Hi friends! We have good news and bad news.  The good news is that my son is watching Arthur on PBS right now and the episode is about blogging which has to be some sort of sign that the writer has definitely run out of plot ideas it is a good day to finally write a new post.  The bad news is all of the characters are mad at Muffy because she is obsessed with her blog, “The Muffington Post”, and I am a little jealous of her amazingly high level of motivation.  The other piece of bad news is that our renovation work is moving along pretty slowwwwwly over here.  We have been alternating between working on a few outside projects, working on the upstairs bathrooms, and having lots of summer fun which has led to a lot of half-done projects that are anything but attractive to look at.  They are well on their way to becoming something special, they just aren’t there yet.

However, we do have some progress to share and I thought that the best way to get back into the swing of all of this was to start with a vote! More on that in a minute…

One area that is showing some real signs of progress is the front of the house.  Really, the whole outside area is looking quite a bit different than it did when we moved in, but I am going to hold off on pictures of the backyard because we have one more little project to complete back there before I take pictures.  Even though deadlines are not our favorite, I know that we are for sure, for sure going to get done with that project by this weekend because that is when our son’s birthday party is and he specifically asked for it to be done by then (don’t tell Ronan, but he might have been coached.)

The Front of the House and The Porch

Something that attracted us to this house from the very beginning was the wrap-around porch.  One of the first things our realtor liked about this house when we were house hunting was the view from our kitchen door that looks down the porch and into the front lawn.   Really, from day one we thought the whole porch was beautiful, but not in like a drop-dead-gorgeous kind of way…it was more of a subtle, if-you-blink-you-might-miss-it type of beauty.  You know every cliche 90s movie about teenagers falling in love where the girl wears glasses and a ponytail and no one notices her and then she takes her glasses off and her hair down and suddenly everyone is shocked by her beauty?  It was like that except our girl was a porch, her glasses were a bunch of overgrown plants and bushes, and her ponytail (I happen to love ponytails) was chipped paint/crooked boards/all the otherwise hazardous conditions that kept people from warming up to her it.  Unlike those shallow teenage boys, we knew we loved the house for what was on the inside and we wanted her regardless of what she would someday look like on the outside, but the potential we saw in the porch certainly helped us make our decision to buy her that much easier.

This was what our house looked like on our first walk-through and on the day we moved in.

Welp, she took off those glasses and unfortunately there were some underlying issues (to the surprise of no one) that needed to be addressed.

It isn’t everyday that you find a porch that is smiling at you : )

We ended up living with the broken and crooked porch for over a year.  I will spare you the pictures of all of the strategic ways we tried to hide the fact that our porch looked like it was about to collapse, but I will tell you that I became a master of using seasonal decor to camouflage some flaws.  (Thank god for hay bales and snowbanks!)

Since the roof of the porch was supported by the pillars that stood on the base of the porch, we needed to secure the roof before we were able to remove the base.  I don’t remember exactly how we got to the point pictured above, but I do remember spending quite a bit of time trying to figure out how we were going to get to the point pictured above…

(This is the part in those movies when the girl starts shaking her head and letting the hair fall to her shoulders…)

Try to ignore all of the annoying little things that are far from perfect in this picture and focus on the fact that the porch is no longer smiling! (Who left that light on? Why is there a block of wood behind the front light? Why does that gutter pipe look like the tube you put the little container at the bank drive-through in? That chipping paint on the roof of the porch tho…)

Those little plants= lipgloss. 

This is still the side of the house that needs the most attention, but be patient…we will get there. That reminds me…we need your opinion!

The Vote

We want to know which color we should paint the trim below the porch, as well as the concrete foundation that runs along the side.

Should we continue with the white trim that is on the rest of the house or go with a fresh black coat? If it influences your decision one way or another, the porch flooring is painted grey (the color turned out lighter than we expected it to.)  So, black or white?  What do you think? Let us know!  Voting will close in 24 hours and we will show you the results (hopefully) this weekend!