The McGee Home Remodel: How We Transformed the Exterior of Our Home

Join Shea McGee and Tyler from Killowen Construction for a behind the scenes look at the exterior remodel of the McGee’s home! Shea shares her process for adding in more traditional elements to the exterior, ensuring every detail adds charm and personality while maintaining a timeless appeal! Plus, gain valuable insights from Tyler, as he offers a builder’s perspective on all the intricate details.

Walls are Benjamin Moore White Dove
Shutters are Natural Tan Sherwin Williams

See what the exterior used to look like here: https://bit.ly/McGeeHome
Read about the original details here: https://bit.ly/ExteriorDetailsBefore

Website: https://bit.ly/StudioMcGeeSite
Shop McGee & Co: https://bit.ly/McGeeandCo
Shea’s Picks: https://bit.ly/sheaspicks

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00:00 Introduction
01:01 The Before and After
02:44 Last Minute Adjustments
04:59 Behind The Design w/Shea
08:28 Construction Details w/Tyler

You’ve seen this tour before but we’re back to share our family home with an all new Look we finished our remodel in time to set out the Christmas decorations I’ve invited Tyler over to uh give us a rundown of the construction details Incorporated throughout our remodel I’m going to defend the shutters to the very end cuz she said someone said they’re the wrong size we designed this home

About five or six years ago and we were on a really tight deadline because this was going to be the first reveal we filmed for Dream Home Makeover on Netflix and we had made some budget decisions and we paired things back we had a lot of good things to work with

And I loved our home but over time I was able to really think about what I wanted to add to bring it to a more traditional place you can see now behind me the big reveal it is still our home and it has a lot of the same Essence that it did

Before but it feels like it’s been here for even longer and that was actually the goal I wanted our home to feel older Timeless this renovation on the exterior and interior of our home was more about adding than subtracting I needed to partner with the right architect to

Realize the level of detail that I envisioned and Steve te of te Design Group was the right fit he understands and lives for classic and historical details I’ve known him for a long time and you know I had this list of like ideas and he took those ideas and ran

With them and did a few different sketches of options for how we could um add that character and so I kind of took from here gave some feedback and mashed some ideas together and we opted on adding these swoop walls to the front shutters detailing in The Gables and

Then last but not least pulling forward the porch and doing these double columns once the drawings were done I had no hesitation I was ready to have them rip the porch off the front of our house and I think I had more stressed about you know wallpaper and Furniture

Selections than I did on the exterior and now that everything has come together I see why except for one thing I love it I’m undecided on the Spheres they coordinate with the shutters I do really like it I think I just I think I just need I think I just

Need to like it’s new it’s so new they were put on this morning I haven’t seen it all together the drawings and I was the one that suggested this had these beautiful Limestone spheres I had pulled images of that look and thought it would be a good addition but they were

Installed yesterday and I could not stop looking at them everything else felt easy and was so beautiful and I loved it immediately I couldn’t figure out why in my gut I just knew they weren’t right and I tried to mull it over convince myself it was the right thing cuz they

Were on the plans and at the end of the day I knew every single time we made a change on our house I was excited and I loved it and with the Spheres it didn’t feel that way it kind of felt like putting on too much jewelry it was like

I needed to take one piece off to get the look just right I wanted traditional I wanted detailing but I still love a classic paired back look and so trying to meet all of those things push myself forward with the detail but then also stays true to me taking them off I

Texted our contractor last night and I was like I can’t do it I can’t do the Spheres I am so sorry that it took four guys to lift these things over to the brick wall and now I need you to remove them and he was like no problem I’ll be

There tomorrow morning so they cut them off this morning and then repaint it over the top I have them I’m going to save them and put them on like a gate post um in a another project that I have going and now I look at our house I have

No hesitation I love it so I think the note there is sometimes our plans don’t work out according to plan and you have to listen to your gut and just go with it and it might feel like a mistake but also it’s just part of the process

We had brick walls in front of our house before but they were completely flat so what we did was we kept half of the wall and then we just added the swoop and a little higher post here I love the swoop detail for a few reasons it gives our

Front porch a lot more stately presence but also it ties to a detail you will see on the inside with this wall that we created to separate our living room from our staircase before the p was copper but it was suspended between the two sides of our home and it didn’t

Have enough presence so we decided to pull it forward and I really loved the double column look and Steve was on the same page and he created this beautiful porch with molding details and these great columns and I love how it gives the front of our home more presence but also

Dimension I have always loved loved gas lanterns and I just decided to go for it I had my heart set on them from the beginning and it just adds so much warmth to our home I love them I’m so happy seeing them during the day but at night it’s the prettiest

Glow we kept all the windows the same except for one and I had a window on this side of the house and Steve put an oval window on the drawings and it was just so cute and just added softness and charm as you’ve heard me say many times

And I love the way that combination turned out we also added shutters to our house to these upper windows and I wanted to make sure that they were architecturally sound and that they could actually cover the windows so they’re big windows and we did a bfold

Shutter which you can see that’s why we have the hinges here and then I painted them a subtle tan color so that they w w’t an exact match to the brick and I like that that gives it just a little bit of Dimension but we still have kind

Of a soft look on the exterior one thing we added that I think is small when I talk about it but added a big impact on the front of the home is we added trim to the Gable so we did a stepped fascia with this molding detail in order to do

That we actually had to pull the roof line forward a little bit and we pulled the shingles so I’m waiting for those to Patina and match as well but you can see it creates like a really pretty Shadow line and then the vent brick detail under those is also something that we

