Before Photos

Because everyone loves some good befores, am I right?

I will start with the exterior because that is what we are tackling first. Once we're signed off on the exterior renovations, I'll show you some photos of the inside!

This is a photo of the front of the house. Like I said, "Little Minty". Pretty aptly named, huh? Oh and plus a coordinating blue door just for kicks! :gag: You'll notice in the photo that the mint-colored siding goes down further on one side of the house. This is because the side to the left of the door used to be a carport but the original owners enclosed it and made an additional bedroom inside of the house. It would be nice to have a place to pull a car undercover but that added square footage is more important! Both of the front windows are new-ish (added during the carport renovation) so they are 2 of the 4 windows that we are keeping; the rest have been replaced. Oh, and that octagon window aka The Bane of My Existence is already gone. Much to everyone's dismay because apparently I am the only person who HATED it. It just screamed 1983 to me and gave me nightmares. Was so excited to see that little guy go!

The sides and rear will see the most dramatic changes with the addition and replacement of windows in very different dimensions than the existing ones. This photo shows the side of the house with two of the old windows. We have replaced the two exisiting windows with long, narrow (2x6) Hurricane Impact windows that crank out to open and then added another identical one to the future dining nook where there was not a window at all previously. The windows were a KILLER Craigslist find which I will tell you more about in another post. Stay tuned! As you can see in the photo, our little house is long and narrow and sits on a long and narrow lot. We have an awesome back yard (or shall I say, Harper has an awesome back yard) and we cannot wait to finish up our back patio to enjoy some beautiful Florida weather out there!

The rear of the house is probably the biggest eyesore. An off-centered, broken door, stained siding with a cracked and exposed concrete slab is what we had to work with. We purchased and installed railroad ties extending the entire length of the house to anchor some drop-off that has happened over time due to poor drainage and a lack of gutters. This helped us build up and solidify the property and laid the foundation for our future back patio! I love form and function in a project! The exisiting concrete slab is a great size so we will work off of that but install our new patio material (yet to be decided on) over the concrete and raise it up to meet the door more closely. Right now it is a great leg workout to get in and out of the house through the back door. Once the patio is done it will be raised off of the property with railroad ties bordering the patio. My Dad found us an awesome (free!) outdoor kitchen from a house being demolished complete with a barely used outdoor grill, sink, stainless steel cabinetry and countertops! It is quite large so we are going to see if we can use it all or just bits and pieces. More on that in a future post!

**sorry in advance for any iPhone photos taken during this renovation process. We are doing almost ALL of the work ourselves so my Nikon DSLR didn't find it's way over to the construction site too often in the beginning. I promise it will make an appearance with better photos soon!