Curb Appeal

Once upon a time, there was a house. It had been a very nice house for many, many years...and then some people moved in. These people had an uncle who fancied himself a contractor. The uncle also fancied drink, apparently a lot of it. Either that or he'd never heard of a level and also never completed a punch list. I prefer to believe in the beer, myself...there are too many bad contractors in the world as it is. The drunk uncle was enlisted to make several changes to the very nice house, including putting on a whole second floor, but that's another story and I shall not digress. Pictured here, you can see the unusual entry installed by DU:


It looks quaint, right? The potted plants helped a lot. Now, notice how, when you mount the stairs, you can stare straight in to the dining room. If the family is sitting down to a meal, you can even talk to them - right through the window - without ever approaching the door! If you're a delivery guy, you might be annoyed that you have to lug the heavy box a few extra feet to the actual door, rather than just shoving it through what really could be a handy service window.


Not so quaint anymore, eh? Here's something really unquaint - a jackhammer! Cover your ears and squeal - the horrible cement block porch approach is being busted into dust!


After the jackhammering (which was reportedly a little fun, at least at first), there were 48 cubic feet of clay to be moved. Lars actually helped with this, in the mornings before he went to school. The clay got dragged down the hill and dumped in the thach of poison ivy (and who knows what else) near the storm creek.

Alec & Co. came over to help build new stairs.

Every home improvement project deserves a new tool. The new tool for this project was a Shingle Ripper. You can use a shingle ripper to remove bad shingles from the bottom, without ripping off the entire wall and starting over.


Finally, a shot of the almost finished new entrance! We still need to get the handrail on (in the picture, the lower newel post is too tall) but you can get the idea. Gone are our days of chatting with delivery people while we eat! We even installed a doorbell, in recognition of the fact that those delivery folks who did manage to make it all the way to our door proved incapable of using the brass door knocker my mom gave us as a housewarming present. Chris thought a doorbell would be a more effective solution than a, "Bell Out of Order, Please Knock" sign.


Finally, because it is my mission as his wife to annoy Chris, I had him make a matching bench. Sweet, isn't it? As you can see in this picture, it actually has a use - we needed something to act as a doorstop for the basement entry and I thought a plain old post would look silly. Even though there was an awful lot of grumbling, I think Chris likes the result, too.


Come over! Use our new entry! As a bonus, you can see (or sit on) our lovely new wicker porch furniture...the new stairs take you right to it!