A First Time Submittal..

As we approached a design that we were happy with, we were asked to select some finishing materials. Those materials needed to be put in with the submittal so that the town could see what they were. They included:

• Exterior Colors - We walked around the neighborhoods looking at countless houses, thumbed through paint color books for historic homes, and flipped through countless exterior photos on Houzz. We figured out that we wanted to pick three colors - a primary color, a trim color, and some kind of accent color.. These two in particular influenced our early design choices (and you can see our attempts at painting samples on the back of the current house)..

Greenlake Custom Home

(notice the green paint underneath the blue in the below photos?)

Countryside Makeover

Ultimately this later one is the direction we went..

Primary - Benjamin Moore Weekend Getaway 473

Secondary - Benjamin Moore Cloud Nine OC-119

Acent - Benjamin Moore Newburg Green HC-158

Primary - Benjamin Moore Van Deusen Blue HC-156 (blue main house)

Secondary - Benjamin Moore Cloud Nine 2144-60 (white trim)

Acent - Benjamin Moore Storm AF-700 (gray accents)

• Roofing - Another educational experience was learning about roofing products. We knew we wanted a long lasting 50 year roof but after that, what? So we went to look at products at a distributor, narrowed down our choices, and then found some real life houses with the products on them before settling on a product. I was very conscious of the fact that whatever I picked I was stuck with probably for my life (yikes!).. Ultimately, we felt that a lighter product contrasting with the main house color would be best. Something long the lines of what was already on the house. Here are some shots from a nearby new construction of the product we thought would look best..

Gaf Timberline Ultra HD Birchwood

• Exterior Lighting - This one was easy.. we just thumbed through craftsman homes on Houzz and told the architect to pick exterior lighting "like that".

Once selected, the architect put everything together in a package and sent it off to the town for review and approvals.. This is what it looked like at this stage.. 

We were pretty happy with it except for the porch which we'd have liked to have done more with. But the architect continued to steer us towards limiting modification of it to pass the town architect's critical historic eye. We would have also have liked to have had gable roofs instead of hip roofs however again the view from the street needed to maintain the historic look so the hip roofs stayed.

But, a month later we got our response and the town architect wasn't thrilled with some things...  sigh...