As y’all well know, we’ve spent the last four years working room by room to update and decorate our house.  And while we love the space we’ve created for our little family on the inside, it was admittedly to the detriment of the outside (specifically the front yard).  I mean, we tried to keep the gigantic overgrown shrubs tidy (fail), and we attempted to keep up with all the weeds (major fail), and we did our best to keep the ill planted grass alive (biggest fail of all) but we let it go too far to ever really come back from it all.  The paint was peeling off the house in sheets and the front porch was rotting right off of the place.  We knew these things would need to be fixed when we bought the house, but it wasn’t until we passed our house from the sidewalk on a family outing a few months ago that we looked at each other and agreed that the time had come.

We’ve got three projects lined up to whip this place into shape.  It’s taken us a few months to get all the details sorted out, to collect quotes and to hire our contractors, but everything is lined up and we couldn’t be more excited!  (And scared… I mean, what if it DOESN’T really look that much better?!?!)

Phase 1: Painting the facade
I’ve been rattling on about this since January and the work was finally completed while we were on spring break.  Unfortunately, I have yet to get a good picture since our black-ish shutters are still covered in pollen.

Phase 2: The front portico face lift + 2 new porticos
This is probably what I’m most excited about!!  We will be using our good friend Shawn Reuter again (he built our back porch last summer) and I think the design will really tie the place together.  Here’s the sketch I gave him that I know he’ll bring to life!!!

The new porch will sit right on the same footprint and foundation as the existing structure, which is saving us a mint.  He will square off the columns, tear the gable off the roof and build a little faux balcony on top with the same diagonal cross balustrade used on the back porch. 

The garage entry door will be replaced with a new french style door and Shawn is building a little portico over it to keep our guests from standing out in the elements.  It’s probably the most used door in the house.

We’ve had trouble with this side door leaking in big rain storms, so it will also be replaced with a new door and have the same type of portico added.  He’ll replace the iron railings with the same diagonal crosses used on the other porches.

Phase 3: The landscaping
We’ve already been working our fingers to the bone planting tiny little shrubs (that will hopefully one day be nice normal sized shrubs) in the front pine tree bed and all around the perimeter of the back.  After the front porch project is complete, we are bringing in a professional to take out a few half dead trees, lay sod and install new foundation plants in the front beds.  It’s not going to look like much, but it will give us a starting point to add to over the years.

Here’s the atrocious dirt and weed pit that I purposefully crop out of any and all pictures.

See…told ya it was bad.
    
Whew!  Much to look forward to over the coming weeks!!!  Fingers crossed the porch projects will start end of the week…
xoxo