Our house transformation

I have been so overwhelmed by the home renovation stuff and all the hundreds of pictures that went with it that I have just put this little blog out of my mind but I think I'm ready to get this off my brain, so here goes:

We closed on the house in May but John was in the middle of flipping a mobile home so we just sat on it for a couple weeks.  It was sort of making me crazy having this new house and a million projects that needed to get started and not getting to any of them.  One day my neighbor in the mobile home park had a whole bunch of flowers for sale in her yard.  So I bought all of them and my mom and I decided to just get started. 

 It just so happened to be the hottest week Utah had seen in years but that didn't stop us.  We set a slip and slide up for the kids and started to pull out old growth and weeds.

 Luckily Wreni is the most easy going baby I've ever had and slept most of the days away in her new room so that I was able to work.  She was such an angel.

 This flower bed at the front of the house was full of Irises, which I love, but they were just a little neglected and overgrown so we pulled them all out and were thrilled to find a drip system underneath them.  That was the first of many little conveniences we've uncovered as we worked on this house.  We knew this place had good bones and the older couple who lived here before us took such good care of everything.

 We worked all day and late into the evenings trying to get all these things into the ground before we lost them.  It was the beginning of the summer of sweat and aching muscles.

 The other flower bed in the front of the house had these 3 huge junipers.  As my mom and I were talking about what we should do with them John just grabbed the chainsaw and started cutting them down.

 Once they were gone it was like we had turned a corner.  This was now our house and for better or worse we were going to do what we wanted with it.  Taking out those junipers was like a breath of fresh air and it opened up the entire front of the house.

 Oh my, we were so thirsty that first week of work.  I made the mistake of drinking out of the hose the first day before I realized it was pressurized irrigation water (what a pain that turned out to be) so we would make this cooler full of lemonade in the morning and it would be gone by the end of the day.

 Every morning we would try to bring a few more things for the kids to do while we worked.  The little swimming pool, a tree swing, some movies on the laptop.  Mostly they just ran around and got in the way.  It was fun..

 I knew from the start that I wanted window boxes for flowers.  I had seen it on Pinterest somewhere and I knew it would make the house look less bleak.  My super awesome husband was so good about taking all my ideas seriously and working to make them happen.

 It was not easy to drill those boxes into the brick but once he got them all hung my mom started filling them and they made the house look so adorable.  It's still one of my favorite parts of the house.

 While the flowers went in I worked on the shutters.  I originally wanted to paint them a dark blue or something but we were afraid it might make the house look smaller.   We finally decided on this creamy beige and I love them.

 I especially love the way those sweet little flowers look from the inside.  Just so adorable.

 So the outside was starting to come together but that entry way needed some brightening up.  

 John started sanding the door to get it ready to be painted.

 I worked on painting all the trim on the exterior that was this awful brown.  The funny thing is I talked to my neighbor later and she told me that the previous owners had all the trim re-painted brown just weeks before we bought it. 

 We picked a nice bright blue for the door since this porch is shaded most of the day.  My dad started this project on the porch then moved the door into the garage to finish it.

 Then there were little updates everywhere that take extra precious time but make a big impact to the finished product.

 

 Last of all we painted the railing on the porch a nice glossy white to match the trim.

 

 So here's the front of the house before:

Here it is right after we planted everything:

 And here it is today.  I can't believe how all the flowers just went crazy.  It's been so fun to watch things just burst to life in this yard.

 Here's the porch before:

 And here's after:

 And here's the front windows before:

 And after:

We still have a couple things to do: put up new address numbers, replace the widows, update the concrete, but for now we love the front of the house.  

Next up I'll show you what's up inside...