Great house. How about a charcoal gray or dark chocolate brown roof?

If that is an ashtray on the coffee table in the living room, does the house smell like cigarettes?

pure michigan, yes, I am doing the roof first. apple pie, No! there is no smoke smell, I think the ashtrays were "for company". As far as color choices, those are the two choices as I see it, thanks!

You know, I have to say it, I agree with puremichigan60, I love the red roof and the blue exterior, the color choices you picked are very nice, but common and a suburban mainstay. You've got this lovely house that needs a little TLC but has character to burn, and it's in the kind of setting millions of people dream of, and that's a dream that will not be realized for most. And I think shutters would be lovely. Don't convert the house; let it convert you until you both meet each other halfway!

Thanks PM, the roof is really tired, supposedly only 16 years old. I can't warm up to the red & blue. The master bedroom color scheme takes some self-control, too. Grey seems to contrast well with the honey parquet. I am going to try to respect what has survived for 40 years as much as I can, but there are limits. I am planning to match the parquet in the Master bedroom which adjoins the LR, still available from Armstrong.

Alberta, that is so well said. I have been looking for about three years and made a quick trip and bought it immediately. I totally agree to let the house keep its character. After all, I am from 1977 as well, having build my first house only a few years later. The person who built this house still owns property adjacent, and is my age exactly. I do feel very lucky, and mean time warp in only the best way!

PM- HAH! I am definitely going for Simply White. Also, thinking about one of the 2016 blues for the Master Bedroom after I get that carpet gone.

Oh,, I didn't mean I thought you'd turn the whole thing into a photo shoot for Crate & Barrel, not at all, it's just that the red roof and the blue exterior really, well, touched me. I just love it and you don't see it too often, and I think with the colors refreshed, it would be breathtaking. But if you're going to go with the grey roof, could you at least then paint the house Hunter Green, I mean, I know it's your place, but you also have to give some thought about what's in this for me??? P.S. The first time I ever saw Crosby, Still & Nash was in 1977.

This is on the east side of Lake Glenville, just north of Cashier, NC. I built a cabin for my parents in the area in 1984, my mother and I pulled nails from a torn down barn on the property--it was all wormy chestnut. I had it planed and after 3 coats of Deft, paneled the whole cabinet, kitchen and bath cabinets, base, window trim and several pieces of furniture later we still had a few boards. I was deeply hurt when my father decided to sell, so this is healing a wound for me. I think it is just right. My husband took a video of a tom turkey walking through the Christmas trees yesterday.

Alberta, bring it on! I am looking for boldness. I am not sold on grey, I was just going by the "rules" and trying to match the stonework.

PM, the view over Lake Glenville is the same as what we had at our cabin, so I feel like these are "my mountains", just as if I were a local. The front of the house faces SE, so this is the late PM sun hitting the back of the house yesterday, I am a little confused why the sun is so far north this early. Love, love, love the southern exposure. I am still amazed, there is 5 acres, cows, barn.

I spent a memorable night in a Holiday Inn in Hendersonville with a young doberman in her first heat, we had to escape an April ice storm on the mountain, and the floors had just been finished.

Have you thought about doing a standing seam metal roof? I love them in a hunter green. I would lose the shutters I think unless you like them.

Not quite 40 yet!! 2016-1977= 39!!

And yes I'm feeling a bit sensitive about it. Don't judge ;)

For cryin' out loud, mountains, barns, cabins, turkeys trotting around Christmas trees, RED ROOF, BLUE EXTERIOR!!! God made stones so that they don't clash with anything, if stones matched everything, we'd all keep walking into walls!!

Alberta, I will tell you my only CSN&Y story, Monterey whatever festival, late 1969, drove up from UCSD with college buddies, they were too cheap to pay admission, so we listened from the outside sitting on a road bank, was kind of sorry I went at the time. What do you think about my kitchen cabinets? The formica is pretty good, one seam needs a little help, so I am thinking about paint.

sandradclark, yes I have, I have metal on a "old Florida style" house here in the swamp. I did look at a 1960 house last summer that had been updated with a green metal roof, and it was ok, but I thought just a tad overbearing. I mean, the house itself did not seem to care for it, if you know what I mean.

Jennifer, I add time for owner-builder prep. ;)

Alberta, so you're saying keep the wallpaper, right?

