DIY Verdigris House Numbers

Hello from the homestead! As COVID has kept us mostly home, we've been tackling lots of home projects and I have to admit: this is maybe one of my favorite DIY's ever.

I'd never given much thought to our house numbers, which is surprising, because I'm very into house number design! I just hadn't thought much about replacing ours until I had a couple packages delivered to the wrong house in the same week. Suddenly it was obvious; our old brass numbers were aged enough they blended in with our wood mailbox post.

I had stumbled upon these beautiful verdigris house numbers on Terrain, but by the time I saw them, they were out of numbers we'd need. I couldn't get them out of my head, though, and one day while we were out on a walk, I wondered aloud if I could DIY a verdigris patina. It turns out the answer is YES.

Verdigris is a blue-green patina that occurs on copper due to oxidation -- it's the reason our Lady Liberty is that beautiful green! It's one of my favorite colors, and is a natural complement to our front door color (Benjamin Moore Wythe Blue).

I was happy to find out you can buy online kits to create the patina yourself. I ordered this Triangle Coatings Patina Green starter kit, which is plenty for just 8 house numbers. For about $25, I was able to revive my existing numbers to create something totally unique!

First, I painted a coat of copper paint on each number and let it get mostly dry before spritzing it with the patina liquid, which I put in a spray bottle. The box says the process takes "minutes," and that's technically true, but I found it took hours. In some cases, I had to reapply both materials to get closer to the color I wanted.

But I got there! I loved this project because it was one of the rare times I saw something, thought "I could do that" and then was able to execute it fairly simply. Very satisfying! And it gives our house a college pottery professor vibe and that's the vibe I'm always trying to project in my life.

New Happy Hour Spot: My Porch

It's wild to think that within about 10 days of my last post, the whole world seemed to change. The threat of a deadly and hyper-contagious virus forced us into our house, where I've been discovering all those lessons learned over the 10 years of becoming "domesticated" are finally coming in handy! I haven't whipped out the sewing machine just yet, but I have made lots of bread, homemade caesar dressing, roasted brussels sprouts with honey sriracha aioli, shepherd's pie, boeuf bourguignon, brioche bread pudding and many, many smoothies.

With few places to go, absolutely no one to see and essentially no ability to make plans, I've been more anxious than ever to make our home the best place to be. So I really fixated on a wish list item that has been slipping down the priority list for six years, but finally had its moment: my dream Lutyens-style bench from Plow & Hearth for the porch. I got the greenlight to make the porch my happy hour destination of choice, where I can sip wine and wave to strangers and admire the dogs of the hood, and it's already upped our curb appeal about 1000%. 

I rounded it out with a wicker side table and cabana bolster pillows from Target and a nice, big geranium that brings me so much joy with its bright pop of red.

Like, seriously, how did we ever NOT have the bench?

From the bench, I can admire this favorite spot of the landscaping we did a few years ago with my mother-in-law. That combo of golden thread cypress, juniper and loropatelum just makes my heart sing.

In the other direction, I can gaze upon this collection of succulents that look great today and will likely be scraggly messes come fall because that's what succulents do.

The porch improvement happened just in time for my first socially distanced visitor! Melissa brought by some paper gold (a.k.a paper towels) and plopped her chair down for a quick visit. It was a delight!

And maybe because she felt bad and knew I needed something to smile about, Mother Nature allowed this one iris to bloom for the first time in a few years. I imagine that's just the schedule it's on, but I like to think it was for me. 

Next up, I'm planning a major sheet mulching overhaul of a hated corner of the backyard, and I can't wait to share more about that someday. 

Year Three of Home Ownership

Sometime in November, we entered our fourth year of home ownership (!!!). It's easy to feel like nothing is getting accomplished and the house is falling apart for a living, so sometimes I like to step back and really take stock of how far we've come. There are some BIG items I really would love to tackle (ahem, the kitchen) that will just take a little longer than I would have hoped. But we crossed some biggies off the list this past year, including: new front fencing, painted shutters and front door and finally replaced the dining room light fixture. 

Let's climb in the wayback machine and remember the journey:

Curb Appeal

From Day One, I was not feeling the red shutters. For exteriors, I like a classic look and I'm usually pretty partial to black shutters with brick. 

When it came time to paint ours, however, I decided to match the color to the darkest shade of the brick and ended up with a dark, dark charcoal-brown that looks like sealskin. I considered many, many shades for the front door and ended up wimping out and going with my favorite color: Wythe Blue by Benjamin Moore. I can't quit it! I think/hope the exterior is slightly more stately.

