Before & After: The House is Painted

I am dreadful. I thought I'd get a Before & After of the exterior of the house done by Thursday or Friday and here I am on Sunday morning...pooh pooh to me.

Last week was incredibly busy with house projects and work projects, so I was sort of running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Add in a gate that caused us a bit of a headache, and well, that's why this post is getting written on Sunday.

SO! This isn't a grand finale Before & After because we still need to landscape, paint the porch stairs, spruce up the weird little alcove in the front door area and some other little tid bits here and there, but yes, the house is finally ALLLLLLLL painted :)

One piece of sad news is that the gate isn't on :( Chris and his friend Luke tried to get it on a little while ago and they were unsuccessful

We bought some new hardware in an attempt to get it on again and realized that when we redo the porch area somewhere down the line we're going to have some problems.

You see, the height for the gate is set at a certain level because of the hardware that's already in place

But we've got this weird little tiny step on the front stairs

And when we redo the porch area we'd like to put brick veneers and build up the height of the rest of the porch area so it's on an even level with that weird step so people don't trip anymore. However, when we do that, the ground will then be too high for the gate. Insert problem. So we made the executive decision to hold off on installing the gate until we get around to working on the front yard and porch area (which will probably be some time next year), so we can make sure we install the gate at the correct height.

In the meantime however, the front of the house is looking damn awesome! But please excuse the evidence of current projects: like piles of dirt everywhere or Chris' truck's top on the grass in the front yard or our shed floating in the middle of the side of our house...I'll tell you about what new projects we've already moved on to on Tuesday, I PROMISE!!!! :) (pinky swear) But at least you'll finally see the house painted! :)

Without further ado, it's time to show you what our house is looking like now that it doesn't have a mint chocolate chip color scheme

The back evolution:

Here it is when we moved in. Lovely painted red siding that is falling apart, windows broken, crappy decks and many many many other problems

We finally got all the structure fixed by re-framing everything and getting all new stucco work done to tie it into the rest of the house

And here it is painted!

And now for the side of the house

When we moved in there was paint peeling, a deck that had stairs at all different heights, an extra window venting the old laundry, an icebox door, just to name a few of the problems

So we replaced windows, blasted it (semi) clean and got the stucco repaired

And now there's no more peeling paint or strange windows and openings!

And nowwwwwwwwww for the front of the house!

When we first moved in we had a super ugly tree in the front that was starting to mess up our foundation and crack our neighbor's driveway, paint was peeling everywhere, we had an ugly center window and a hollow-core front door that was about 3 inches too short...

So we cleaned things up, replaced windows, put in a new corbel, got a new light, and worked on improving things (obviously our grass needs some assistance)

And now it looks pretty damn good, if I do say so myself

This is a great comparison of what a mess the front door used to look like


And here are 2 more angles of the front of the house - because that's my favorite part :)


So what do you guys think??? There is still a lot of work to be done and you guys have been so patient while we filled you in on all the work it took to get here, but I am SO happy with how it turned out.

And I can't wait to fill you in on why our backyard is looking so strange :) But first I must revel in the joy of checking off this project as DONE!