Front of the House

Now that I don't have any more vacation posts, I thought it'd be fun to document our home and what we've done to it and what we plan to do.  I think it'll be nice to be able to look back at how much we've accomplished. 

Quick backstory - we started looking at homes just before we got engaged in May/June 2011.  It took us a year and a half to find this home.  We had decided on a neighborhood about a year after looking then we looked at 5-6 homes in our current neighborhood.  This one popped up and we went and looked at it that day and put in our offer.  The sweet lady accepted it and then got 3 more offers that same evening.  We felt fortunate to get it!  We also feel very fortunate to be in the neighborhood we are in.  I'll just put it that way instead of getting too sappy!

I LOVE our neighborhood.  I walk or run it almost daily and enjoy meeting more nice people each time.

So let's begin...

Also keep in mind as you read these posts that we bought our home in October 2012 while having two other mortgages (our condos uptown) and getting married 6 months later and having to do A LOT to our house, not to mention buying things like shovels, garden hoses and a full size washer and dryer.  Yeah 3 mortgages for 5 months was joyous...okay y'all get the point.  We basically started brand new.

This is from the bottom of our driveway.  Our home sits up on a hill.  All of the driveways in our neighborhood have the brick bottoms at the base of the driveways then all have concrete driveways.  No front facing garages are allowed.  We all have the same mailbox too.

We have these two beds on either side of the base of the driveway.  Those bushes like to drive me bananas and we have to trim them very often.  We recently had them shaped in early July and they already need to be done again.

They don't look terrible now but they did when we moved in.  We have mulched them too.  

Our mailbox was extremely faded since it probably had never been redone since the home was built in 1999.  I spray painted it in June and used some brasso.  I still need to get new brass knobs but it does look a whole lot better.

Alright, our grass or lack thereof.  My goodness.  Basically it's all weeds.  Maybe next year we'll install an irrigation system and kill the whole yard and replant grass.  I think it needs to be professionally done.  No sense in spending a bunch of money and then it doesn't work right.  Dad can install sprinklers but I hate for him to do that.  Kevin maybe will learn!?!

Now I'm walking up the driveway snapping pictures.

In this picture you can see how deep our house is.  I like how it looks pretty modest from the front unlike some of our neighbor's homes! ;)  Those are gorgeous but we just can't compete with that!

You can see how much work we have to do on the beds around the house too.  We have mulched all of it in the past 6 months which was a huge improvement.  You should have seen it before that.  Yuck! 

More bushes to trim.  There was this big bush grown around the light pole that Kevin's parents helped us rip out when we first moved in.  I need to plant some pretty flowers there but I can't keep them alive.  

Side of the house.  The lady has gorgeous rose bushes planted in there that I'm excited to see bloom again.

Let's talk about the shutters.  I'd like to paint those really really dark green like almost black or black sometime.  I think they'd be classy.

Oh our front door, let's talk about that.  You all know how much I hate it and everything around it too.  First, we need new lights, these look too small.  I hate the white plastic paneling around the front door....do you all think we should brick that?  And I hate those designs in the glass on the sidelights and above the door.  I would want the top squared off (not with the arch) and the sidelights with just plain glass and a couple pieces of wood in the middle to break it up.  Know what I mean?  And of course I'd like a realllllly dark green or black door and no screen door (although Mills loves looking through it) but they aren't really in anymore.

A new roof had been put on it last Fall so we got lucky with that.  Looks like some bushes died on the left side of the house that she never replaced.  We need to do something about that eventually.

Overall and the main reason we decided on this house is that it has really great bones.  But we do have a lot of work to do.  I think next, I'll show you all the backyard!

As we do things around the house, I'll be sure to share!