Curb Appeal

Warning- long post.

When we bought our (now) beautiful house it was in need of a lot of love.

Below are pictures from when we were looking at the house:

 

Lots of tall bushes, a rickety gate, and a very boring porch. The good news is that there was a porch- something that both Tim and I love. In the second picture you can see that the bushes pretty much engulfed that porch. They had to go. For several reasons. First of all, they encroached on the walkway to the front door. Second of all, they made the house look much smaller than it is. Most importantly, for the first year we lived here, the front door was our main point of entry and I was terrified I would come home late one night and someone would be lying in wait for me behind the bushes. Scary...I know.

 

The bushes along the driveway had to be trimmed back as they scratched our cars.

 

The last picture shows the bushes in front of the nursery window. To give you a point if reference, the top of the bushes were even with the top of my head. Not even kidding. They covered up most of the window so that when you were looking out all you could  see was green.

 

Last May, my amazing husband took out his machete and hacked away at the bushes. Unfortunately for him, we had just found out we were pregnant, so I couldn't help him with the heavy lifting. Strategic, aren't I?

 

After several days of back breaking work he had conquered the bushes and you could actually see the house. We planted a few meager plants that promptly died in the summer heat and then, like I said, we were expecting a baby so we ignored the front of our house until this Spring.

 

Now we have this:

 

 

 

 

Much better, no? Don't worry about the hose- I still have to find a cute storage box. I actually took these pictures about a month ago and the plants have about doubled in size since then. This front flower bed has always been a bit of a head scratcher. Its a huge space. I think we decided to just put in a ground cover that can tolerate shade- stay tuned.

 

In front of the nursery window we planted a blossoming cherry tree and knock out roses among some annuals.

 

On the left hand side we have ferns, hydrangeas,

 

impatiens,

monkey grass,

 

 

and Aurelia. 

 

 

The monkey grass is a transplant from my parents' house that they were going to throw out. So, score! Free plants! Plus, I think it seems very happy in its new home.

 

I cannot emphasize how much the curb appeal has improved on our house just by tearing out those man eating bushes. Let's do a side by side before and after, shall we?

 

 

 

 

I love our house :). 

 







Announcements

A lot of fun stuff is happening over here at The Texas Cottage!

I'm writing today to announce several fun projects that are currently in the works. The first and biggest is that we are redoing our deck!

Here is a picture from before we moved in:

Besides some landscaping, not much has changed in the 1 1/2 years we have lived here.

The deck has always bothered us. Its actually a large space, but see how it is divided into 3 sections? The awkward space makes it difficult to arrange furniture or move our grill around. Also, the taller portions of the deck are about 3-4 feet off the ground. That, coupled with our 6 foot fence means that when we stand on our deck we can see into our neighbors' backyards...awkward.

Anyway, those are the problems and my amazing husband is fixing them. Here is the plan:
1. Lower the right section of the deck so it is level with the middle section.
2. Expand the middle section so it comes out as far as the right section.
3. Knock out the left section of deck and expand to create a paver patio with a pergola above.
4. Hide the utility boxes.


Additionally, but not quite as exciting, I am redoing two of our inside closets- our hall closet and what used to be my second closet. So here is the deal. Our master bedroom is actually smaller and has smaller closets than the nursery. We chose to use it as our master because it has an attached bath. Strange, I know that the bedroom with the attached bath would be smaller. Oh the joys of living in an older home. One of those joys is teeny closets. So, when we moved in, both the hubs and I had one closet in our bedroom and one closet in what used to be the office and is now the nursery. Flash forward about a year when I nesting and had pregnancy brain. I decided it made more sense to switch my second closet with the hall closet. It actually made no sense and I had to shove all of the stuff we kept in our hall closet into a smaller space resulting in this hot mess:

Don't judge me too harshly. Like I said, I was pregnant. Apparently I got tired before I finished because I never got around to moving my shoes. Anyway, this had quickly evolved into one of those comedic closets you see on TV where everything falls out when you open the door.

The hall closet where I had moved my clothes was barely better:

Stay tuned for these stunning transformations! The hubs is already about halfway finished- a real feat I might add during the Texas summer!