Exterior Upgrades
Yup, We’re Those Neighbors. Again.
Remember when John met his frog friend (well, technically his toad friend) here?
Well, this time around we made a new neighborhood acquaintance…
… a snaaaaaaake! And we were skeeeeered. But not to scared to take a picture. Thankfully he was just a harmless garter snake.
Why were we outside? Yard maintenance. We figure our exterior will need a whole lotta small phase projects if it’s going to ever-so-slowly transform like our last one did, which went from this…
… to this (over the course of 4.5 years)…
So since that’s nothing we’ll ever be able to accomplish overnight – or even within a year – we’re all about breaking that humongous task down into much smaller bite sized pieces to tackle slowly over time. So here are a few little outdoor undertakings that we’ve recently checked off.
First on the list: spray the mailbox and our house numbers with ORB (oil-rubbed bronze spray paint) so they would look a little more refreshed.
The most fun part of the process was when John brought it to me using rubber pot holder thingies because it was literally too hot to touch from sitting out in the sun out front:
Up close and personal, she definitely wasn’t looking so hot (even though she was literally quite hot):
So I wiped down all the bird poo with a wet cloth (I live a glamorous life) and used my favorite ORB spray paint (hi my name is Sherry and I have an ORB problem) to apply a few thin and even coats (you can check out some spray painting tips here). I also sprayed the rusted tops of the screws for holding the mailbox in place and our brass house numbers.
Oh and for “drop cloths” I usually use an old fabric one (or cardboard from the recycling bin) but this time I decided to use the same few big black plastic bags that I’ve used for other ORB projects as of late (I just ball them up after they’re dry to be reused since I’m such a spray painting fool these days, and hate to toss them after one go).
Can’t show you all of our house numbers of course, but the mailbox is looking mighty shiny:
Oh and I did this on a Sunday so as not to confound the mailman. By the end of the day everything was dry and I was able to screw them back into place. And while I was up there I snapped a few shots of the flowers since we had some requests for updated pics to see how they’ve grown.
But first, here they are before, back when we planted them:
And here they are now, paired with the freshly sprayed mailbox (we photoshopped out the newly painted house numbers on the post though):
Isn’t it amazing how much they’ve filled in? And it’s worth noting that we only watered them once (when we planted them) and it’s been scorchingly hot so I’m extreeeeeeeemely impressed. Wave petunias are the way to go, it seems.
Even Lord Squirrelio is enjoying the expanding flora:
Oh and as for the mailbox post, we’ve considered painting it but kind of like how it blends into the landscape thanks to the old weathered wood. A landscape designer friend of ours has a theory that you should never bring attention to your mailbox or post itself, just keep it neat and let it be what it is (so it doesn’t stand out/detract from the yard around it). That natural wood post definitely does that. We still might paint it down the line, but for now we’re happy to leave it au naturale.
But I digress with all of the mailbox updating. Back to the title. Here’s why we’re those neighbors again. Remember when we admitted that we had a bit of a mailbox problem (before we weeded, laid down landscaping fabric, planted some flowers, mulched, and removed some extra signs on our mailbox post) which made us quite the embarrassed new family in town?
Well, we also have this insane side yard that doesn’t look like it’s ours, but it is. Yup, everything in this picture is our lot:
Even the crazy shaggy stuff on the left.
See, it’s a whole lotta don’t-know-what-to-do-with-that-but-don’t-want-to-have-to-mow-or-weed-or-otherwise-maintain-it space to deal with, so we decided to see if we could naturalize it (the neighbors have some naturalized land on their lot next to ours so we thought it would “go together” nicely).
Oops. Total failure. It just ended up looking crazy and overgrown:
Not only wasn’t the overgrown grass doing it for us, a few well meaning neighbors actually mentioned that we might want to mow it before “we get reported to the neighborhood association.” Talk about embarrassing. We muttered something about trying to naturalize it like the lot to the left, admitted that it definitely wasn’t working out the way we hoped, and vowed to at least cut the grass in the front for less of an unkempt appearance from the curb.
