Fencing it In

I posted about some small changes out front that we were making a week or so ago. Well, since we have someone staying in our basement for a while, we wanted to give them their own entrance instead of shuffling past our cars in the carport on the right side of the house. You'll also notice the horizontal slats on the porch that have also been sent on to a better place. :) Carport to the right.

Fugly metal fence to the left that didn't really open and close at all.

Plan where I showed my thoughts on separating the gravel from the extended flower bed that has yet to be extended with a fence that did not exist yet. 

Well, while I was in SLC last weekend visiting friends, LB got that fence built on the left side of the house. I kid, I kid. Our crazy cheap crown molding guy did it. And. It. Looks. Awesome. LB did, however, spend the whole weekend working on the house and cleaning up the front and back porches, plus managing Cheap Dude. The house definitely looks a MILLION times better. I feel like we have claimed this formerly dead space on the left of the house now.

The other major difference is that LB removed those previously mentioned horizontal slats on the front porch. It opens the house up a ton and makes the porch feel 900 times bigger. I pulled up to the house on Sunday night from the airport and said out loud, "Woah. That doesn't even look like my house." In the best possible way, it totally doesn't.

You can see that I still need to get dirt to blend these two beds together: the left is gravel and the right is dirt/where the red bricks used to be.

Here is the question: do we paint the fence white or leave it stained its glorious cedar stain? My vote is to leave it because I feel like it will be too much white, but perhaps it would also look really "clean" and cohesive.

Consider also that since LB removed the horizontal bars on the porch we have been talking about wrapping the posts in cedar for looks and strength (double threat posts!).

Cast your vote in the comments!

Trimming It Out

One of my goals for the past, uh, year (yikes) has been to get rid of the green trim on our house. I posed about it here, here, here, and here. I knew I wanted it black and bought the paint for it a year ago. The issue was that the idea of LB and I up on a ladder scraping and priming and painting caused me to up our life insurance.  Real talk. We finally found Mario who agreed to paint it for $300. SOLD!

We used the Clark + Kensington Paint in Semi-Gloss Black. I like that I said "we" when I did literally no painting.

The unexpected benefit of getting this stuff painted, was that the wood had seen better days. It needed scraping and caulking and Mario took care of all of that. I also want to pressure wash the crap out of the house/the white paint and get that all sealed, but that's way down on the priority list right now.

Painters who paint with a smile.

I LOVE how classic it looks now.

I am obsessed with the black shutters. They would look better with white blinds (clearly), but one-ish thing at a time. 

The light I ordered also showed up from build.com! It was a little smaller than I originally thought; the swiffer is there for size comparison obviously and not because I was too lazy to move it out of the shot.

But anything is an improvement over this thing.

Voila.

The real benefit of this bad boy is the light output. It is bright as all hell. Our front porch can be seen from the next street over, a copter, an airplane, the freaking moon.

Regardless, I am so glad to have these "small" outdoor updates handled. It's only taken a year.