It’s a new look! What do you think?

By Sophie Villeneuve

Design is a process.  It takes time to land on a final design and find all the right materials to fit the vision. Things can also change along the way: product availability, product limitations and compatibility, or even a change of heart. Every decision made usually impacts the next decision in some way.

Here’s the design journey of an exterior make-over.

First, the “before”

These homeowners came to us with a vision. They wanted dark blue siding, dark stone, wood accent at and around the garage door, and a red front door. They liked dark trim, soffit and fascia but were committed to white because the windows were already white (and new!). Marrying to existing conditions can also have its challenges.

Through our design process, we explored different solutions and landed on a design.

Phase 2 of a Lagois project is firming up the selections and committing to the total investment. Through product selection we realized some of the finishes did not meet the homeowner’s vision and budget.

For example, the wood accent around the garage door had a different texture than the wood-coloured garage door. There were solutions which would cost more so we decided to re-think the colour scheme.

• We explored dark trim, even though the white trim was originally chosen to match the widows.

• The red door they “thought” they wanted ended up looking disconnected once we finalized other finishes.

• The blue siding never deviated.

• The stone selection was solidified in a black/charcoal tone.

• This tone led us to look for a charcoal coloured garage door.

• The wood tone around the garage door remained to add warmth and to tie-in with the rear porch that has a wood ceiling.

Once a garage door was chosen in the charcoal tone to blend with the stone, the red front door started to look out of place. The wood accent added enough interest that the front door didn’t need to “pop” anymore. A few brainstorming sessions led us to re-introduce the dark trim in the Iron Ore colour, as well as the front door.

We were ready to go!

Rendering after selections

Site conditions also led to some tweaks. The front bow window was built differently than we had anticipated and it did not allow us to remove the angle below it, so we followed it with our stone.

What do you think of the final result?

Sophie Villeneuve is Project Development Manager at Lagois Design∙Build∙Renovate