But it meant that we had to attempt to mow that wayyyyy-too-looong-to-easily-mow grass. Thankfully big strong John got ‘er done! It didn’t take five minutes (more like about an hour of slow back and forth maneuvering and turning off the mower to get clumps of grass out every ten minutes or so)…
… but slowly but surely…
… we went from that crazy overgrown embarrassment to a slightly more manicured-up-top look, thanks to just moving that front strip:
We like how it actually looks like it’s part of our lot now, even if it’s obviously the more naturalized portion of it:
Now it looks like the area down the hill is intentionally wild (hooray- no weeding or incline mowing necessary down there) but the area up top is a bit neater from the road. You know, as opposed to looking all sad slash abandoned.
In other small-things-we-tackle-in-the-hopes-that-in-five-years-we’ll-blink-our-eyes-and-love-our-exterior news, we also planted three more evergreens in the back area of our house to hopefully provide more future privacy from the back (and to pay the environment back for doing all this clothespin driving).
We went with three more of the same fast growing evergreen trees that we planted on the side of our house (so you can check out more on how that all went down here).
Next we did a little weeding. Or should I say big weeding. We don’t know what the heck is in the soil here, but check out the size of some of the weeds springing up around the someday-we-hope-it’ll-look-naturalized-and-wooded side & back yard:
Yeah, that’s a giant dandelion. And yes, it felt like we were suddenly on the set of Jurassic Park and would soon see a pterodactylfly by or something.
Sure we want some areas of our side and back yard to look woodsy and naturalized someday, but for now these big ol’ weeds were more that a little embarrassing. So we dug them out and marveled at their shrub-like proportions. Crazytown.
As for our outdoor checklist, it’s waay too long to share in its entirety, but we’ll jot down a few things that we did (just for the satisfaction of crossing them off) and list a few more objectives that we hope to tackle over time:
weed the side of the carport(done here with some mom help)limb up the giant magnolia(done here)build a side patio(done over the course of about four weeks here)weed, mulch & plant the embarrassingly unkempt mailbox area(done here)plant three fast growing evergreen trees on the side of our house for privacy(done here)make some mini porch updates(done here)upgrade the mailbox and our house numbers with some ORBplant three more fast growing evergreen trees in the back of our houseweed the side and back yard areas, so they naturalize with trees (not giant dandelions)- avoid snakes (so far so good, but this is an ongoing initiative)
- transplant the tree that’s planted ON our house (seen here)
- remove/transplant a ton of bushes and shrubs that block our front walkway & our house in general (in multiple phases)
- paint the front door
- frame out the round country-ish columns on the porch
- remove the also-country-ish scalloped header on the porch
- build raised bed gardens in the back
- add a wood compost bin in the back (right now we use this slightly less handsome compost method)
In short, we’d like to slowly tame the jungle that is this in a bunch of not-too-intimidating phases:
Because let’s be honest, you can’t even see the porch. Le sigh.
What about you guys? Do you completely “gut” your yard and rebuild it all at once, or are you one-project-at-a-time folks like us? Have you ever seen a sneaky little snake? Or a giant person-sized dandelion? Or been told to mow your lawn by the neighbors? Oh man, we’re still kind of blushing.
Waste Not, Want Not
That was my attitude when it came to using up the rest of the oil-rubbed bronze spray paint from this project that I had leftover. So I turned my attention to the mismatched patio furniture that we inherited from the previous owners (seen here in an old photo with my dearly departed ceramic dog, sniffle).
Sure, I like painting things white (and white ceramic animals, and white chocolate among other snow-colored objects) but sometimes white things outside = grungy. As this shot demonstrates, any time it rained little dirt and leaves splashed into the crevices of the table and looked all grubby.
Parts of it were peeling too:
And you should have seen this guy in March/April in the height of allergy season. Yeah, it was fuzzy and yellow. So I figured a coat of ORB spray paint could cure his everything-shows issue. And unify those chipping black chairs.
So I just dragged everything out to the yard, set them down on items from our recycle bin (namely magazines & cardboard boxes)…
… and sprayed away.
Especially satisfying? Taking the nasty parts like this…
… to this (gotta love that ORB glistening-in-the-sun phenomenon):
Voila:
The whole shebang took about an hour and a half. Maybe two if you count brushing everything with a stiff brush (from our dust pan) to shake all the junk off, and carrying stuff out to the grass and back after they were dry. Oh and it took another can of ORB to get all three pieces done, but we figure spending $7 for that second can and using the rest of our leftover one (from this project) sure beats investing in new patio furniture just yet.
