First Sign of Spring
A few weeks ago I was outside with my little man and I saw this:
It was the first sign of spring in our yard and it was beyond thrilling. Although this winter wasn’t as rough as last year’s, I couldn’t wait for it to be over! Anyways, that “first sign” made me think of all we had to do to the exterior now that warm weather was once again heading our way (or so I thought, what’s with this little encore winter is putting on?) Even more then that it made me think of all the things pertaining to the house’s curb appeal that we had already accomplished. I’m thinking now is a good time to catch you up on a few of those changes.
The very first thing we did when we purchased the house was replace the roof. Here’s a picture of the house and roof before.
Then, once we finished replacing all of the windows in the house (believe it or not we found all of them on craigslist and Pavlo was able to install them himself saving us a pretty penny) we replaced the faux Tudor facade on the front with clapboard siding to match the other sides. All of the clapboard siding was painted in a light beige (Sherwin Williams’ “Softer Tan”) and the trim was given a fresh coat of gloss white paint.
The last major thing completed before the cold weather hit was replacing the driveway and the steps leading to the front door. It may be a little bit hard to see in the picture above but the asphalt driveway and the concrete steps were cracking and crumbling like crazy. Besides, all of the other houses in the neighborhood had concrete driveways so why should ours be the only one with asphalt?
Some final details for making the front exterior at least presentable was the purchasing of new light fixtures, a new mailbox, and fixing up our light post. Even the neighbors were asking us when that hideous black and white light post (seen in the image above) would be replaced.
Even after we attached the new light our post was still an eyesore.
Before going to the extent of replacing the post entirely we decided to try our luck at painting it. It was a much less expensive (not to mention faster) option and luckily for us it worked!
After replacing the roof, driveway and path, adding then painting siding, installing new light fixtures and a new mailbox, we were left with something far more desirable. Before I reveal that here’s another glance at our HOUSE at purchase:
And here is our HOME after some exterior sprucing up:
To us it is still a work in progress so we’re now moving on to finishing the carport and a little more landscaping…that’s if the warm weather would come to stay!
Looks great!