The After Photo’s of Rainbow Ranch Exterior

Since we’ve got so many photo’s to share I’m putting the Rainbow Ranch exterior and Outbuilding photo’s here and I’m sharing all the interiors in a different post. I hope that you enjoy all the projects we’ve done!

Now that we are preparing to leave Rainbow Ranch and move onto the next house and next chapter I’d like to share the before and after’s. While there are still projects left to be completed here, they will now be passed on to the new family and we are certain that they’ll add their special touch to all the spaces as well.

Most of the photo’s that I have of the “before” are the listing photo’s. The house was actually in much worse condition than the photo’s showed because it had been listed previously. The owner listed it and then decided not to sell it so when they listed it later the previous photo’s were used.

We bought the house thinking that we would stay in the house we were renting at the time and do some updates before moving in. You know what they say about those best laid plans right?

We closed on Rainbow Ranch on October 17, 2015. Our rent house flooded on October 30, 2015.

We had pulled up carpet, removed some fixtures and started making plans but we were immediately downsizing by more than half in a very unorganized fashion. Thank goodness the barn was watertight enough to use as storage, and we’ve made great use of it over the past few years.

The Before and After Photo’s

The Rainbow Ranch Exterior Before/After

Before: When we purchased the house it was in need of a new roof and some cosmetic updates. It’s a well built house with an amazing view, and a swimming pool. It just needed some TLC to make it shine!

After – the very first project was having a. new roof installed. Over the course of owning the house we installed a new front door, painted the brick, added shutters and had new windows installed. It completely changed the looks of the house.

Before – The front door was solid and the windows were divided light so replacing both of those really changed the look of the house when you walk up to it.

I did keep the front door painted all kinds of bright colors, and I continued to do that even when we added the wood door. I stained it at first but decided that it needed some brightening on this porch!

After – The original front door was a solid steel door so adding a door with windows really changed the look of the house both outside and in.

Before – The back of the house had a screened in porch, a giant deck and lot’s of concrete painted red. Peeling red paint. Not so pretty red paint.

After – The screen porch was removed almost immediately so that you can enjoy the amazing view from inside the house. The concrete was peeling blue paint and stayed that way for a few years until we were able to repaint it. The deck has been repaired and stained a couple of times. We also removed the balusters on the deck rail and replaced them with wire so that they blend into the beautiful view.

After – Removing the balusters opened up the view all the way around the deck and it is an amazing view!

Of course removing all the red paint from the pool deck and stairs updated that space!

The Outbuildings

One thing about having a home with a some land is that you wind up with lot’s of buildings besides just the house. We started out with a cedar cabin, a shed, a greenhouse and a giant building that we call the barn – but it’s not a barn at all.

The Cedar Cabin

The cedar cabin is exactly what it sounds like – a one room cedar building. It has been home to our kids between homes, a craft room, a guest room and storage. It’s been a handy little building and the only update I made to the outside was painting the door yellow and decorating the deck.

Before – This is the building that we call the barn, although it is clearly not a barn.

What is it? Well, it could have been a pole barn to begin with, but then someone built a building inside of it. Literally – there’s another building inside with dropped ceilings and all. So we did a few updates to it and could never quite figure out how to update it.

After – This could also be the worst angle of “the barn”. You can see that we did update some of it but there’s still a lot left to be desired here. At least it doesn’t looks as bad when you drive by these days.

Here’s hoping that the new owners will be inspired to do something fantastic with it. I know there are lot’s of possibilities!

Before – This is what we called “The Shanty” and in this listing photo it’s in much better shape than when we actually inherited it. It was almost big enough to park a car under.

This is the actual before, what it looked like when we moved in. Removing some of the siding definitely left it a little less structurally sound. The roof shape also caused a waterfall down the middle.

When parking in here the question was – do you want hail damage on the front of your car or the back of your car? Or are you more afraid of the shanty collapsing on your car?

It was an easy decision to remove this structure but trying to figure out how to squeeze a bigger structure in here was fun. There’s a greenhouse, wellhouse and water storage tank to the left and the cedar cabin is to the right. The electric pole is behind the structure so that limited how deep it could be – lot’s of obstacles to overcome.

The shanty became a garage. Room for parking and a workshop, and also a lofted area for storage. This was the only building that we added from the ground up but it was an excellent choice!

I drew a picture of what I was thinking for my husband and he sketched out floor plans and made it a reality. The two of us built this with some help from our kids. It was a long project but totally worth it.

The greenhouse and well house are great additions to the property. The well house just keeps all the equipment out of the weather, and also out of sight. The greenhouse has been a fun place to work on trying out new plantings and reviving old ones.

There’s not much you can do to improve these so they look basically the same as they did.

And that’s all the fun Rainbow Ranch exterior photos. We did some big projects and some small projects and we definitely made a lot of progress. We are also leaving a lot of space for the new owners to improve on some of our ideas.

You can always follow along on Instagram or Pinterest to see new inspiration daily and sneak peeks of all the upcoming projects. Believe me, there are a lot of projects waiting in the new house!