Before

Shortly after we moved in, we took off the shutters from around the front door because I thought they looked weird, only to discover that it was the house’s original color underneath (yellow). It remained like that for the next 18 months because after a while, you don’t even notice the flaws anymore.

In Progress

Over the winter, I started noticing the shutter colors in other houses in the neighborhood, and I realized that very few houses had the same color for the shutters and the window frames. I thought two different colors would really help set the windows apart. After taking a careful survey of house colors in my neighborhood (especially the houses that caught my eye) and consulting with many people, I decided to go with black shutters. I also needed to touch up the paint around the front door.

The front flower beds were filled with lumpy cement, so we cleaned it out and transplanted some of the azaleas from another area of the yard. They are still filling in, but bloomed last spring and looked very pretty. We really need to trim back the rest of the bushes in the front yard, but we have quickly discovered that yardwork is not our favorite task.

Current

Completed So Far

• Removed shutters from around front door.
• Painted the shutters and the railing by the front door black.
• Painted the entire front section of the main level of the house.
• Painted the front stoop to match the house.
• Cleaned out rocks and cement from the front flower bed.
• Transplanted azalea bushes to the flower bed under the bay window.

You can read all the front yard posts here.