House: Outside

As promised.. here are some photos of the outside of the house:

First of all, the only picture I have of this huge change is from winter - back before the house was purchased - this huge tree was leaning in front of the house and it was ug-ly:

A few weeks ago, Steve's dad and brother came over and took it down:

Big hole!

Hell YES!  Looks WAY better.  Then, you'll notice all those bushes along the ground... well, those are all in the process of coming out and/or being replaced.

Some of the bushes remaining

Bushes gone along the front of the house!  The remaining ones in this picture have been trimmed to be the same height

My mom has been coming over and helping out with weeding and the planting of new stuff:

Hostas, Lupine, and Azaleas :)

So, we're slowly but surely filling in the empty spaces.

We're also in the process of scraping, sanding, priming, and painting out exterior trim (which is taking WAY longer than we hoped, because it sucks!), so ignore how awful the trim looks :)

Here are some other pictures from the exterior of the house:

Garage, patio, side door (the door we come and go from)

Side door and current 'patio' area

view of the 'patio' from the yard - see what I mean about this not being the ideal patio?  The table in the back is just sitting between the garage and house, can't look out to see much...

This is looking into our 'backyard' from the patio

From the back of the patio

again

This is still from the back of the patio, but looking at the back of the house, towards the park

Just another of the front of house

Beyond our yard is a park

 

Sidewalk leading to the front door - 

From a bit farther back

There is no path/sidewalk that leads from the garage (where we park) to the front door, so we never use this door.  This would be where we want to put a real patio.

This is the view from the park side of the house, that is our front porch, which you enter if you use the front door

 

still from the park side, just further over towards the neighbors house.  All those ground dwelling bushes up near the house are the same as what was in the front of the house - those will be coming out at some point as well.

This is what used to be our backyard, now it's our neighbors driveway.  Not much room  for anything.