It’s not uncommon for us to get a few email and comment questions about the way our house is situated on our lot. Many people can’t figure out where the patio leads or where our garage is located in relation to our house so we figured we should whip up a little exterior diagram for ya. We actually have almost an acre of land and an extremely deep woods behind our house for privacy, which we love (it’s actually one of the main reasons we bought our seen-better-days ranch home). And we were also lucky enough to have inherited some great privacy hedges and fences that keep our yard feeling nice and secluded from our neighbors on either side. But on with the tour! Here’s our looooong and skinny lot (to scale):
You might not believe that this rendering could possibly be to scale (is your house really that small? is your lot really that long?) but we traced over a scaled blueprint of our property (found in our giant file of papers from the closing). Isn’t it funny how TINY our house is compared to the acreage that it’s on?! You’ll notice a few things right away. Poor John has a lot of grass to mow (love ya honey!), we have an extremely long driveway with room for a whole bunch of cars at the end, and we have more than enough trees and shrubs to feel like we live in the middle of the woods. You can also see how the sunroom stairs lead down to the patio, which leads out to the driveway, which is where we added our little herb & veggie garden (in one of the only full sun spots we had thanks to all the aforementioned foliage).
And because we get quite a few questions about where all of those sliding glass doors in our sunroom lead, we’ll clear that up once and for all…
Only one set of doors leads out to the back patio while the rest lead absolutely nowhere. Really, if you stepped out of them you’d fall about 5 feet into the edible garden or the bushes on the side of the house (see diagram above). But we love that they’re there for the view and the cross breeze that they provide when we slide ’em open. The one that leads to a few brick steps that take you to the back patio is just out of frame to the right in this picture (see the corner of the doormat?):
And here’s a view of the patio from those stairs that lead down to that area:
But let’s rewind and start from the street. Here’s the house pretty much from the edge of the long driveway where it meets the street:
And if you walk up the driveway towards the house, here’s the side view:
Then as you enter the big part of the driveway in the back you’ll see where we had the tables set up for our backyard wedding:
Of course we’ve since painted the garage black, so on an ordinary day without 75 people back there it looks like this:
Here’s the view if you turn slightly to the right:
And here’s the scenery when you turn even more to the right and walk towards the gate (which leads to the patio). You’ll notice our little edible garden just outside the gate in front of the brick stairway that’s tucked away behind that lamp post. It leads down to the private entry basement (which is primed for a major makeover, stay tuned…)
Once you enter the back gate you’ll find yourself on the cobblestone path that leads to the patio. Here’s a shot looking back at the garage from inside the fence:
And here’s a shot looking up at the back of the house and the patio from that cobblestone path by the gate:
Of course we can’t forget the view of that crazy deep woods behind our backyard. We love that we have a nice sized grassy area for Burger/future babies along with the privacy and seclusion that the deeply wooded area offers.
Lot, we love you.
Can’t you see why it was the lot and not the house that stole our hearts and wooed us into making an offer? All that privacy and green was just so seductive after many years in the concrete jungle that is Manhattan.
So there you have it. A tour of our home’s exterior. What about you guys. Do you have any unusual features? A long skinny property? A detatched garage? A separate entry basement? A chicken coup? (We actually inherited one behind the garage!) Do tell.
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