A Historic Storybook Home gets an exterior update

When we moved to Winston Salem in the summer of 2020, we spent all of one day looking at houses, and I immediately fell in love with a charming 1930 Storybook Home in the historic Ardmore neighborhood. We wanted to be close to everything, and love how unique all of the homes around us are. The character of old homes is hard to duplicate, and we have worked hard to honor the character of the home while renovating.

This past spring (2025) it was finally time to update the outside of our house. The cedar shake seemed to be original to the home, and was starting to fall off the house. Our pergola needed to be redone, and we were ready for fresh paint. I added on a few wish list items while we were at it: adding a beautiful glass storm door (to replace the old screen door that was so broken it wouldn’t even close) and overhang with a copper roof - very Winston Salem.

Here's where we started …

And immediately before we started after we cut down the overgrown holly tree. It was winter so all the plants are dead. Once we cut down the holly tree, we loved how you could see the pretty slopes of the roofline more.

We worked with MW Construction - I had worked with Mike before on a client’s project and was so impressed with his high quality work and communication. He made the whole process painless and it moved quicker than I thought it would.

We started out with narrowing down paint colors… my initial thought was navy or white, but I humored my husband by painting three different blues on our siding for us to compare. Spoiler alert… we went with the navy.

Shake: Hale Navy by Benjamin Moore

Trim & Pergola: Chantilly Lace by Benjamin Moore

You can tell how rough our siding was starting to look, along with our front door.

Mike suggested hardie shake siding so we could keep the look, but not spend the entire value of our house on new cedar shake. I did really want to replace it with cedar, but was sold on the price and low maintenance of the hardie. We plan on staying in this house until our kids graduate high school, so paying now and not having to touch the outside again while we live here was really appealing. Our window sills were mostly rotton as well, so replacing those and the rest of the trim with hardie seemed like such a smart choice.

And we decided to replace the boards on the pergola to refresh it instead of putting a roof over it like I initially wanted. But I did get a front door overhang, which makes me so happy! I just wanted to be able to unlock the door without standing in the rain. So one small victory ha

For the overhang, we put a copper roof on it and did corbels to add to the character of the home instead of posts to anchor it. With the corbels, it did take away any space that we could fit pretty sconces or lanterns, so we added a light to the overhang instead. I’m not going to lie - all of the outdoor lights are soooo ugly, and the only pretty ones hung way too far down. We literally had 12” to work with for the door to open without hitting our light. And it took me most of the renovation to finally settle on a light that I loved.

Here are a few in progress photos…

We uncovered a few surprises along the way, but thankfully nothing too crazy. There was no insulation which I suppose is not surprising considering the age of the home. And some rotton wood by the front chimney, but otherwise it was pretty smooth sailing! I’m not going to lie, we have done several renovations of old homes, and always hold our breath because we know there will be problems we uncover. We just always hope they are small - and with this project the only surprises we uncovered were under $2k. Basically a miracle with an almost 100 year old home.

Here are some damage photos, and the exciting day that we added insulation and realized our feet wouldn’t be cold anymore when we were standing in our kitchen and the drafts came in from under our cabinets.

And obviously everyones favorite part: the finished photos of our pretty navy & white 1930 storybook home…

I cut our limelight hydrangeas back to basically little sticks, so they could get to everything to paint - apparently they liked it! If anyone has tips on how to keep them looking happy like this, but not so tall, please let me know! I tried pruning the tops, but they kept growing, and I didn’t want to prune after they bloomed and have the tops look terrible.

I LOVE our copper overhang and the character the corbels added.

The light is not technically outdoor - its damp rated and I am hoping for the best since it’s covered. Its the Kelan semi flush by Visual Comfort

The house numbers I searched for a long time to find real copper ones that would match our overhang. Those came from Dropcap Studio and are the Depot House Numbers. I LOVE them! And love that the copper pops against the navy.

I gave up on the mailbox matching with the copper and went for a simple white one to tie in with the trim.

The exterior photos wouldn’t be complete without some blue and green front porch pillows.

Thibaut Pixie, Christopher Farr Carnival and Schumacher stitched stripe in navy

You can shop more custom Styled with navy pillows here, or view my portfolio of custom cushions & pillows

xoxo

Liz