It's so hard for me to believe that we have been in our house for just over 5 years!!! We put so much love and time and energy and effort into building our forever home and still absolutely love it. The only thing I would change is adding a pool to our yard, but I'm still trying to convince the Mr. about that one. ;-) After the initial building and decorating, the house kind of took a back seat to life. We finished the basement and did big yard project a few years ago and then it took another back seat. The Mr. and I love a project though so we've decided to go ahead and have the exterior re-painted. We could probably wait another year or two, but some of the trim is starting to look bad and needs repair in a few spots, so we are just going to do it all at once. I've never loved the exterior color of our home and I'm having the hardest time deciding what I want to change it to. If I was building our house all over again I would replace the stone on the first floor with siding and paint the house white like this. I'm obsessed with the white farmhouse look. I really thought about painting our house some shade of white for a while, but then decided that I just didn't think it would look right with the dark stone. We've driven around neighborhoods, searched Pinterest, and looked at color wheels and paint samples until I'm blue in the face. I *think* I've decided that if I can't have a white house, I want to go the other extreme and go dark similar to these. The question is how dark. I love the contrast of a dark house with light trim and warm wood accents. I just don't want to hate it and I know once it is done I have to live with it for at least another 5 years. So that's where I am right now. We have painters coming over today to start getting estimates and I need to make up my mind quickly. I've been using a few different apps to try to see what it would look like. While it isn't great, it kind of gives me an idea?! A few other things we are planning to do during this mini-makeover are things that I have wanted since we built the house, but didn't include at the time. We'll be having a trellis built and installed over the two garage doors. I always felt like that space was kind of bare and wanted something to break it up. It will look similar to these and will be stained to match our front doors. The other thing I have always wanted are shutters. We can't put them on all of our windows, but will add them to the ones we can and my plan is for them to look similar to these. They will also be satined the same color to match the front doors! Anyone have any thoughts or ideas? I would love to hear your opinions of what you think would look good!!! Please share in comments! Follow us on Pinterest HERE. Follow us on Instagram HERE. Follow us on Facebook HERE. Follow us on Twitter HERE.