Getting Stoned

With all the time, effort, planning and money that has gone into our renovation, there's been one important area that has been sadly lacking - the outside of the house. Other than painting the door purple, we've done nothing to improve the look of the facade, as was pointed out to us by a passer-by one day. He asked how the renovation was going. My hubby said, "we want everything to be just right, so we've put a lot of money into fixing it up."  To which the man replied, "Really???? WHERE???"

Ouch. After that we got serious about choosing paint colours to freshen up the masonry. That in itself was a challenge. What goes with purple? We considered a lighter,fresher shade of yellow or light green. Then it hit us like a ton of rocks - stone cladding!

We've been blessed with the most talented builder around, and this is what they did for us (thank you Anthony O'Neill and crew!) -

Just a reminder  of the "before" -

During -

And here's a bit of the detail-

Of course, we now need to paint the window surround and sills, and that ugly yellow chimney! I'll post more after we paint, but this is what I consider to be the biggest bang for the buck so far!