The weather has been gorgeous! I mean 70 degrees gorgeous! It is giving me spring fever and then today I found these beauties peaking up from the ground! We did not do any of the landscaping so I have no clue what will come up and when. But I was beyond excited to finally see some color! So it got me thinking. With the weather warming up we can start up on the house updates! Yay!

I have talked a lot about the work that needs done inside. Which is a ton of work. But what is the point of updating the inside if your curb appeal is, well non existent? So now to start planning and plotting. Not to mention we need to start plotting out our vegetable garden. So I thought I would show you our desperate need for an outdoor make over (please keep in mind- this house sat empty for 7 years.

Let’s start with the front. The steps will need to be redone. They are sunken in a bit (that brick should not be showing) and the cement at the bottom is all cracked. I had moss rose growing in it when we moved in. The top right picture shows a bit of our porch. It screams “I NEED A SWING” I have dreamed of having a front porch like this with a hanging swing with some pillows that I can curl up and read on. We have our patio furniture there as well. We painted the floors and ceiling before we moved in. We want to put a railing back up and I want to see what is under those vinyl siding on the pillars. My patio furniture is also going to get a make over. Lastly the clothes line- It seems counter productive to have them RIGHT off the dirt road so I am hoping to convince the Popo to relocate them.

The sides of our house. Well, one side is in need of grass. That big ol’ dirt spot is where our septic was and they had to trench across our drive to relocate it. There is also some landscaping that follows our drive. We need to clean that out and see what is planted. We do have some rose bushes on the side of the house as well. Our side door, which is where everyone comes to anyway, is really not that inviting. The pavement has sank in towards the house a bit. And as you can see- my grill is ancient. Like 9 years old ancient. I would love to put a deck or make an actual patio to make it seem more “welcoming” to visitors. This is right off our kitchen too so I think our patio furniture would be more suitable here than on our front porch.  The other side of the house actually is fine. The previous owner tried doing some landscaping but could never get anything to grow. So some shade plants should do this good.

Last our backyard. It is your typical acreage back yard. There is really nothing defining it as the back. It all kind of blends in with the rest of the property. As you can see it is in desperate need of grass as well. And yes they used TUBS as a form of a planter- those are going. Then the previous owner has their weird random section with 4 posts. Don’t know why or what but those are going as well. They used to have a sidewalk that led to something so that will be torn out and grass planted there. They also have a strange random stretch of plants off to the side of it. That will probably go to. I have this thing about “islands” of plants. I don’t like them.

So as you can see- the outside of my house needs as much love as the inside. This is something I can actually do and handle. It will take some time. But it is something that is achievable. The inside we are still waiting a bit longer to assure it stays warm. March and April for us are odd months for weather. We can have a snow storm or ice storm or even a tornado. We just don’t want to open the walls then have it get really cold again. So things will really start moving here in the next month or so! I can’t wait!