Front of the house after

We still have several more outside projects to do in the back yard. I hope to be able to tackle them soon, but have to work around the weather! But, I'm considering the front done for now!

Reminder of what we started with when we first moved in:

And at the first of June:

Here's how it looks today (sorry for the glum, but at least it wasn't raining):

I wish we could have mowed the grass, but I still think it's come a long way! Eventually I want to replace the 2 outside lights and add some garage door accessories. Other than that, I really like the front of our house now. I still love the yellow door!

Oh, and our Crape Myrtles stated to bloom, so I had to get a picture of them:

Love them!!

Linking to iHeart Organizing's Monthly Challenge!

Flowers and Mulch

I love the way flowers and mulch brighten up a yard. The mulch makes a flower bed so much more noticeable and professional looking. Of course, are plants still have a lot of filling in to do, but it looks a lot better.

I got a bunch of flowers at Wal-Mart on clearance. Three of the plants are perennials, so if I can keep them alive I won't have to keep replanting every year! Here's what I got:

The pink flowers were called "Hot Pink Jazz", but I think they were Wave Petunias mixed with something else. They were $2.99 each and they went into the hanging pots. They were nice because they just popped right in to my existing pots. No planting required! These are the only annuals I got.

The brownish plant are Hens and Chicks and they were $2.68 The ones to the left of those are Upright Stonecrop. I got 2 of those. They were $1.66 each. They are starting to bloom now and they are yellow which is perfect against the front door. The last one at the bottom is actually a shrub - Japanese Pieris for $2.88. That is going to go behind our lilies where another shrub died.

My son loved helping me plant these! Here's how they look now:

 

 

 And, we planted these 2 weeks ago and they are still alive! I think all this rain has been their saving grace. I really hope I can keep them alive!

You can see in the picture above to the right that I had started laying landscaping fabric in our other flower bed. We made the mistake of mulching last year without laying anything down. The grass just took back over. So this year we took the time and laid the fabric. It looks so great with fresh mulch!

Under Pressure

Sorry to get Queen stuck in your head :). A few weeks ago my wonderful hubby pressure washed the house and drive way. It is amazing the difference pressure washing makes!

Here's a close up of one of the worst spots on the house:

 And after: 

 

And here's a shot of the driveway before and after:

 

 
Of course it was still wet in these pictures, so it lightened up a bit.

So glad to have that really bad spot cleaned up. It  bugged me every time I pulled in the driveway!

The front of the house is officially done. It's taken me a while to get pictures because it's been the rainiest 2 months ever here! We even laid mulch in the rain. At least it wasn't hot though!

Front porch railings

Our front porch rails had been looking bad since we moved in. It was finally time to get them fixed. I already had the exterior white paint that I bought long ago, but I never used it. This was a long process. I've been working on it for about 3 weeks off and on. It's one of those things that can't be done when there is so much rain! But, I finally finished and it looks so much better. It's amazing the difference when you walk up the porch.

Here's what we started with:

See the cracking, peeling, and general dirtiness? Also, see that adorable photo bomber?

Closer up:

First I used a scrapper to remove as much chipping paint as I could.

Then, I sanded everything I could get to with the electric sander. Mostly the tops of all the rails. I didn't worry about sanding in between all the rails. The paint wasn't chipping in between and I wasn't switching colors or anything.

 Then, I made some bleach water and cleaned everything- every nook and cranny. That took a while.  It was already looking better. I didn't get a picture of that.

Here's a mid-progress picture. The right was done and the left wasn't. See the difference?

Here is the before and after together. I know it's probably hard to tell the difference in pictures, but it looks tons different in person.

I also painted the trim around the door because it was looking really rough. This is an older before picture I had:

And after (the horseshoe's been gone for a while)

It's so much nicer walking up our stairs now!

Trimming the trees

One of the first projects I did was trimming up the Crape Myrtles lining our driveway. They can get out of control if you let them. We like to keep them trimmed for several reasons. One, we don't want branches hitting our cars every time we drive in and out. Two, the last one can make it hard to see on-coming cars when we are backing out. And three, it's easier for hubby to mow around if he isn't getting hit in the face. LOL!

It isn't a hard task at all, just a little sweaty and time consuming. I used Friskers tree trimmers and trimmed any branch that would hit me if I didn't dunk.

Before:

And after:

Isn't that so much better! It is so much nicer backing out of the driveway -I can tell you that. And, it makes the front of our house look much more polished too.

Outside befores

We have been as busy as we can be working on outside projects. Unfortunately the weather has been against us. It has been super rainy here. It either just rained or is about to rain most evenings and almost every weekend. It makes it hard to do outside stuff! But, the front of the house is already looking tons better.

Here's what we started with:

It looked worse in person, but you can kind of see how dirty the siding is in the above picture.

And the back - which is even worse.

Our overgrown rose garden - we are getting rid of it.

We are going to keep this one knockout rose if we can dig it out. It will move up front somewhere.

This is supposed to be a grilling area, but we never finished it.

Look at the mess our puppy made!

The final part of the back porch that was never finished. - Oops!

So the outside definitely needs a lot of work! The front should be done by the end of the month. The back will take a bit longer.

Look at our crazy lilies!

Right after we moved in (2011) I posted this picture when we planted these lilies:

We bought 6 small lilies that were sharing 1 pot originally. I think they were like $15. This is what they look like now:

 
They have gone crazy! Our property used to be farmland -maybe that has something to do with it. They are so heavy a lot of them are falling over, which is kind of sad.

And with our adorable 4 year old in front for perspective: