Mission Accomplished

Over the weekend we finished up "Project Curb Appeal." After another long weekend of scraping, painting, caulking, and more painting along with trips back and forth to Home Depot (thank goodness it's close by) we are done with our goal to spruce up the outside of our house. There were some issues along the way like having to repaint the trim because I painted it black and hated it and had to repaint it white. But now it is all done and I can drive up to our house and think how pretty it looks.

Thanks to everyone for their ideas and opinions on what colors to use. We are very pleased with the result. Or at least I am, I don't know if hubby cares too much one way or the other as long as I'm happy. =)

Here's a reminder of the before with the faded shutters, dated neon green house numbers, overgrown bushes(there are windows back there!) and peeling door and garage paint.



And the spruced up after (pictures are a little off in color, I took them at 8:00 last night after I finished painting and I was losing daylight.):



The bushes got a nice trim although hubby is banned from trimming the burning bushes anymore. I trimmed the one of the left and he did the one on the right(poor bush.) They grow very fast though so hopefully next year it will look alright.



The trim around the garage was replaced and painted black. We took off the tops of the lights on each side of the garage door and removed the glass panels and lightbulb. I spray painted the tops of the lights and painted the rest of the lights without removing them from the house! It was tricky, but I taped plastic around the lights to cover the garage while I was spraying them with black Rustoleum. I only got a little bit of black paint on the brick.

I posted earlier about how I spray painted the shutters. Here's the post on that.

One of the biggest changes and easiest was putting up different house numbers. I bought the plaque at Home Depot for $25 and the numbers were $5.99 each I believe. The plaque looks so much more elegant the the cheapo green reflective plastic numbers we had before. I wish I had replaced them 4 years ago!



And finally the front door. I used Behr semi-gloss Sly Fox to paint the door and the sidelights. I first painted the trim around the door and windows black, but it looked awful. So I painted them one more time for the last time! (I had already primed them with one coat primer, then added two coats black, and now three coats of white paint.)

We bought a new storm door because ours was about to fall apart and didn't close right. This one has a screen that rolls up inside of the top of the door. So you can have it all glass like it is now or roll the screen down and have a door with the screen any size you want. We are hoping this well help keep the door from getting too hot since that may have cause our previous front door to warp in just two years. We're not really sure since steel doors aren't supposed to warp at all. A nice black antique iron style doormat(it's really rubber) adds the final touch. It was $9.99 from Garden Rige.

We added several more flowers to try and brighten up the front. Hubby was nice enough to plant those for me along with 6 other bushes along the sides and back of the house. I don't remember what the yellow flowers are, but the purplish bush is called "wine and roses." It has bright pink flowers. Everything looks a little scraggly right now, but they will fill in eventually.

So that's our first before and after and we will have many more to share as we continue on down the road of home improvement. A road that never ends.



Be sure to check out more outdoor and garden projects by visiting or joining the Garden Party on A Soft Place to Land.