Added which just meant cutting out some of the existing brick and then painting it white to match the rest of the house last but not least our blue stone walkway so I already had blue stone on our porch when we were building our home I couldn’t afford to do the Blue Stone

All the way to the sidewalk so I came up with a creative solution with our concrete and did the grass strips which I think is a great look and a great solution to make concrete more interesting but I always had my heart set on doing the blue stone all the way

To the street so we carried it out and I love that it ties in with the porch and also just elevates the entire experience from the street all the way to our front Door do you see this I’ve been following The Saga of the groundkeeper I’m going to defend the shutters to the very end cuz she said someone said they’re the wrong size and I said no they are not actually I’m going to I’m going to dive

Into that but we did them right but we did them right okay we finished our remodel in time to set out the Christmas decorations Sid did a really nice job wrapping the Garland but the lights he didn’t put them up they keep falling down and then he puts them back up and

Then we get more snow it melts and then it pushes the lights down so the wreaths are hanging on it looks amazing though I love it I love the way our exterior turned out and the interior too I always um wanted to be able to put more Garland

Up on my house and the columns the double columns gave me four places to put Garland which I’m excited about so I’ve invited Tyler over to uh give us a rundown of the construction details and Incorporated throughout our Remodel and it’s freezing out here so I’m going to

Head inside and let Tyler give you the tour okay sounds great thanks sh thanks Tyler and action bunch of really cool things that were small details but I think made a big impact that Shay decided on this roof was all scooted back right came out to about right here

So we extended it about 3 ft doesn’t seem like a lot but it it was a lot of work so these guys here here are structural there’s a couple ways to do this these are are painted and they’re they’re steel but another way to do it

Is you can get a like a 4×4 post whatever your engineer says put that in first and then slide like a fiberglass um column over it and you can get a real similar look so this was we didn’t need four structurally you know the two that was a design decision and I

Think they look great but they are holding up the roof one of the added elements are these gas lanterns now they’re so cool I was in New Orleans recently saw where these were made saw saw their store that’s that’s based out of there and when you doing your model

And you’re wanting to add gas fixtures uh really important to think about how difficult that is because these were electrical we replac them but we have to run gas lines from here which weren’t here originally all the way to our mechanically so there was some demo on

The inside some drywall patches we kept it to a minimum but there was still work on the inside that just had to happen to get the gas routed from our mechanical room to these lights I think she would say it she would tell you it’s worth it

They’re so gorgeous so if if maybe these are out of your budget initially I think something that would be very smart and fairly affordable is to run some sort of sleeve or conduit for a future gas line to your mechanical room before you do all the drywall that way you want to add

These later it’s way easier one advantage of being the original contractor on this home a few years ago was I know exactly where we sourced everything this blue stone front porch got extended we extended the step we extended all the way to the road uh a real challenge when you’re doing a

Remodel is making sure the old matches the new where this isn’t that 100y old building that’s a lot easier but it really did help that it was the same supplier that provided this Stone and this Stone Shay’s team does an amazing job at drawing things to scale and

Properly but there is something about seeing it in 3D they for example these light fixtures I love to make a cardboard cutout the exact same size hold it up on the wall for shet also with this wall um we modified it we made this taller we added this swoop now you

Can draw those things however sometimes in in real life the radius isn’t quite you know how you want it to turn out so we’d love to mock this stuff out get the homeowner’s approval before we finalize it another just really cool detail that was technically difficult were I’m calling

Them swoops so the see these little brick swoops here everything was going straight up and it required a lot of demo with the brick and a lot of framing with the roof and one thing you just really need to consider with these beautiful exterior models is the structural Integrity of the home it’s

Not really as easy as just adding lipstick on top of it right and decorations these Gables um they are a closed foam insulation like ventless Roof System so what we had to do is we had to rip that framing apart get it all protected get insulators here to spray

That foam and then really concentrate on the flashing and the framing for these really just perfect seamless brick swoop details it took a while to get there but we got it right and it is not going to leak all right I wanted to talk about these shutters cuz I’m incredibly proud

Of them and defensive about them see how they have hardware and hinges on the side where they can fold out and cover the entire glass we built these in-house um at our cabinet shop and we were very very clear and very precise with the dimensions and made sure they got

Approved by Shay because because she is also a shutter snob and that is totally fine and totally okay but I heard she got a little bit of grief online that they were the wrong size and they absolutely are not they are perfect perfect Shay and I have been talking

About for about four or five years the gutters and downspouts here we ended up not doing it on the first round first round during the new build we ended up adding them back so they’re there they’re working on getting the patina just right I mean again you’re working

With old materials and new materials but the copper will will tarnish and be a similar color probably in about 6 months so another change we made here and again when you’re changing things on the exterior you got to think of what the impact is on the inside we did have a

Window here but it wasn’t this oval window but it still meant we had to demo on the inside so we had to reconfigure Shay’s closet our cabinet shop did that but on the outside here the challenge was again was old versus new even though this is a four or 5-year-old home

Getting the stone to match exactly but we got it right and I think it looks great another thing is this bolo Gas Lantern we had to get a gas line there there was no light there previously so again it’s a planning on the inside how much are you willing to demo on the

Inside to make your exterior look great another thing if you’re thinking about an exterior refresh is throwing a window any window in a wall you have to check the structural Integrity of the home you got to make sure that there’s the right um header size above the window cuz

Every exterior wall is a structural wall right so we did have a permanent inspection on this but you got to check with your engineer and make sure you’re framing it properly that wraps up the exterior but this is just the beginning we have a lot

More to show you we have the main living spaces where we changed some of the architectural details and the furniture and then in the bedrooms we did a complete refresh using decor and New Pieces