How to deal with a big forehead…

The house that Dan and I bought is a pretty weird house, you definitely don’t see many of this style around here.  In researching, I’ve learned that it is a Gambrel Front Dutch Colonial Revival style, which does a good job of making it sound much nicer than it really is. In reality, my house is “that barn house” with the big white forehead.

Our poor old house was a rental for many years, and you can really tell.  The yard was a wasteland, there is writing on the brick (there was even writing on the walls inside), cable wire has been randomly stuck through walls… the fence is falling down, the house number had been at one time written on the front of the house in chalk – someone later decided to stick a painted piece of plywood over that… So,as you can see, it needs a bit (ok, a lot ) of TLC.

So, we went out this weekend and finally bought some yard-work-equipment.  We got our first rake & shovel.  We cleaned up our yard, which is in very bad shape, put up a new house number, got rid of all of the random rocks littering our yard… It made a huge difference.  Next weekend I am hoping to get out to clean the brick a bit, so if anyone knows how to remove pencil and years of chalk build-up from brick, I’d love to know!

In the next couple of months we are hoping to paint our front porch and put up shutters to try to fill the empty void that is our gambrel-front (to me, looks like a big forehead, anyone else?).  There are beams in the front that are painted out white, that I have considered painting dark as a feature, but I’m not sure it might start getting too busy, or “barn-like”.  Suggestions?  I would love to put clapboard or wood shingles up, but that is not in the budget right now! I think we’ve decided on navy (almost black), white/very pale grey, and charcoal like in the last picture….