A small face lift

I always felt our house we bought in October 2008 looked like a big box. Nothing really cute about it. But it has a great back yard and a lot of aspects we were looking for. We knew we would be able to change some things we didn't like about it. So we started today , to give our house face some more character we decided to paint the shutters and stain the porch.
Before.............



Front porch after....
We started to paint the shutters with a brush and roller.... but decided it didn't look so good. The super paint you have to use for outdoors is very thick and sticky.. and therefore doesn't dry very well or spread evenly. We were going to spray them with our paint sprayer but couldn't figure out how to get the shutters off the house...........but decided to spray them while on the house anyways. It is so much easier and looks 100 X's better. after all Tim painted for his job for about 3 years.

the blue we picked is kind of like a dark aqua blue I would say.

Finished product....

What do ya think?

I really like it. It gives it some character and doesn't feel so boring and boxy to me now. I think on memorial day we will be painting the trim just around the top bay window though, to even it out a little more.

p.s. when I say we I mean Tim cuz he did most the work. I only helped stain the deck a little.

this is one step of many, but it's a start. I hesitate to do too much to this house because it is not our forever house. but I am willing to do small inexpensive things to it that will help us resale it in a few years and give it more appeal to the buyer.