One of the selections we stumbled with was, shockingly, our windows.
Why?
I LOVED the look of black windows with bright white siding, but didn't love the pricing of the black windows. I myself had already decided it was something I could live without if it afforded us more of the interior details we wanted.
Rob, on the other hand, had other thoughts...
He reminded me this would be serving as our design studio in addition to our home, and felt like the impact of the black windows on the white siding (similar to the image below) would make a stronger first impression. Has he been living with me for 30 years or what? He thinks like a designer now. Everyone thought I'd be the one fighting for the dang black windows but NO... it was Rob! Don't even get me started on the metal roof!
In the middle of this discussion, I said, "Why not go black siding with white windows instead?"
This would give us the same impact of black/white/red we were searching for, with just a fraction of the cost, right?
The image below ALMOST convinced us this was the way to go. But the more we talked, we started to realize several things: on our lot, the siding would most definitely fade AND because the siding was dark (and black was harder to find), it too would be higher in initial cost, so we ultimately realized we were moving in the wrong direction.
So, the truth is, (like all our customers) we have a lot to squeeze into our home and a tight budget to meet, so we have to be really careful and plan thoughtfully. Here's where we enlist in the specialists! Get yourself some expert opinions if you're struggling!
We worked with Dave Shoaf at Kempsville (Carter Lumber), Bert White at Builders's First Source, David Walken at Massey, and Justin Vanlandingham at Pella.
Our Ultimate Decision
We ended up spending the most time with Dave at Kempsville and ultimately elected to go in that direction. These guys are all so dang busy and incredibly helpful so we hated getting them all too involved, but we did need to know the basic numbers to know where to start. When you are asking someone to invest time to help you come up with creative ways to get what you want AND save money, patience is important; especially working with the "OCD Leals." :)
So, here's the creative way we chose to tackle our vision: We would do the black windows on the front of the house and the two sides. These are the sides that will be seen by the public and make the most impact on the "first impression WOW." Then, on the back of the house, where there are more windows than any other elevation, we are doing white windows! You won't even be able to tell which are black/white from the inside, because ALL the windows are white on the inside. Boom... win/win.