This Old House
2008 - ongoing

 Back to Home Page

 
In August of 2008 we purchased our first old home.  This house was built in 1931 and has suffered a bit of neglect along the way.  Neither of us have ever been much for "fix it" people, but we're learning fast!  I'm using this page to document some of the before & after pictures of our projects.
 

Here's a shot of the house before  
we did any work on the landscaping .
 

Here's another shot of the house before - 
after a little work had been done. 

We had removed some of the yucky
bushes and low-hanging limbs that used
to crowd the house - plus we had a new
roof put on by this point.  
 

These shots show the front yard "flower beds" - if you can call them that.  
Also notice the scraggly condition of the grass, this is another project we undertook at this time.

We moved all that rock to the back yard by hand and wheel barrow.  We also hauled about
40 loads of dirt across the street to our neighbor's yard. (We even got permission first!) 

It is too soon to have after pictures of this part yet, but it is going to look awesome.
  
Here is a work in progress shot.  At this
point it took a lot of faith to believe we 
are actually making improvements.

After this was a sprinkler system, and
now a fresh, green fescue lawn, with 
lots of flowers in the flower beds.
 

Here are some pictures of the front porch in its original state.
 

And here we see them after a weekend of power washing, mortar work, staining, and weather-proofing.
 

This shows the work Eric did by repairing the fence that runs along the driveway.  
I also relocated some plants to complete the transformation.
 
This is a before shot of a project of Eric's - repointing the brick work
all around the house.  The original mortar has turned to sand and 
there are some really awful old patch jobs as well.

Can you imagine looking at yourself in the mirror after doing this 
patch job?  Eric will have it looking like new in no time.  I'll post an
after picture as soon as this is done.
 
Here's a shot of the back yard - Eric has actually already
cut down a bunch of trees along the garage at this point
and we had already piled the rock from the front yard out
here, but you get the drift.  It was just a square patch of
grass.  

I've since put in two flower beds and am working to revive 
the grass.  The next sunny day I'll take a pic of the new 
flower beds for your viewing enjoyment.
 
Here's a shot of the back yard with
some flowers going on.
 

 Close-up shots of the two flower beds I put in the back.

 

 Here you can see the condition of the deck steps when we moved in.  And over here you can see the difference a power washer makes.
 

Ahh, much better.
  

Here's a view of the garage as it was - unpainted wood trim, evidence of the vine we tore down, and rotting wood along the eaves.  
 

Here it is after Eric replaced the rotting wood and we gave everything a fresh coat of paint. 
   
   
 

Back to Top