Elbow Grease & Love, Part Deux

Justin and I weren’t married when we found our house. He had long overstayed his time at his parents’ house and our wedding day was less than a year away. I was in my last semester of college, so I’d be home soon to help make it cozy and nice in time for me to move in after the honeymoon. He began the search for a home and found out about a house one of his coworkers was selling.

Justin brought me to this small gray house in our hometown. I had seen it hundreds of times and hadn’t though twice about it. It was a fixer-upper that had a lot of potential. It was on a small lot in a semi-quiet neighborhood and was conveniently close to several restaurants and even the local grocery store (I can see it from my front porch!) The family that owned the house built it themselves and it was a great starter home for us. I think they knew we would love it and make it home.  It turns out that my man is quite talented and we (and by ‘we’ I mean mostly ‘he’) have been able to update it slowly but surely to our tastes.

Our house was cute enough but didn’t have much curb appeal.

  

Here it is now:

We installed a new front door (you can’t see it here) and painted it and the stoop what I like to call “fire engine red.” (Have I mentioned I love my phone’s panorama feature?)

Justin’s a firefighter and he was able to find an old, non-functioning fire hydrant. He sand blasted it and gave it a new coat of paint and somehow (I still haven’t figured it out) rigged it to become a water spigot. It’s a great conversation piece and his firefighter buddies love it! He’s watering our day lillies below:

  

We also got a TON of day lillies from my SIL and MIL and got some pretty neat flower beds growing. We laid a brick border and are slowly adding personal touches. I planted Gerbera daisies last week, but these pics were taken before then :)

 

Here are the daisies before I got them in the ground. Funny story about those. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m cheap frugal. I couldn’t bring myself to pay almost four bucks for a tiny little single-flower plant, even if they are totally adorable. Last week I went to Lowe’s to pick up some potting soil and saw they were 50% off! What a deal. I thought about it for half a second and decided against buying them. They looked a little worse for wear. I decided to wait a few days to see if they marked them down any more. They are perennials and will come back every year, but these looked rough, folks! The very next day, I had to pick up some more potting soil and sure enough, they were 75% off! I decided not to press my luck because they would surely not be there long. I picked up 20 for the cost of 5! Deal of the week? I think so!

We’ve still got a long way to go—I’m still trying to talk Justin into building me window boxes!!!