Ranch House Exterior Renovation

When we purchased our Ranch style house we knew that there was going to be lots of work involved in this renovation.  We have renovated a few houses but this one would be our biggest to date.  We loved that it sits just outside town on 3 acres which is exactly what we were looking for.  We had also spent years looking for the perfect place that wasn't going to cost an arm and a leg and that wasn't going to be 20 minutes just to get into town, and trust me those options are few and far between.  Most of them are older and needed attention and this house was no exception, it was ugly and dated.  The inside wasn't to bad, the kitchen and bathrooms need a total gut and the rest is more cosmetic but we loved the layout and the potential that could come with it. 

Once it was ours the hardest part was trying to figure out what to do with it.  with all the search options on Pinterest there was surprisingly not a lot of resources that lined up with what we wanted to do with our house so we ended up finding a garage plan that we thought would work best and then like any renovation we just had to sit back and wait to see if it was all going to work.

Once the garage frame was up it was a lot higher that then house which we knew it would be but it was a little concerning and we started to question our choice, I mean really there is not turning back.  At this point we had to decide whether to drop down the porch roof or do a continuous line to the house to make it look like one unified piece.  

Once the porch was on we completely lucked out that the roof lines worked out perfectly so we could have the roof line go straight across and the garage and house was starting to look uniformed.  This summer we will add a peak to the original house and finish the roofing to have it all match.  

One of the things I disliked about this house was the front door.  With the old garage door being at a lower level, and the main door had this really pretty plywood deck it just looked confusing to me.  I wanted to raise the old garage man door up so that they would both be at the same level, making it possible to do a deck across the whole front of the house. 

This served as two purposed. One it has a better flow with more usable space.  Two, it covered up the old pitted concrete that would have been a lot of work to rip up.  This year we will clean it up with lattice and flower beds.  

 So with the new garage, siding, soffit, eaves troughs, deck, windows and doors.  Ha, it seems like not to much when you say it quickly.  The outside of the house is starting to come together.  We still have the three other sides of the house to do this summer and that will involve moving and arranging doors and windows differently but with the short time frame of the warm months I think we did pretty good getting to this point. 

My motto with design is that "Just because it has always been this way doesn't mean you can't do something different."  I think that we have kept with that motto on this project and transformed it into a beautiful house.