Yes, keep the wallpaper, in a big box, in the basement! See, CS Lewis once wrote that all that is not eternal is eternally out of date. The way I look at things, the human race comes up with things that are just great things, like red roofs and blue exteriors in the NC mountains. They also come up with stuff like that wallpaper, which is ghastly today and was ghastly in 1977. Like I keep telling people-ABBA's clothes were hideous in 1976, too! You have seen that whatever you were wearing in Monterey is now being sold today for a small fortune at Bloomie's, right? They don't even sell Nehru jackets for Halloween. Now as for the kitchen, I hate to cover good wood, but stripping those cabinets and restaining would be...formidable. I don't trust my monitor, are the counters and appliances a light lemon yellow?

You must remember that shade of appliance-butterscotchy yellow. I am now really really sorry I got rid of the yellow tuperware canister set (it would probably almost match either the counter or the stove). One of my first college age kitchen acquisitions. I allowed myself to keep one hippy shirt forever.

I have been playing around with a light apple green to paint cabinets, but this is just photos, won't be there in person for a week. The formica seems to be slightly more yellow than green, and not overly good match with appliances. I would be happy with sage green cabinets and white walls, not sure if the formica would like that. I have no training in color and it does not come easy for me, that's why I posted to begin with. So happy it has struck a cord. I can reconsider red & blue updated based on feedback , but I would have to have somebody lead me by the nose. I painted a house in the Keys SW Bewitched, it is a blue with violet undertones (I am told) , so its not that I don't like blue.

SW After the Rain, 166-C3 for the exterior...and I'm working off a fan deck, not the Internet!

That counter color is a challenge, can you switch out the cabinet doors, I'd get flat panel onea, and paint the whole shooting match a deep white, maybe a little distressed, and attached maybe black wrought-iron esque hardware? What is on the walls?

what else, striped vinyl wallpaper of course.

After the rain, wow, but I get it. hey there little red riding hood,,,you're everything a big bad wolf would want. I was holding back, the front door is red too.

Alberta, you are good, house across the street built in 75, pro redo, cabinets done just as you said. g'night, thanks for enlightening my sensibilities, will check the thread tomorrow, more pics if anybody still interested.

Change out cabinet doors. If you hate wallpaper,strip it & paint. I have blue(pale) carpet still in LR. Is it good? Do u like it?

Striped vinyl wallpaper? I was hoping it was tongue and groove!

Oh that view, that porch, A RED FRONT DOOR!! And I do love the idea that you are preserving Formica, it's a tough bird with its own particular sensibility that lasts, as long as you don't keep the toaster oven too close to the backsplash (True Life Tales #967,987), I often want to suggest it in threads with people who change their countertops as frequently as I change the oil in my car, but I'm afraid they'll beat me senseless with a Pottery Barn catalogue. So does the fact that the folks across the way have cabinets like that deter you? I'd love to look at more pictures, but have you come to any conclusions so far based on what everyone has had to say?

Conclusions, for now: Exterior; work out RED AND BLUE!! theme, postpone roofing 6 months and get a bid on dormer work (which I had already contemplated), now seeing the Meander Road house, must attempt, more sunlight for me.

Interior, donate excess furniture, curtains, etc. remove/paint offending materials; wallpaper, carpet, popcorn, paneling, & cabinets. Take out CFL fixtures, replace with LED. Take out wall between LR and kitchen (load bearing) and back wall of LR (not load bearing). Pull up kitchen vinyl, put down matching honey parquet in master bedroom and probably kitchen.

Buy a big fat leather sofa to sit in front of that bay window. Drink espresso. Think about next remodel phase. You are all invited.

If you take away your shutters it'll make your windows look smaller. Little black peepholes would seem to unbalance the exterior look. Decorating aside, lovely home, congrats!

gardensuz, I am sure your are right about the windows, these are those really really cheap plastic shutters, so I am hoping an upgrade to the beefier vinyl board & batten style will improve the look. Small windows and the buck stove fireplace insert were both part of the energy efficiency mantra back then.

A suggestion, one I wouldn't have considered until I saw it in person -- I almost bought a house last autumn with popcorn/cottage cheese/God help me ceilings, and what got me even more than the expense, the mess, and the possibility you could find something you couldn't deal with aesthetically under it was the possibility of asbestos. It is generally accepted that this is a sleeping dog you really need to let lie. So check this out from Armstrong, a possibility in any of your rooms?

yep, GP
ot





yep, got test kit already packed

Basement bedroom

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What does General Practitioner and the Old Testament have to do with any of this?

OK, as far as the pics go, now you're just bragging. I like that light in the last picture!

I'll be sure to post a few photos from my first work week, you know, when you are there all alone in the middle of all your "projects" and there is no way out but to finish....

Thought I would revive this thread, kit and blue bath are gutted, roof is done, and part of exterior is painted. I really tried to make the red/blue work, but could not, went with BM georgian green and weathered wood shingles, we love it, guess I am just shallow.