Sprucing Up for Summer

Last summer, when Dan and I bought our house, we couldn't even begin to think about doing anything to make the porch or our yard look nice.  Almost a year later, we're not much further along (we still have many indoor projects calling our names!), but this weekend I finally got around to giving the outside a little bit of attention.

One of the things about this house that really appealed to us was the enclosed front porch.  We imagined mornings sitting there with our books and coffee, winter afternoons basking in the sun, and evenings watching people walk by.  Unfortunately, it's been a little tough to comfortably do any of these things with our porch seating arrangements looking like this (those chairs aren't exactly the most welcoming ones I've ever sat in).

On Memorial Day during a whim stop at IKEA, Dan and I finally decided to purchase some proper chairs.  We have much more welcoming, comfortable, cozy place to hang out now, and the porch feels a lot less empty!

 

I decided it might also be nice to spruce up our front garden a bit.  I still have no idea what to do with the yard aside from mowing the lawn, trimming the bushes, and weeding (and my skills in those areas are still pretty weak), but now at least we have a little garden bling to cheer things up a bit!  The globes (there are three, but you only see two here) are supposed to be solar-powered lights that glow after dark. . . we'll see if they work!  And I must say that I love my little pinwheel.  I've always wanted one of those.  :)

 

The Dark, Scary Place Under the Stairs

Well, as you may have guessed, Dan and I haven't been particularly busy with house projects of late.  With a long weekend ahead of me, I'm hoping I can get motivated to do some painting while Dan is away visiting friends, though it doesn't appear that the forecast (high humidity) is going to be working in my favor. 

We've mostly been busy hosting a number of guests, though while my dad was here visiting last weekend, he did begin thinking more about one of the biggest sore spots of our house right now: the stairs leading up from our exterior basement door.  Unfortunately, the stairs are wide open to the elements (as you can see below), and this has posed a number of problems: A) When it rains, there is nowhere for the water to drain, meaning that it ends up right against the house and our basement door, which is where water came flooding in during the hurricane last summer.  B) It's really no good for storage because everything is open to the elements and it's super dank and gross down there.  C) We have a number of neighborhood cats who have decided to claim this space as both their litterbox and their place for storing dead animals.  Ewww!

 

 My stepdad Cliff has been thinking about this project for some time as well, so now everyone is busy pondering the best solution for getting this covered up and sealed off so we don't have to worry so much about water damage, basement flooding, and cat poop.  Once again, Dan and I are very fortunate to have such handy, experienced minds helping us out with this stuff!

Luckily for Dad, we had some fun while he was here, too.  Here we a a few pictures we took from our visit to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania:

And, as it happens, the back of our house isn't all bad.  This spring we've discovered some cheery little surprises popping up the backyard. . . strawberries!

Outdoor Improvements

We haven't done much outside, and I'm finally ready to admit that this year is not the year we are going to get a garden started or get our yard in better order.  I'm just way more focused on the interior of the house at this point, though I'm hoping that next year will be the year we get our hands dirty and get some things started!

Nonetheless, I did want to share a few pictures with you.  We're still hoping to do a lot with our front porch.  We definitely need some new furniture (I'm hoping we'll have that in the next couple months).  We also wanted to redo the floors, but we looked underneath the carpet and let's just say it's going to be a bigger project than we thought, so I think that's going to have to wait!  In the meantime, we've had this rug from our old place that has just been sitting in our basement, so I laid that down and also put out a colorful welcome mat.

(For reasons I can't BEGIN to understand, this picture will not post correctly!  I've tried everything, but it seems to be a glitch with Blogger that I can't fix, so please just do a me a favor and imagine it turned counterclockwise!)  :)

I'm also happy to report that our plants are really starting to grow with the warmer weather and are looking quite full again.  Even better, our neighbor had some extra mulch and offered it to us, so the front yard is starting to look a bit more spiffy!

And, though this has more to do with bringing the outside in rather than outside improvements, I wanted to share this picture of the flowers that Dan gave me for my birthday.  They're now front and center on our dining room table.  Aren't they lovely?

Getting Organized: Part 2 (and Getting Ready for Guests!)

Here's some more before and afters of our organizing projects of the last couple weeks. . . .

Our linen closet was a mess and had all kinds of things in it that didn't belong (like a special cleaner for our sofa and a bag of kitty litter!).

Much better!

In our office, we've had boxes stacked against the wall just waiting for a bookshelf.  Additionally, because our linen closet was such a mess, the office also became a storage spot for random things like toilet paper.

We finally got our new bookshelf in place, and I'm happy to report that our office is now toilet paper free!

One room that we really needed to tend to was our back bedroom/guest room.  It didn't exactly say "welcome" with all the random stuff dumped in there!

We got the space cleared out, covered the futon with a cheery blanket (though it's a bit wrinkly at the moment!), and added a couple things to make it feel a little more finished.  We also took down the falling-apart blinds and put up curtains on both windows (though as you can see, I still need to hem them--ha ha!), and we bought some new bed linens so guests have a nice place to sleep when the futon is converted to a bed.

It's not finished by any means, but it's a vast improvement!  We have a lot of visitors coming to stay with us in the coming weeks, so I'm glad I can at least offer them a reasonably cheery and comfortable place to sleep.  I think it's also going to be a great little room for curling up with a book when we're not using the space as a guest room.  Yay!