I cannot even properly articulate how these two changes were worth every penny. Such random house projects, but they have made such an impact!
We origonally kept the trash cans in our garage for easy access, but with needing a bigger car for two kiddos, and let’s be honest, two kiddos, we had to move them to outside. The problem was that our house is on a slight hill, and when these trash cans are full, it is SO difficult to get them down to the street. Heaven help you if it’s been raining or snowing.
So we decided to have someone come in and help us fix it. Now normally we do most of this ourselves, but with it connecting to the driveway, the gutter situation, and being pregnant, we were happy to outsource this one! However, I wanted to still take you along for the process!
So this was the side yard before. You can see the slope and how it would be difficult to get everything back on the driveway. This is also where I added a flower bed to make it look a little nicer along the house line for both us and our neighbors, and make it less grass for Aaron to mow!
Concrete is in! Seriously a breeze now to get the cans to the street, and really nice to be able to just open the garage and walk out in slippers if I need to, to throw away the trash!
After seeing how high the concrete had to be to make it level with the driveway though, we decided we better put in a gate. One it would look significantly better from the street, but two with how many kids we have that play on our court, I’m trying to decrease the number of ways they can injure themselves.
You can see too that I had them fill in the gap on the right so we didn’t slip and fall either! If you are local, please reach out, we love our carpenter!
For being a simple gate, I’m pretty happy with the details on it!
These roses will evnetually triple in size and not look quite so silly. I also plan on spreading grass seed again in the fall to fill in everywhere that was dug up!
You can see why I am excited for it to be powerwashed, right? 20 years makes a difference in the color of the concrete LOL
So enough about the gate, on to the pergola. Our neighborhood has a lot of similar style houses, but I didn’t care for how flat and white ours appears, and right when you drive up. Ideally, I love when the garage is on the side or the back of the house, but being that we obviously won’t be changing that, I wanted to add some character to the front.
We had added the shutters last fall, and I haven’t regretted the process for one minute. We get compliments on them anytime someone sees the house for the first time. I also added this flower box, which admitedly, I have let everything in there die and my belly is too big to be leaning out my window right now to water it. But come spring, just you wait.
I debated painting the garage door, but honestly, I thought that would draw too much attention to it. I mean it’s a garage door. So I added these magentic hardware pieces to it, and decided to add a pergola!
Again, this guy was quick, so not a lot of photos, but you can see how much character it adds when you drive up to the house. I may in the spring put two planters on either side and have some sort of greenery trail it's way along the top! Any suggestions for good plants to use for that? I’m all ears! I’ve done good with keeping my plants on the ground alive, just need to do better about that flower box lol
Pretty incredible though right? Small changes over the last almost two years, have really begun to add up. I’m excited with how far this house has come in such a short amount of time. I’m also excited to take a break for a while when baby girl gets here and just enjoy the space we’ve created for a while. Just a few things left to wrap up so that can happen!