I tried and failed — TWICE — to keep boxwoods alive in those planters. I'll start a new hunt soon for a better option. Maybe an evergreen shrub?

Our motion-sensor porch light finally crapped out and I jumped at the chance to replace it. We ended up going with this Capistrano model, which I purchased off Amazon.

It's classic and modern at the same time. 

The biggest item on our agenda was to replace the crumbling front portion of our fence, which our fence guys estimated was original to the house (making it nearly 40 years old).

The new fence is a beaut, and I couldn't resist topping it off with fence jewelry (a.k.a copper post caps). 

Front Room

I can never get over this before picture because the room just looks so, so different. Since buying the house, we've:

• Removed the railing
• Put in hardwood floors
• Removed the wallpaper
• Painted
• Added bookshelves
• Finally hung drapes
• Finally replaced the dining room light

We had a very hard time agreeing on a light fixture. I wanted something modern and frankly, would have gone a little funkier, but Sean talked me down a bit. We went with the Bautista light fixture from All Modern. 

The dining area before...

And today! We just hung the drapes on Sunday. 

 These are very simple, but very elegant IKEA Ritva drapes that, when hung, can almost have the tailored look of a pinch pleat at the top. They are very long and cost less than you'd spend on four panels at Target that would look half as good. I got the rods at Target. They look like a cross between nickel and muted brass and I love the faceted ends. Modern, but not overly trendy.

Master Bedroom

Wow, this picture reminds me how much I did not like that color. 

In 2017, we added a headboard and just this past weekend, we finally hung some art. The prints are two quotes from our favorite authors that I picked up at a boutique in Provo, Utah:

• "You have bewitched me body and soul," Jane Austen
• "We were together, I forget the rest," Walt Whitman

The middle print is by Ashley Goldberg and I think I gave it to Sean wayyyyy back in maybe 2007 or 2008? It reminded me of us. 

So that's year three of the Kennedy Casa! I'm not sure what year four will bring, but I know my to-do list includes:

• Purging!
• Framing and hanging more art and getting rid of what doesn't have a place
• Saving for the kitchen reno and maybe seeing what we can do to make it more enjoyable in the meantime
• Finally giving some shape and character to Sean's man room
• Possibly doing some small upgrades to the hall bathroom
• Updating 1-2 ceiling fans
• Painting trim that's way overdue for painting
• Painting the trim on the sheds*

*I really, really don't feel like doing that. 

Front Door Makeover: I'm a Robin's Egg Blue Addict

My name is Amber and I am a Robin's Egg Blue addict. It was one of my wedding colors. It's also the color of my bedroom, my living room lamps, most of my pottery, my recipe box, my patio chairs, my future kitchen tile...you get the picture. I knew I wanted to paint the front door but I didn't want to fall into my same old pattern, and yet, here we are: my door is the Pinterest equivalent of a basic bitch: Benjamin Moore Wythe Blue and unabashedly pretty. I can't quit you, robin's egg.

From our first visit to the house, I was not feeling the red shutters or the red-toned faux wood fiberglass front door. It felt old-fashioned to me, and I'd been fantasizing about a bright front door like those I saw all over Dublin. I thought that meant I'd have to get a new front door someday that was more my style, but after seeing a friend paint his door that was nearly identical to ours, I felt emboldened. Once we decided to paint the shutters, I knew the house needed a bright touch to balance out its new dark look and became obsessed with virtually painting the door online.

My first thought was Wythe Blue, but it's a little played out in the blogosphere. Seriously, do a search for it on Pinterest or Instagram and you'll see many, many Wythe Blue doors. It's classic for a reason, but I didn't want to be a cliche! So, I got samples of three Sherwin Williams colors (Peppery, Silvermist and Patina Green) from Lowe's and painted these Spot On nifty wall vinyls they sell in the paint section in a three-pack. These are awesome because you can hang them up, move them around and get a good idea of what your future color could look like.

Sean, Katie and I squinted, shaded our eyes, took pictures, looked up close, looked from far away and decided the Patina Green was the best, but still not quite right. Not quite as good as say...Wythe Blue. So I accepted my fate, and packed Sean off to our local BM dealer. 

 I got very, very lucky on the prep side. Our fiberglass door had never been painted and is protected by a storm door, so it truly only needed to be wiped down with a damp rag. Primer was built into the paint, so all I needed to do was tape the window and hinges, put down a drop cloth and work up the courage for the first stroke! We tried to remove all the hardware but ultimately got intimidated trying to undo the Baldwin lock on the backside of the handle, so I taped and hoped for the best.

