Curb Appeal Phase 11

I am sure I have mentioned maybe once or twice about the non-existent curb appeal at my house.  As I am sure many of you know, the problem when you buy an older home, you inherit all their bad taste and poor judgement as part of the package.

I have had many sleepless nights wondering what I could do to add some zing to my place.  I have looked at every house from here to eternity just hoping to find the inspiration that I needed and still be able to maintain my beer budget... no not the beer drinking budget... you know the "champagne taste on a beer budget" kind... lol

Now for the next dilemma, who would do it?  Rose lives too far away to come help me...   I really, really wanted to get this done this fall.  Thank God for friends... my girlfriend came to my rescue, she has a handyman that does lots of work for her and he is good and VERY reasonable, so she set up a meeting with him.  Needless to say Jay was talking my kind of beer language, I ended up giving him more than he asked for, afterall fair is fair and he would do it right away... alright (enter happy dance).

Off to the lumber store I go and got the needed supplies and this weekend my dream became a reality and after 6 years of being a homeowner,  I am finally in love with my house.

THE BEFORE

 check out that pitiful white siding.. it looks like they just slapped the two pieces together without any thought at all... the white side is about 100 years old and the left side was added on about 35 years ago... they made it work inside but gave no thought to what they did to the outside.  If you notice I have no front door... it is at the side of the house... now that part doesn't bother me, solicitors can't figure out where to knock.

I lost a shutter in a wind storm last year... that just made it look even more un-appealing

now you may remember Curb Appeal Phase 1,

I was so excited when we finally got this part done, but it was such a small portion of my dream...

 the trellis made a huge difference but it still needed some major TLC

enter barn board and battens...

TIM-BR-MART was so kind to deliver it and actually put it in the garage for me...

sometimes it pays to be a Damsel with in distress...

they don't know it yet but they have found a new loyal customer, bonus is I only live 3 minutes away, I can't believe I have never visited their store before... no they didn't even pay me to say that... as a matter of fact they don't even know I am mentioning them... hmmmm should have been thinking earlier... must talk to them maybe I can barter with them a bit... never hurts to ask.

stained all the boards twice because I didn't like the first colour

on the advice of others, we used semi-transparent stain first... big mistake, that was not working for me at all...

off to the paint store again to buy 2 more gallons of semi-solid stain... oh so much better, lesson learned... ask the experts next time

removed all those hideous plastic shutters from all the windows...

HAHA... got you Gail...

now there is still a little bit of tweaking to do so you will have to wait until Friday for the big REVEAL...

do I have your attention yet?

now make sure you pay attention to that blank piece of white siding above my window... Jay did the most incredible facade for that... I just love working with creative people. 

Hey I had to do something to steal my blog back from Mya... lol

Stay tuned...

Have a great day...

Hugs, Deb