of the front courtyard.

All of the replacement siding has been put up on the house, but it still needs to be painted, although the primer is very close to what we have chosen in color (Benjamin Moore Cromwell Gray), and the trim still needs to be added. We purchased our siding from Jeff at http://www.eichlersiding.com. Great guy and great business to deal with! We were the first to buy two of his ‘Eichlerondacks”.
Check them out!
Although our home isn’t an Eichler, I like to refer to it as a ‘Faux Eichler’ since it has many similar characteristics. We chose the ‘thinline’ and I am loving how it looks on the house.
The top overhang trim is still the original brown and is going to be painted a darker accent color. The overhang underneath will be painted white. 
The garage door, literally, was a fluke. The garage door sales rep came with samples and we had decided on a fairly low budget plain garage door when he mentioned they had a glass door in their warehouse that someone had cancelled the order on and they were desperate to get rid of it, would we be interested in it for half the price? Would we? When he showed me the brochure, I was sold. No plain garage door for us!

Hello, awesome new garage door!

And it is SO quiet! We LOVE it!!!

We had a planter box custom made out of corten steel for the courtyard. Previously there was red brick boxes on either side which you can sort of see in this picture.

 

We are probably going to put some sort of bamboo in it, I really like horsetail. The other side is getting the same corten planter box which will be installed soon.