Home Improvements

The last few weeks I have been working on the exterior of the house, and the front yard. It is amazing what a difference a few changes can make. It started when I painted the front door.  (I just had to get rid of that country blue color!) I also painted the original 1962 hardware, which I love for it's vintage feel. 

This week I took down the shutters and window boxes so I could paint them black. But when I got the shutters down I realized that I liked the house a lot better without them. And since I'm going for a clean, mid-century modern look (like the era of the house), it makes sense.  So the shutters went out to live in the shed, and the window boxes got painted and put pack up. They even got some new flowers planted in them. The house was looking so much better!  I still plan to replace that carriage style porch light (yuk!) with something more modern that will go with the new house numbers I put up. It's going to look fantastic!

Next, the yard.

First I had to get rid of all those weeds in that bed along the sidewalk.

I have wanted to edge the sidewalk with some nice plants, but it was going to cost me several hundred dollars for that many plants. I wasn't ready to invest that much in it. So when I read on a blog that someone was tearing out a whole patch of lirope from their yard, I promptly emailed them to see if I could pick them up.  It was an hour and a half drive to Richmond, but I got over 100 plants out of it. (Which would have cost me about $500)  Sweet!  And they were the exact plant I had wanted in the first place. Awesome.

Look how full my car was!  (Thanks John and Sherry for hooking me up!)

It took me a couple of days to dig up the weeds, plant the lirope, cut a trench along the edge, lay down the weed cloth, and then spread the mulch.  It was back-breaking work, and I am exhausted now... but it was all worth it. I am so pleased with the results.

Here is a 'before' picture of the house when we bought it a year ago. You can see it with the blue shutters. We're not quite done yet, but we have made a lot of progress...