You might not see it yet, but adding some pillows (or chair pads), some swagged bulb lights, and a few other festive patio accessories might just take this old set from drab to fab. Yes I just said drab to fab (she types as she buries her head in her hands).
What have you guys been spray painting lately? Any outdoor chillaxing going on? Anyone shocked that I didn’t paint everything white instead of ORB? Anyone turn this post into a drinking game (and sip every time I mention that three letter abbreviation)? Just went back and counted, but I only said it three times. Not enough: ORB, ORB, ORB. There, done.
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Crack Sand.
You know we love to save a buck wherever we can. Sometimes to a fault. And as any scrimper knows, sometimes it can bite you in the a-dollar-sign-dollar-sign (a$$). Though I’m not sure we ever expected that we’d wish we had splurged on “the fancy sand”…but that was the case after living with our finished patio for a few weeks.
If you recall, we used some leftover paver sand to fill the cracks between the stones instead of spending the $95 that the stoneyard would’ve charged for a delivery of the polymeric stuff (which has some cement-like qualities to help keep it in place and block weeds a little better).
At first the paver sand looked great in those cracks…
… but after a few weeks and (more importantly) a few rains, I grew increasingly unsatisfied with my crack sanding job (yes, I just very maturely resisted the urge to write “the sand in my crack”). It had washed out in a bunch of places, leaving lots of empty gaps and an inconsistent look that I wasn’t happy with.
So, we bit the bullet, swallowed our pride, and bought a bucket of polymeric sand at Lowe’s for about $30. It technically should have only been enough to cover about 1/3rd of the patio, but since the cracks still had some regular sand packed into the bottom of ‘em, I knew it’d go further (not only did one bucket do the trick, we still have lots leftover in case we ever need to redo it). So at least we didn’t end up spending the full $95 that we were originally quoted.
Applying the sand was tedious to say the least. Just as the directions suggested, I used a ziploc bag with the tip snipped off to pour the sand directly into the cracks… of which there were lots. Did I mention it was tedious? And yes I channeled Duff from Ace of Cakes the whole time (minus the weird facial hair).
My initial application was way too heavy – which isn’t ideal because once this stuff gets wet it truly is cement-like. So you want to be sure you put the sand only where you want it to stay for the long haul (as in, not on the face of the pavers).
So section-by-section I swept my heavy-handed sand “icing” until it thinned out into something more subtle (the top half of this pic is done, and I hadn’t started on those bottom cracks).
Then in an extra credit bout of nerdiness, after all of the sand was poured and swept, I went over the whole patio with my electric leaf blower on its lowest setting to be sure I got rid of any excess on the surface of the stones. After that I broke out my hose and misted the entire area per the directions (being sure to get everything wet without going overboard and washing things out).
In retrospect I wish I had blown or swept out a smidge more sand before wetting things down so that the “seams” of sand between the pavers were a tiny bit thinner. Guess I’ll add that to my Lessons Learned list. Right under “Use polymeric sand in the first place.” But it’s really not too bad. Kind of charming in that it-looks-like-it’s-been-here-a-while-way (when the seams are free of sand it looks really dorky-new to us, like too-white sneakers on the first day of school).
Even though we did save about $60 in the long run, I do wish we’d “splurged” for it during the initial patio laying process. It would’ve saved me lots of time (it took about three passes to get the paver sand looking good during my first attempt, whereas the polymeric stuff took only one) and in the long run I’m confident that the “fancy stuff” will do a much better job when it comes to blocking weeds, ant hills, and all that other unwanted stuff over the next few years.
Here’s a shot of the pavers that I snapped yesterday, about a month after putting all the new sand down. We figured we should wait to post about it to see how it stood the test of time (and a few crazy thunderstorms). So far it’s holding up as well as the day I did it. And yes, I’m quite relieved about that. I don’t know that I had another sand application in me if this one didn’t pan out.
