Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Now that's ugly . . .

As reported yesterday, Mr. Landscaper came to visit and brought his Bobcat.  We had talked about getting just the landscaping on the left side of the house removed.  He, and his young helper (son?) went right to work and started ripping out overgrown landscaping.  Once we saw how open it was, we asked him to start ripping out the stuff on the other side, leaving the HUGE rhododendron in the middle.



Okay, first of all, we rarely go in our front yard.  I usually approach the house from the north and to tell you the truth, I knew the landscaping was overgrown, but until I saw this picture, it just never registered.  As Mr. L said upon seeing it, "No wonder we never got any trick-or-treaters."

As we stood in the cold watching all the action, we started thinking about what we wanted for the front of the house.

As I stood there watching, I was reminded of all those episodes of Curb Appeal I've been watching and man, is our house in desperate need of some curb appeal.  It's ... ugly.  We just never knew it because the landscaping was so overgrown.  I mean, even when we bought the house it was overgrown so we never really saw the front.

Man, it's worse than ugly.

I can see a trip to the paint store and the architectural salvage yard in my future.



After Mr. Landscaper left, we stood looking at the rhododendron and thought -- we should have had him pull that out, too.  But I wanted to see it bloom one more time.  Now I realize . . . it's only pretty for one week of the year.  It needs to go.

Over the winter, we're going to think about what we want for both the house and the yard.

In the meantime, how would you make the front of our house look better?

6 comments:

  1. what happened to the flag?

    Can you put those ornamental things on the front facing (I know I'm saying this wrong)?

    Is there a space where you can put deck chairs?

    More colorful potted plants

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  2. The flag had to come down when Mr. Bobcat was in action. I swear, I thought he was going to gouge the garage (with my minivan right next to that wall), but he brought that thing within inches of the house and never hit it. The guy knew what he was doing, but we were spazzing out.

    I'm thinking I might get an interesting piece of iron gate to hang between the windows and maybe paint the top peak a coordinating color. (First, the whole house needs painting. That was going to happen two years ago, but . . .) Deck chairs are on the deck out back. We rarely even go in the front yard, but we would like it to have some curb appeal.

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  3. Yes, you need a contrasting color in there somewhere. Is the gray stone part of the front of the house or a low wall in front of it. I can't tell from the picture?

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  4. Actually, I LIKE the look of your house now that it can be seen. (::sheepish giggle::) Some low, colorful blooming plants along the base of your stone wall would look really nice -- really bright, medium height, long blooming plants. (Sorry, my gardening skills desert me as to exactly WHAT kind of plants. Check with a gardening store?)

    The iron gate idea sounds interesting. Could you perhaps paint it a complimentary color to what you decide to paint the whole house? Something that would make it easy for passers-by to see easily? Can hardly wait to see what you come up with!

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  5. Linda: yup, gray stone wall. Very 1960s, which was when the house was built. We'll probably "cover" it with shrubs. But I don't want shrubs that grow really large.

    Laurie, I'm lobbying for a nice sage green coler. Mr. Lorna wants the same BORING brown.

    If I was loaded which cash (which I'm not), I'd hire someone to disguise the 1960s look. Oh well . . . I can dream.

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  6. No, it'll be fine. Get some color on the house and add something colorful and eyecatching on the sides of the wall where it extends past the house. (Tell Mr. Lorna not to be an old fuddy duddy about the paint.)

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