I read several good online tutorials that recommended handpainting the insets and tricky corners first before using a smaller roller for the flat panels. I took long breaks between coats to watch 13 Reasons Why and make sure I didn't rush the job. All told, I ended up doing three coats on each side and it didn't take long when you consider I watched so many episodes of the show. It took most of my Saturday, but was 90% done by 6 p.m.

After two coats! I can't say for sure if it would have gone faster if I'd primed first...the paint adhered pretty well, but I'm just a little obsessive and almost always do 2-3 coats on any paint job.

I could not WAIT to pop out and see the door in all its glory and I'm so happy with it. Sean, who indulges all my crazy whims but usually isn't very effusive, was truly impressed. It definitely pops and we don't have any other houses on the block with this color (thank goodness!).

And of course, it's a beautiful complement to a planter of succulents I just put on the porch. By the end of this week, we'll have a new fence in the front, so our curb appeal is definitely getting much, much better! To-do list now includes: cleaning up our mailbox area, mulching the front beds, removing moss growing all over the place, and pressure washing.

Bye Bye, Red Shutters

Our house exterior recently had a big makeover, and like putting mascara on, it really completes the look! From the day we pulled up to the open house, I said, "I would have to get rid of those red shutters." Call me boring, but I like a fun-colored door more than bright shutters, and I have particularly always disliked red shutters on brick houses (we all have our weird things, right?). 

Considering that was my first impression, it's pretty amazing I made it this long without actually whipping out a paintbrush, but as any homeowner can attest: there's always something else that needs fixin'. Around the fall, I got really itchy to tackle this project, but then the weather took a turn, we had a bonafide hurricane, and before I knew it, the moment had passed. 

Meanwhile, this was happening...

  

Peeling. Like a lot of peeling. White fiberglass shutters were to the previous owners what red shutters were to me, apparently, and their red paint job has been rapidly deteriorating over the past two years. Most people would never notice, but I couldn't pull in and out of the driveway without taking a mental inventory of the white spots peeking through on each shutter. The time had come!!

Because I'm a newbie at all this, I genuinely believed we had wood shutters until we pulled them off the house and realized we didn't have wood...and they didn't look like vinyl either. Mystery! We truly weren't sure what the right protocol is for painting chipped fiberglass shutters, but the folks at Home Depot nonchalantly shrugged, said "Sand it and then paint" and we decided it was time to just go for it.

We split the project over two weekends, which I can't recommend enough. If you, like us, are cursed with louvered shutters, you're going to need some time to really get intimate with the nooks and crannies.

On the first weekend, we hosed them off, wiped them down, cleaned them with TSP and wiped again with soapy water and then AGAIN with rags. After we felt sure we'd swept away every cobweb, we sanded them to remove the obvious peeling paint and set them aside for a week while I tried to settle on a swatch.

I had always known I wanted to do black shutters. That is, until I went to pick out black swatches and realized there are MANY shades of black. On a friend's recommendation, I scoped out the Sherwin Williams line at Lowe's, and on a whim, grabbed a swatch of Black Fox. Black Fox is an almost bronze-charcoal-chocolate color that defies definition. It is not black — that's for sure — but as I held swatches against our brick, I realized it was a great complement to the dark bricks. And although I'm not in love with the shade of our brick, I realized everything will work out better if I play nice.

I chose the Sherwin Williams Weathershield paint with primer in semi-gloss and bought one gallon (we have quite a bit left over, but that's good for touch-ups). Because the pollen was heavy, we decided to do the whole project inside the garage. Using a trim roller for the fronts and sides and angled brushes for the louvers, we painted on Sunday and (sadly) even a little on Monday night for the amount of time it took to listen to the entire S-Town podcast. One coat was definitely not enough, but thankfully, a second coat seemed to do the trick!

We let the shutters cure for a few days and finally, Sean put them back on the house and I came home, looked up and went, "OMG!" At first, I thought...am I going to be OK with not having the black shutters I always pictured? I also felt more committed than ever to paint our front door a nice color for some contrast.

But after looking at a before and after, I can say for sure that the house is more ME and I think the color was a great fit for the brick. I was even inspired to plant dwarf boxwoods in my iron planters and now I'm using all the virtual painting apps to try to narrow in on a color. Any ideas?