curb appeal

this house had very little curb appeal when i bought it.  i know if i ever want to resale it i would need to make it look appealing to the average buyer.  thankfully my mom has a green thumb and was able to help in picking out flowers and teaching me what to do.

before, the house had a huge christmas tree in the front yard blocking a window and a portion of my porch.  this mad the house look a lot smaller than it really is.  an old basketball hoop stood off from the driveway.  the backboard was broken.  and i didn't want all the neighborhood kids coming to play in my yard.  there were no flowers or any other kind of plants/trees in the front.  the backyard was a clean slate too.  absolutely nothing was in the backyard.

BEFORE

BEFORE

BEFORE

BEFORE

so, we removed the christmas tree and the basketball hoop.  which made the house look so much better from the street!  mom, matt and i spent one sunday digging out a flowerbed in front of the front porch.  i wanted something more unique than just a straight line so we went with a wavy pattern.  i love that it adds a little character to the normal flowerbed arrangement.  

to cover the remaining pole we couldn't remove from the hoop, we got a large barrel and planted some flowers in it.  mom also planted some flowers around the mailbox.  we also planted a tree out front.  though i'm not sure if we'll live in this house long enough to enjoy any shade from it.

between the sidewalk (leading from the driveway to the porch) and our house is a brick flower bed that was just full of gravel.  we put 2 large ferns down in it.  matt's mom also bought us 3 ferns to hang on our porch.  we also added black shutters around the windows and replaced the porch light.  

eventually we want to replace the screen door to a full view screen door so the little puppy can see outside.  and i'd like to have a black front door.  we want to take the current front door and replace the door that goes from the laundry room in to the garage in the back because the current door back there has seen better days.  also, when we have the money, i'd like to buy nicer front porch furniture.  it is nice to sit out there in the evenings as the sun sets on the back of the house.

AFTER

AFTER

AFTER

in the backyard, mom created a flowerbed around the garage (white siding area).  we planted a tree in the middle of the backyard.  in the back corners of our lot, she planted a garden on one side and a butterfly garden on the other.  by the butterfly garden, is a small slab of concrete.  i'm not sure exactly what it was used for before - maybe the base for an outbuilding?  but it is very small.  currently we have a small chair and table sitting on it (really all it can hold).  the butterfly bushes aren't really attracting a lot of butterflies but i'm hoping next summer we'll be more successful.

the garden grew quite a bit of tomatoes, a single pumpkin, green beans and some onions.  our dirt is more sandy and i'm not sure if more veggies would be successful in growing in boxes with real soil than sand?  our plan next year is to build some kind of boxes to put our veggies in.  we'll see which is better.

on the side of the house next to the garage is our gate.  the ground underneath the gate was like a valley and the pup could crawl underneath it and get out.  to fill that, matt and dad used the dirt from the flowerbed by the garage.  they had to dig out a hole large enough to put a pipe in it to pull the rain water away from the house.  that dirt was enough to fill in around the gate and now the pup can't escape.

finally, we don't spend too much time sitting out back because our neighbors have a huge pig in their yard!  any time the wind blows a certain way we just smell hog poo :( buuuuuuut, eventually when we have the money, we want to cut the window out that goes in to the kitchen to make a back door and install a patio so we could enjoy the backyard one day.

AFTER

AFTER

LOU ENJOYING THE BUTTERFLY GARDEN

AFTER

NEIGHBOR PIG

the front yard before and after: