taking ten years off my...

house.

If a hair cut can take 10 years off your age, then certainly I can take 10 years off my house by painting the foundation.  I turned in some credit card points and bought some exterior paint and started working my way around the perimeter.  (I'm currently about 75% finished.)  I've been doing small sections here and there when I have a free hour or two.  I scrape the parts that are really flaking off and then put on two coats of paint (Behr, Cabin in the woods).  It looks so much better.

Here are the pics:

East side front... with its mangled siding

West side front... lots of peeling paint

 Here's the new brown paint against all the various layers.... gray, cream, green... and under it all BROWN.  It makes me feel good to think we're recreating the original beauty of this house.  (Just like we found that the kitchen used to be yellow with brown trim.)

Front before:

Front after

Under the carport

And of course I had to then paint the "new" door we put in after the knob died on the old door.

Now hopefully it looks less like an interior door.  Someday I'd like to special order a good, solid exterior door that will fit the opening... but for now, this works.

I also finally (like after five years) replaced the torn screen in the screen door.  It was a tough job, which was why it had been put off for so long.  It also helped me put off the job knowing that the tear was Tom's personal cat door.  He'd just jump up and through to let himself in or out (when the door was open, of course).  There was no real way to warn him that the new screen wouldn't let him through, so we just had to let him jump and bounce off the first time.  Then he just sat there... staring at the door, like he was trying to figure out why it didn't work.  I never caught him trying to jump through again, but he spent an awful lot of time just staring at the open door.  I think he was trying to decide whether it was safe or not.

The kitchen bump out:

And around the covered patio

I also painted the front of the carport.  It used to have aluminum siding, but it was starting to fall off and we needed some siding to patch where we took the door out of our bedroom (you can see the window and patched siding in the pic above).  Underneath the siding was cute wood, painted yellow - a bright yellow that clashed with the siding (but yes, under our yellow siding we have a yellow painted house).  It look YEARS but I finally got that spot painted.  

Clashtacular

So much better

And just for fun....

2011 (right after we moved in)

2016

And for even more fun....

2003 (long before us)

2016

Maybe we've taken off more than 10 years??

(though I'll let you in on a little secret... there's another change (with practically no money spent) coming)