Revamping Curb Appeal

We moved in to our house at the end of March, 2013.  Thankfully we have an amazing team of friends and family that helped us move.  The new house is only about 7 minutes from the old one, so we didn’t have far to go, but we had a lot to move.  Patrick was driving a 1-ton truck with a 16 ft flat bed trailer, yet another one of his handy skills.  Unfortunately while loading the second load, he stepped off of the trailer and rolled and sprained his ankle.  Accident prone – one if his not so handy skills. We had some attempts and wrapping and icing before I decided to take him to the walk in clinic.  Our friends were awesome, the finished the load, and Patrick’s brother was able to drive the truck and trailer to the new house where they unloaded it.  Luckily I had planned ahead and bought large pre-made hoagies from Winco, bags of chips, and cases of pop and beer to feed our troops on that surprisingly hot March day.

Patrick is very much like I am, he has to be doing something all the time.  It was KILLING HIM not to be able to lift or move anything.  Luckily my Mom and Step Dad came down to help us unpack.  My Step Dad was able to help him remove the front door and get it set up on sawhorses.  We were able to prop Patrick on a stool so he could sand and paint our front door, and install a new handle and lock set.  These were perhaps not the most urgent items to do when first moving in, but they were things he could do without further injuring himself.

Patrick has a weird thing about front doors with windows, for some reason he doesn't like them, and thinks that they aren't safe.  I looked around for a while at home improvement stores, salvage stores, and craigslist.  We couldn't agree on anything.  All that we could agree on was that the front door was ugly, and that we didn't want to drop a ton of money on a new one. We opted for repainting the one that was there, and putting in a new lock handle set. 

We found our perfect shade of red for our front door. Lady Bug Red, a Martha Stewart color from Home Depot.  I specify, because I spent hours trying to find pictures of red doors, and trying to find what color people went with.  It had to be just right. I didn’t have much luck finding someone who was able to tell me what they used. We also used a Schlage door handle set in a flat black color, it went in really easily, and we would recommend it to anyone looking for a quick easy front door face lift. It was about $145.

That part wasn’t too hard, but it did kick off my hatred of the paint department at Home Depot near our house. Sorry, incoming rant.  I went to the paint section, ordered the paint, said I wanted it for our front door, and the guy mixed it in interior paint, something I didn’t realize until I got home.  Ok, fine, partly my fault, learning curve.  I didn’t specify exterior, I didn’t think I had to when I said it was for my front door.  I scrapped that as a $16 mistake, I didn’t want to be that person and make my poor communication their problem.  Luckily my mom refurbishes furniture for her antique mall space, so it had a home and a use. 

While waiting in line for my paint to get mixed, I wandered into the garden section and got two Juniper topiaries.  They called for partial sun, which the porch got...I thought.  I planted them in two large black pots that I had from the old house, and put them on either side of the door.  The effect was gorgeous, but sadly it did not last long. Six months later the trees were sad, brown / orange pathetic shadows of their former beauty.  Luckily, to Patrick’s annoyance, I had not removed the tags.  For some reason I’m really bad at removing tags.  In this case it worked to our advantage.  I noticed that the trees had one year warranties on them.  Yes, one year warranties on trees.  We put them back in their pots that were luckily still in the shed, and endured the strange looks as we wheeled our dead trees back into the store.  Home Depot was redeemed, they gladly took them back!  

Our First Snow

I still have not figured out what to use on the porch, and I currently have dead mums out there. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them!  No, I’m not perfect, I work on what I’m inspired to do, and I have not been inspired to do anything about the dead mums. That is part of the joy of owning your own house and attempting to be a grown up.  If you have to pay the bills, you get to eat your dinner sitting on the floor at a coffee table while catching up on New Girl, and starring out the window at your dead mums.  For some reason they are kind of pretty in a sense that I haven’t had to put forth and effort to do something better with them.  I am sure that the time will come where they will drive me nuts, and I will jump out of bed at 7:00am, hell bent on replacing them while Patrick groans that we should be sleeping in.  It will probably be on a day where we have massive amounts of snow or be at night, 15 minutes before the stores close. My inspirations seem to always hit at the most annoying and inconvenient times, and are usually met with a heavy sigh, and “I’ll get the keys” from Patrick.  He really is a Saint!