Is This Our Final Answer???

We've been wrestling with a bunch of exterior ideas over the past couple of weeks...

First we wanted this:

Or this:

Then we talked to Lyle, and he told us that dark stucco would run, so we couldn't do the red, and we weren't quite sold on the yellow yet.

So then we were toying with the idea of this:

We weren't completely sold on this idea either. Ryan was saying that he was thinking that choosing the exterior of the house would have been the easiest decision we would have to make...He's now learning that it's probably the toughest.

We turned to a couple of our friends for their opinions, and even asked for opinions on our blog. Some were insightful and had good points, and others (well, Glen, to be exact) came up with this:

Then we toyed with the idea of doing a cement-fibre siding on some of the house, and stucco on the rest. We did not, nor will we ever want vinyl siding (if you watched the news last night or this weekend, you will have seen those houses in Edmonton with the vinyl siding on them that melted from the heat of a fire or something like that. If you need more proof that vinyl siding isn't good, check out the documentary Blue Vinyl - pretty interesting), so we were looking at the more expensive cement-fibre siding. Here's what those thoughts led us to:

We both loved this idea...until we got the quote back for the cost to do it...it was a little more than we expected, and a little more than we were willing to pay. What we wanted was a bit different than the above pictures, but it would have cost us about $7000...that was the cost to us. That is above and beyond the cost that the builder had worked into his budget as well. We got the quote last night (Sunday night), and we now have a different idea all together...as of last night. We've already talked to Lyle and described to him what we want...and what we want, is this:

It will be yellow stucco with stone along the front porch wall and along the bottom of the garage. We were tossing this colour around at the beginning, and I guess it stuck. We also know that we can paint stucco, if we ever get tired of it. We will also have a red front door, to give it that kick of colour that it needs.