House a Home Outdoor Edition: Intro and Update

Outdoor Edition!! Woot! Woot!

Sometimes the outside can be just as important as what's on the inside. We immediately fell in love with the inside of the house when we first toured it. The outside was.... nice, you could tell it was well kept, so compared to plenty of the other homes we saw this was a huge improvement. We had never seen a ceiling fan on the outside porch before, that was a new one and the whole house had a very southern feel about it. The green shutters and white railing only added to the feeling that this house was a better fit in some place down south.  Here is what the house looked like prior to us moving in...

Painting the shutters and front door was on our to-do list for this summer and many mucho thanks to Nana and Papa Wendorf for coming to entertain the wee one and ....paint the shutters! Thanks Dad!! Below are the before and after we painted.

We love the change, what a difference! I'm still working on painting the sidelights on each side of the door and possibly even the rungs on the railing. I was inspired by the picture below to possibly paint the rungs as well. Thoughts?

I used Photoshop to give myself a rough idea what the railing would look like brown. I'm kind of liking it.

Bonus Outside Edition!! There's more!

We got A LOT done this weekend. While my mom watching Sloane, my Dad painted the shutters, Chris ran around helping everyone and I built a garden wall!! It's definitely amateur work, but I'm pretty darn proud of what I was able to create.

Here is the backyard (or lack there of) prior to us moving in. The pool was only about two feet high off the patio and we feared when Sloane started walking and pulling up on things that was too low. Not to mention, Lola could easily jump that height and all it would take was one squirrel or bird on the edge of the pool to entice her. So out with the pool. The previous owners were kind enough to leave some of the nice river rock to start us off on making a planting bed in the pools place.

Watching Dad move big heavy rocks

Running wild, before Nana and Papa came to help tame this animal. Pretty dang cute, no?!

Before the wall

And after!!

We still need to add more rock to the bed and obviously add some plants, but the hard part is over! I can't wait to see what a difference a few plants will make! I'll keep you posted!