Home Improvements

It's been six years this month since we bought our house and we thought it was about time that we put some extra money into the outside of the house to make it ours.  Robert has been dying to make these upgrades and it was finally the right time.

We started by replacing our roof, which they told us when we bought the house that it needed to be done.  It was always such a hard pill to swallow, though, because it's so expensive and you don't have much to show for it at the end.  While most people might not notice the change we think as a package deal it will make the whole thing stand out.

Our old roof was sort of a reddish color, and we ended up going with a blackish/gray color this time.

You can also see in the pictures above that we tore out the succulent garden under the window, as well as the tall tree over on the right.

Next came the wood fence, which was starting to blow over between our house and the neighbors.  It turned out amazing and we even got to know our neighbors during the time the fence was down and hope to hand out with them more.  They told us that the original fence blew over the day before we were supposed to close on the house and the previous owner had the GARDENER put up the new one.  No wonder it was so shoddy!  Hector (the fence guy) dug new holes that he cemented in and built everything by hand, including the gate. I don't think this fence is going anywhere.

Then we painted the house, which we went back and forth on (or at least I did) but I am so happy with it now I can't imagine it not done.  We chose a light gray color for the stucco and a darker gray for the siding on the front of the house, all with white trim.

As you can see in the pictures above, Robert also put up black shutters on the front window and we ordered another set for the window on the garage.  Also you may have noticed our new planter boxes!

The final large project we had going on at our house was bringing up the front planter boxes in height and including stone on the front, fixing out broke sprinkler system (front and back) and laying down new sod (front and back).

A close up of all of the details:

We are so pleased with all of the work and are so excited with our "new" house.  We still have a couple other finalizing things to do but all the big work is finally complete.

Still up on the list:

• a new front door - which chose a 9 window black front door, set to be installed on May 5th
• we are hoping to find tall black pots to put on either side of the front door to put succulents in 
• now that we have those large planter boxes, we need something to fill it with.  We finally broke down and hired a local nursery to help us choose the types of plants to fill it with. You wouldn't think that's a big deal but every year we spend so much money on flowers and they always ended up dying!  Plus I was afraid to use the year-round plants myself because what if I put a 10 foot tall tree next to a 2 foot tree?? Now that we have this pretty space, we need to make sure it looks nice!

Stay tuned for a final before and after picture in a couple of weeks!