Exterior cladding

Last week we picked our colours for the new house. The exterior of the house is clad in a combination of brick, CanXL hardboard and cedar shingles. On top of picking colours for those items, we also had to choose colours for the trim around the windows, the soffits, the front door and garage door, and panels that are placed on either side of the bay window at the front and on the side near the roof line, the roof shingles, as well as some other trim pieces. All I can say is that building with Uniform certainly made this task very easy.

Uniform works a lot with acclaimed Ottawa architect Barry Hobin and Hobin's team puts together many of the colour combinations that you can see on Uniform houses. Since we like Hobin's work, all we had to do was drive around different Uniform developments and see if there were any colour combinations that we liked. We found a combination in Uniform's St. Georges Yard development in Westboro. We gave Uniform the address of the house we liked and they pulled up the colour scheme from their database. Within about half an hour, we had all the colours and the brick style picked. It was extremely easy. We had toyed with the idea of putting stone on the house instead of brick, but stone is more expensive, and besides, most of the houses in the neighbourhood are brick, so I think brick will blend into the overall streetscape better.

The next task is picking the interior finishes. This will not be as easy

Inspiration for the exterior cladding for our bungalow

Some of the inspiration for the exterior cladding of our renovated bungalow in Ottawa comes from homes like these below. The styles and colours of these homes are quite different, but they are characterized by a mix of stone and either stucco, siding or brick cladding.

This first house is considered by some to be a characteristic example of the Prairie Style of architecture with a hipped roof that juts out far over the walls and no gables. Clean, horizontal lines are the dominant architectural feature with a pronounced use of natural materials.

The house below was designed by our architect. She used a brown stone at the base with a dark green/brown stucco and an accent of red along the top of the wall. She then brought this inside this house using the same stone for the fireplace and for the base of support beams, which themselves were made of the same wood as the beams on the porch.

This prairie style house uses a grey-coloured stone on the front. They have also used a more modern style window, unlike the Arts & Crafts style window proposed by our architect for our bungalow.

This house designed by another Ottawa architect uses a light-coloured rough stone cladding on the front of the house and stucco on the sides and rear of the house in the same colour. The wood of the porch and soffits provides contrast.



Here is an Arts and Crafts style house with a large grey coloured stone that goes quite high up the wall combined with a beige/light yellow stucco and greenish trim.

And here are a few more colour combinations:

Finally, here are some combinations that use a smooth stone on the bottom. Some of these homes use brick on the top, but I think it is unlikely that we would do the same.

Decisions, decisions, decisions.