We must've lost our minds... Part 2

This is the overgrown mess that was the front of the house. That is a HUGE rhodadendron there at the corner of the porch. It was nearly as tall as the roof. I'm sure it was probably lovely in the spring but I am TERRIFIED of snakes and any place they may be able to hide... It had to go. Getting the bush/tree itself down wasn't bad. Getting the roots out of the ground - not so easily done. After hours with a hand saw, we gave up and I decided to ruin a blade on the reciprocating saw to get the roots out of the ground.

We also decided the aluminum rails had to go. Have you ever tried getting 20 yr old screws out after they've all but rusted in place? Not fun. Recip saw to the rescue - again.

The day after we took possession of the house.. we came home to find one of the sons sitting on the porch of the storage building. They still had a bunch of stuff in the garage, storage building and the house that they were just going to leave. Uhmmmm.... no. We told them they had to get it all out and deal with it. It wasn't our problem. He said they'd get it out the next day. No problem... until we get home and there is NO ONE there but a fire burning right next to the barn. When he finally shows up an hour later, all he has to say is, "We burn there all the time." !!!
I think this is the evening he talked about putting on a mask, sneaking on the property to scare the "city girls" and the "we have a gun" exchange occurred. There was instead a call put into our real estate agent who called their real estate agent and strongly suggested they not set foot on the property again.

That very same day, I found out I had to have surgery and would be out of commission for at least 6 weeks. Surgery was scheduled in less than a week. I wanted to pick a project that I could finish before I had surgery. The porch drove me crazy. It was GREEN!!! It went so well with the white brick lamp post, the earth-tone brick circular planter beside it and the yellow buildings.. I wanted to get the cement part of it sanded and all of it painted before I had surgery. That way, it wouldn't drive me crazy when they brought me home from the hospital. It's the little things folks... the little things!

I bought an orbital sander and started working on the porch. (Buying tools becomes a recurring theme. I will still tackle any project that comes along as long as there's a new tool involved.)

It was a good ol' fashioned sledgehammer that took out that lamp post and most of the planter that's beside it.

I'm making progress. I get the rails down and the porch sanded and painted two nights before surgery. At least progress I can live with until the spring when I can rent a jackhammer to take out the sidewalk to no where.

At this point, we still haven't moved in. We were living in an apartment about 3 miles away. We'd go to work in the mornings and come home in the evenings to work on the house then we'd go to the apartment, shower and die for 3 or 4 hours and start all over again.

So flash forward to spring and the weekend we rented a jackhammer. OMG!! I did the entire sidewalk by myself. It was really bad when the jackhammer would get stuck and I had to pull it out. My arms were so sore the next day, I couldn't even type. It was 8 inches deep in some spots. Craziness!!

This was the weekend our next door neighbor confessed he and his wife can't wait to get up on the weekends to see what "the girls" are going to do next. They also told us how happy they were that we bought the place and were trying to fix it up because it hadn't looked this good in years.

This same spring we chose two separate colors that complemented the colors in the bricks on the house and painted the peak of the porch and the shutters.

We still weren't happy with the way the front of the house was looking so another trip to Home Depot cured that. We bought paint and lattice. We painted the top portion of the grey facade white about the width of a header all the way around. Then painted from that mark to the ground a dirt brown color and put the lattice over top of it. It looks like there's nothing but ground beneath the lattice.

We then went to the farmer's market for flowers. We change the flowers with the season. Rather than planting them directly in the ground and digging them up in the fall when we replace them with mums, we dug holes and put the pots in the holes. In the fall, we only need to pull up the pots and replace them with the pots of mums.

We also extended the porch deck to cover the steps that were there. We plan to put circular steps on either end of the porch and create a foot path around the the sides of the house.

The hanging fern warm up the porch and give it some interest. Unfortunately, birds normally nest in them and water them can be terrifying if you don't know a bird is living in there.

We also took out the yucca plants that were right in the middle of the front yard. They were overgrown and didn't actually bloom. I am not crazy about yucca in the first place and it was another hiding place for snakes.. I call them "yucky" plants. Can you tell where the new grass is in the photo to the right?

Unfortunately, right now I can't find any really good pictures of the end result. The one below shows only a third of the porch but you can see the sidewalk area filled in nicely. Hopefully, this summer we'll get to putting the steps in. Not having steps up to the front door gets a little tricky on Halloween. So we go to the end of the driveway with our camp chairs and pass out candy. That's how we introduced ourselves to the neighbors. We took them a treat Halloween night.

Now, let's have a moment of silence for my recently departed Jeep. That's it in the background of the photo to the right. Trace had a little trouble with slick roads this past December. She hit some black ice and started spinning and wound up flipping it. It's a total loss but luckily, she only hurt her hand. It could've been worse but believe me, I miss that car when I'm loading both dogs into my Camry.

More to come....