Has anyone else learned their lesson the hard way? Or can you think of a time where you wish you had just bucked up and done things right the first time? Basically I’m looking for you guys to make me feel less like I’m the only one who makes these kind of mistakes.
Psst- Want to look back on the entire patio process from beginning to end? Here’s the first post (about planning), the second post (about prepping the area), the third post (about unexpected budget breakage), the fourth post (about further prepping the area), the fifth post (about adding the gravel & sand along with the majority of the pavers), and the big we’re finally done post (complete with a bucketload o’ pics).
(Slight) Porch Progress
Hope you guys all had an awesome holiday weekend. We had some fun with our family (more on that later in the week) and are still sort of building up the ol’ momentum again (after our big paneling project from last week) – but we did manage to squeeze in a tiny porch upgrade. See, when we were house hunting in the late fall of last year we snapped these two terrible shots of the porch:
Then on moving day we plopped down the wooden bench (from Home Depot a few years back) which used to live on our first house’s front porch… and that was the extent of the update. Blah.
Pretty bleak huh? It’s ok, you can yawn. We’re right there with you.
So we decided after more than a half a year of living here it was high time we brought all of our old planters out of the workshop/basement and actually used them again. Most insane part of the story: there was a hosta that was still alive and growing inside of a sealed tupperware bin in the sunless basement amongst all of our planters (we moved them by stacking them all into a large tupperware bin that we tossed into the basement in December and didn’t even open until last week). Mr. Hosta is pretty darn hardy, eh? Anyway we hosed down the old outdoor pillows and planters to shake off the cobwebs and dirt (btw, all of them are from Home Depot – although I painted those square planters a while back which used to be wood toned).
Since John had the hose out we even filled the bird feeder in the back. While joking that it looked like he was relieving himself. Yes, we’re tweens.
Then we ran over to Home Depot and grabbed a few potted plants/shrubs and plopped them into our already-owned pots that we (finally) set out on the porch. Here’s a coleous that we grabbed for $6. They always remind me of my mom because they’re one of her favorites too. We’re suckers for those high contrast leaves.
On the other side we have our already-owned little miracle (Mr. Hosta) and a feathery little $5 plant with purple flowers (don’t remember the name but it’s a shade-loving annual).
For either side of the door we got some hardy evergreen shrubs (can’t find the tag with the name on them- boo) that should only grow to be around three feet tall and 16″ wide (so we hope they can live in those planters for the long-haul). But if they get too big we’ll just transplant ‘em and try something else. Maybe even something seasonal like mums in the fall and brightly flowering annuals for the spring/summer.
It’s definitely not a dramatic overhaul but it’s a sweet little pick-me-up until we can get to the larger porch projects that we’d like to tackle down the road. Like removing the scalloped header above the porch, framing out the columns so they’re chunky and square, transplanting the too-large bushes that crowd the walkway…
… replacing the dinky porch light with an oversized lantern-like guy (and possibly getting another one wired on the other side of the door for symmetry), and of course painting that bland front door of ours – along with updating the hardware and possibly staining the concrete porch floor.
Oh and our old welcome mat from Target (which has to be at least a few years old now) still looks pretty good. Probably because we didn’t use the front door to get into our first house (we went through the sunroom) and we don’t use it at this house either (we go through the side door in the carport).
So although there’s a lot more on the porch agenda, we’re glad that we added a little life in the meantime. The whole planter rinse-down & plant run project took about two hours total. Now we just have to remember to water these guys (which should be 100% free thanks to our trusty rain barrel).
Of course when it comes to long term curb appeal plans, we’d love to be able to actually see the porch from the front of our driveway. Since right now the view is obscured by five million bushes and shrubs (even though I limbed up the ol’ magnolia a while back). Yes, “jungle-esque” is an appropriate adjective for our yard.
And of course we have big plans to turn the carport into an enclosed garage once we can pin down exactly what we want when it comes to doors and windows and all those still-to-be-decided details. Sigh. Someday. Has anyone else out there done any porch sprucing lately? Do you guys all use some other entrance than the front door to get into your house? Any other insane hosta stories of survival?
Psst- Clara painted us a masterpiece and we excitedly added it to our hallway frame wall. More on that over on BabyCenter. So proud of our little Picasso.
