Exterior Upgrade Ideas?

[Sundry1]

Hi,

I'm new to the forum. We bought our 1989 Fleetwood about ten years ago. We love our neighborhood and our house. Now it's time to do some interior and exterior upgrades. Wondering if anyone has ideas for making the house look a little less boxy outside.

We're thinking about replacing the flat board window trim with something more stick-built looking. Any other ideas?

[Greg]

Hi & welcome. OK as long as I have a blank check lets see here. Why stop at the window trim? upgrade the windows as well, if you are in an area that gets cold you will be glad you did.

Skirting, most have the basic vinyl skirting. Upgrade, there are many choices out there now. Steel, cement, blocks are all gaining in popularity.

Siding & roof, Lots of options there as well

Landscape, well placed landscaping will make any home look better. Greg

[Sundry1]

Thanks for the reply! New windows would be great. We live in high desert mountains about 40 outside of L.A., so while temps are often pretty wonderful, we get as high as 110 and as low as 25 every year.

We've done a lot of landscaping around our concrete foundation. We're thinking of maybe adding a pergola, if it can be close to the house but freestanding.

Thanks for the great forum. We need our lovely home to last a long long time!

[Suzque49]

We live in the high desert area also, about 60 mi north of LA.
Our home is on 10 acres.
We've made several upgrades to our home (built in 1990) since we bought it in 2002. We re-worked the ugly mobile home shutters on the house and made them look more like a stick built, then repainted the exterior of the house.
We built a 1000 sq ft covered wraparound porch on the west and south sides of the house, entirely freestanding, makes the house so much more inviting, (and cooler keeping the house shaded from the summer sun) not like a mobile home set in the middle of the desert.
We have natural desert landscaping, and living in the foothills, it's green most of the year.
I will email some pics if you would like to see what we have done.
Now we are working on the kitchen to upgrade and open it up to the dining room. Next will be new carpet and paint for the entire interior of the house.

[DCDiva]

Susan I would love to see the exterior photos--this is our current project next week we are doing the final work on the exterior and would love to get some ideas--I looked at your deck project photos that were still in progress and can not wait to see the the end result---I know the roof on our deck we added made a huge difference in the cooling and we only did 18 feet of 50--our exterior looks odd right now--we made it this way so in the future we could add on if we want too--our dd is going to college in this town and will be there 5 years and what she is going to college for the job market this there right now and we do not know if she will move back to our area or stay there and we wanted options if she stays--it is a one bedroom right now and if we rent it the added room and bedrooms would get more income---so I have to come up with ideas to make what we have look nice without breaking the budget and to satisfy an 18 yo to make it look her style without adding all of my style lol
Melissa

[Sundry1]

We live in the high desert area also, about 60 mi north of LA.
Our home is on 10 acres.
We've made several upgrades to our home (built in 1990) since we bought it in 2002. We re-worked the ugly mobile home shutters on the house and made them look more like a stick built, then repainted the exterior of the house.
We built a 1000 sq ft covered wraparound porch on the west and south sides of the house, entirely freestanding, makes the house so much more inviting, (and cooler keeping the house shaded from the summer sun) not like a mobile home set in the middle of the desert.
We have natural desert landscaping, and living in the foothills, it's green most of the year.
I will email some pics if you would like to see what we have done.
Now we are working on the kitchen to upgrade and open it up to the dining room. Next will be new carpet and paint for the entire interior of the house.

This sounds great! I'd love to see any pix you would like to send. We just finished having laminate flooring installed in 900 square feet of our house, and tile in the master bathroom. We live in Acton, CA... Northeast L.A. County.