I finally have brand new photos of the front of our house after spending the last few weeks working on various projects on the exterior. So let’s get started right away.
I have to start by sharing this picture that captures the massiveness of the oak tree in our front yard. It is challenging to capture the entire tree in one photo because it is so large. I love this tree and am always so sad when autumn comes and it loses all its leaves.
But now we come to the house. I went back and found “before” pictures from two different years so we could compare what this house looked like then with the progress I’ve made so far. We’re starting with the front of the house the day we closed on our house in August 2013. It was pretty monotonous, but I saw great potential in this small house.
The next picture is from Spring 2016. At that time I was thinking about painting the house yellow, so I had yellow paint swatches on the front of the house. We had replaced the windows in the living room, but the rest of the house looked pretty much the same. I like these pictures better than my original “before” pictures from three years ago because you can actually see more of the house since the trees don’t have a lot of leaves.
And this is what it looks like today…
Here’s another one from the day we bought the house…
This is what it looked like in spring 2016, with a few new windows, a new mailbox and a few yellow paint samples, but everything else was still pretty much the same.
And here is the same view today…
Of course, I still have a lot of work to do in front of our house and in our front yard, but this little house has come a long way!
About four months ago the city began work on our street, tearing out old crumbling curbs and pouring new curbs. I’m really thankful we no longer have crumbling curbs, but I really wish they had replaced them all because now the curbs are two different colors. I tried pressure washing them all and when they were wet they were all the same color. But then they dried two different colors again. Well, yes. This is beyond my control
I think the two changes that have made the biggest difference are (1) converting the garage into my studio and (2) building a new driveway leading to the back of the house.
And then the complete renovation of the veranda made the crucial difference. It used to be a concrete porch with narrow concrete steps leading to a narrow sidewalk.
And now I have a wooden porch (that I built over the concrete porch), beefier white columns, wide front steps with handrails, and a much wider sidewalk.
I just love looking at these old pictures and seeing how far this house has come.
I love the progress so far. It took me years to get to this point, but the fact that I did so much of it alone and with my own hands makes me proud.
But of course I have a lot more planned. When I get back to outdoor projects (hopefully later this year when it gets cooler), my first priority will be adding steps to the new bedroom door on the far left of the house. And then I would like to start landscaping. I have such big plans for the little area outside the breakfast room windows to the right of the porch.
I took these pictures yesterday around 7:00 pm as the sun was setting behind our house, so the porch looked pretty dark. Personally, things don’t look so bleak. There’s a big difference between seeing the house in a small photo on a computer or phone screen and seeing it in person.
I think some people were confused about where the steps were that I built a few months ago. These steps are on the side of my studio (i.e. the original garage), which is at the right end of the house by the driveway. Below you can see that the driveway to the back of the house leads to the carport that we had built as part of the garage studio project. And then my workshop is right behind the carport.
The sun was shining very brightly on this side of the house when I took these pictures, but here is a better look at the floor plan of the studio, carport and workshop.
So in reality you never see the two pink doors together. My side studio door is pink, but you have to look at the house from a certain angle to see it, and from that angle you can’t really see the front door to our house.
Once you are far enough to see the pink front door, you will no longer be able to see the side studio door.
I’m so proud of all the improvements I’ve made to the front (and side) of our house, but I can’t wait to tackle the area outside the breakfast room windows. It has great potential, but at the moment it looks a little sad and forgotten. I’m imagining a pergola over the breakfast room windows, built with the same brackets I used on the side of the studio, but in a smaller size. And of course, I’ve shared in previous posts that I would like to have a fountain or water feature in this area. And of course plants. Lots of plants.
And I still want flower boxes under the windows of the studio, including under the window to the left of the front steps if possible. Building these planter boxes is still on my to-do list. I have to laugh at the fact that I’ve been dreaming about planter boxes on these windows for years, and then I built planter boxes for my workshop before I built them for the house.
I know it’s hard to see details of the porch from such a distance in a small photo, but y’all, I’m so proud of our porch. For the first time since we’ve lived here, I feel like the porch is actually finished. There have been upgrades over the years, but until now there has never been a finished skirting board. And the fact that the baseboard matches the stone on the left side of the house is so exciting to me.
This is what the house looked like from this angle in spring 2016.
And then there’s the door on the other side of the house. Yes, it’s a little strange having two doors at the front of a house, but with the Hardie trim removed and the new faux stone added, I like how it looks now. I think it will be so cute when it’s all finished, with steps, plants, and maybe a little pergola over the door to match the one over the breakfast room windows (if I can figure out how to attach it to the stone).
When I look back at these old pictures, I wonder how I ever saw the potential in them…
But I’m so glad I did it! I’m exhausted just thinking about all the effort that went into these projects, but they were truly worth it.
Okay, I feel like I’ve taken about a thousand pictures and I’m having a hard time narrowing down the ones I want to share, so I’ll just post the rest without comment. Enjoy! (Side note: As I was editing these images, I realized that I could turn many of these images into a children’s book called Where’s Tiger? He seems to appear in most of them. )
