I began to stay home with my kids right at the beginning of fall, so I had plenty of time for house projects, but now had such a limited budget. I had to get a little creative, but that's how I work best so no biggie! Initially I hated our black shutters as much as Steve hated our pink brick. I thought they were too harsh. I wanted to do that thing where you gel stain the garage door to look like wood and change out all of our shutters with DIY cedar shutters. I tried the stain first on either side of the front door where it's like a vinyl rectangle....it was awful! I don't recommend it. It was a sticky mess and looked super fake. Then I painted the same space tan because it was better than the gel stain, but now I had three colors on my house (I had already painted my front door at this point) and my house looked like Neapolitan ice cream. Great for a dessert, not so cute on a house! At this point, I was not convinced on anything, so it sat like that all winter and every time I pulled in the driveway I would cringe. Finally the weather warmed up and my creativity started flowing! The boys on Halloween with our neopolitan ice cream houseHello April! We got some warm weather so I jumped right in. I removed all of the brick border around the landscaping first because they were crooked, had weeds coming through them or were completely covered with overgrown grass & weeds. I saved the pavers because I eventually want to make a paver patio in the back yard (I think). Jason's birthday party was a few days later so I needed to make it look right before then, or I would go crazy thinking about what our guests were thinking! (Probably nothing, but still) So I went out and got mulch to re-do the existing mulch and also to fill in the space where the bricks were. I laid out cardboard boxes and newspaper as an eco friendly way of weed proofing the space, then we laid out black mulch. ***Suddenly I didn't hate the black shutters anymore!*** It was as simple as changing the mulch color and things were instantly cohesive. Why hadn't I thought of it sooner? Then plants started popping up and we decided to make a couple of simple changes. I moved a couple of plants around along the side of my house, against the back yard fence to create privacy in the back yard. There, we planted feather reed grass and dames rocket which will create a screen blocking the back yard view while still being pretty! (I may or may not have killed two of the dames rocket with weed killer by accident *crying* the grass plants will still create plenty of screen) I also removed a couple of hostas and replaced them with two Miss Kim lilac bushes just outside the kitchen window. How amazing will that be when they are fully grown and fragrant?! I eventually replaced the plants between the boxwood bushes with Veronica Speedwell as well. The variation that I got is a lower plant, which is what I was looking for. This plant is a perennial so it will come back year after year and it attracts hummingbirds and butterflies! It doesn't get much better than that! The biggest change of all was the paint on the house! A friend of mine suggested gray and it was a perfect suggestion! Steve and I went to Home Depot for exterior paint and the woman in the paint department recommended a paint made for brick, stucco and concrete. It was by Behr. Click here to find the paint. This made things so much easier, I would recommend this paint to anyone looking to paint brick and you can use it inside or outside. Hello outdated brick fireplaces everywhere! Painting was about a half day project, pretty quick! The last change was a small one, but made quite a difference as well! We purchased new house numbers at Lowes for about $6 a piece. They are super modern with clean lines and came in silver or black. We chose silver and mounted them on a piece of wood that I painted black. I did this for contrast between the numbers and the house and also to tie into the black shutters. The end product of the whole house is better than I could have imagined. My neighbors even came out to comment on the changes as we were working; which, of course was a wonderful compliment! Overall, we spent about $100 to add some great curb appeal to our house! Below is a quick breakdown of what we did:
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KathleenCreator of Our Honeysuckle Homestead. Archives
May 2017
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