There are so many changes we’ve done in the last few months, that rather than go through each one of them, I’ve decided to quickly post some photos with brief explanations. I know many of you are curious, besides, forgive me as I play catch up, lol.

Seriously, there’ve been so many and I thought it would be a great way to not only quickly show the changes, but here at year end, be sort of a look back.  Enjoy the photos!!

Do you remember it when we bought the house (my eye still goes right to the poison ivy!)?  It’s cleaned up, scraped, repaired, rebuilt and painted now, along with the small side porch. We still need to take down the old handrails and replace them, along with a porch rail but otherwise, this area can be marked DONE!   Check a box! 

BEFORE:

AFTER:

By the way, to work on this wall, Paul had to completely remove a small section of the attic wall and rebuild it.

Remember, no hired scrapers, painters, roofers, or other.  Everything that’s been done to the house we somehow (mostly Paul) has put hard sweat into.  What an accomplishment.  Check this box! 

A few pics of the side porch too, during the process (notice several boards and removal of old bird nests had to be done here, too).

BACK DOOR KITCHEN ENTRANCE.

Lastly, but not least, the back kitchen entrance and what a change a little hard work can do!

For those of you who have seen it, it was shall we say in need.   It was one of those things you walk past 100 times and no, it’s not on the list right now but then one day, you snap and say “I can’t walk past this one more day without doing something.” 

And a beginning clean-up job was undertaken. 

At the time we bought the house:

Where to begin? 

Paul had already removed the old broken roof to the back door (it had been collapsed by a tree limb some time ago) but still the wall was in bad shape and basically just cinder blocks.   The screen door had also been removed and the porch support rails were taken down. 

We got out the pressure washer, went after it and took the chipped and peeling paint as far as we could, did some repair work, sealed it and painted it!

And below the finished job.

Oh, we still have more plans for it (possibly overlay the blocks with stone veneer) but for now, we just had to do something and doesn’t it look more inviting now? (notice the second floor back wall has been scraped and painted, too!)

Doesn’t this look more inviting now? 

For our backdoor neighbors and friends, at least they shouldn’t be intimidated walking up to the house anymore.  😊 

In fact, I’d say in the spring, with some flowers about, it would be a lovely setting for a barbecue.