As I write this I’m looking outside our dining room window to a wintry wonderland. Now, I love a good snow day. Just one though. Once I get that one good snow I am done. I’m over it. I am officially ready for spring.
So I’m already reminiscing about last spring & all the beautiful things we were able to get done on the exterior of our little home & daydreaming about what I want to get done this spring.
Let’s reminisce together, shall we?
One of the biggest problems I had with the exterior of the house was all the overgrown plants. I lovingly referred to it as the jungle for quite awhile. Mainly because I wouldn’t be surprised if something scary jumped out of there.
Finally one day I mucked up enough courage & went after it… cutting & digging.. I let all of my frustrations go! HOLY COW what a difference just getting all of that out made. It made me immediately feel like we were taking care of this house. It took a few weeks of going back & digging out little plants that were trying to claim their ground ( literally! ) but it finally cleared out.
Another thing I wanted to change as soon as possible was the shutters. They had been painted years & years ago. They were faded & just needed a little bit of love. I went with Sherwin Williams Tri-Color Black. I love it. It’s black, but not too dark & overwhelming. I love the contrast it created with the white house. We have a couple columns on our front porch that I also painted this color.
It always amazes me what a can of paint can do. It’s such an easy job with such a dramatic difference. Well, it should have been easy. I found out pretty quickly there were some wasps that were not into my new paint job. My shoulder was stung on day 1, but I came back with fear & vengeance! It may have taken me a couple extra weeks to accomplish this task, but it finally got done.
Wasp: 1
Ellyn: 1
Another major difference to the exterior was our German Smear of the red brick. To me the brick just looked dated & didn’t really mesh with rest of the house. Aaron was a trooper with this because it was really my desire, but he did all the work.
There are a lot of different methods for achieving this look. We used white, thin-set mortar. Aaron used a gloves to smear it over the brick & then used a trowel to scrap off the excess. At first we had a good bit of red still peaking through, but decided we wanted it to be more white. I absolutely loved it when it was done!
I felt like after we did this the house looked so much cleaner! Before there were too many things for your eyes to look at & this really just simplified the exterior.
Another not so fun task we tackled was washing the exterior of the home, but again the biggest difference! We made a mixture of equal parts bleach & water, sprayed that on the house & then went back & hosed it down with water after letting the bleach mixture sit for about 5 minutes. The house was so dirty before, but after an afternoon of this it looked so fresh & welcoming.
The last major thing we worked on outside was digging out our flower beds. Previously there was brick there, but after years it was all broken & really half of it was already gone.
We measured out our flower beds, tilled the weeds & grass, & then dug up the dirt a bit. We added some simply pansies that immediately made me feel like our house was a home.
All of these things didn’t take more than an afternoon really ( besides the ordeal with the wasp! ) but each one made a huge difference in the exterior of our home.
What I want to accomplish this spring:
- Paint the front door – I would love to do a simple, tranquil blue.
- Finish up our flower beds – we need to plant more, add mulch & then add a perimeter to it.
- Add a walk way – we have no sidewalk down to our driveway & it makes me crazy! It gets so muddy when it rains!
- Either paint or replace front porch railing.
- Plant bushes/trees in the front of the house in replace of the jungle.
I hope this encourages to think about those little changes that will make a huge difference & get after them!
Happy renovating!
ellyn
Ps. Spring come back soon!
