Home Improvement

A deer just walked up Rosehill Drive in front of our house!  You just never know what you'll see when you look out our windows. 

Yesterday I was sewing in my studio with all the windows open to let the beautiful weather inside. The elementary school across the street was having a fall festival with live music and games and the sights and sounds of kids playing and parents visiting made me nostalgic for the old days when Paul was younger and we enjoyed similar kinds of events together.  Ah, the teen years are quite different.   

Thinking back to those earlier times reminded me of how much my mother delighted in Paul. Yesterday marked the fifth year of her death so I've been thinking of her a lot this past week.  

Okay, so back to the topic at hand -- fall home improvement projects.  Here's a photo of our house taken in the early spring.  

The previous owners painted it basically all one color, which I don't hate but I don't love either.  We plan to repaint sometime in the next few years.  A few areas, like the balconies, needed more immediate attention and Ben has turned his good skills to scraping, priming, and repainting them and is just about done.   

But recently I felt that the front entrance needed some brightening up now, some color to enliven it during the winter months ahead.  

Working with our designer friend Lotus, we decided to paint the front door, the pediment, and the balusters and railings and to tile the concrete porch.  Ben was willing to tackle the paint job, Lotus put us on the waiting list for her wonderful tile guy, so all I needed to do was to work with Lotus to select the colors. 

Here's the initial selection of color possibilities.  The two colors on the left side of the paint chip strip show the colors on the house and the larger chips show the colors I liked.  Watch this spot and you'll see what we chose and how it turns out!

Did you notice the heart shaped bed of blooming tulips on the right front of the house photo?  It's pretty in bloom and when the tulips are done blooming they are succeeded by a perennial with  tall stalks and little purple flowers.  Sounds nice, yes?  But no, it is a real challenge to keep that bed looking decent and after a year of messing with it I knew it had to go.  A friendly gardener suggested that we take it out and plant a dwarf blue spruce in its place.   So the other day Ben began the job of digging up the bed and getting it ready for a small tree.  My job is to help pull out all, and I mean all, the deep spreading roots of that perennial. 

Here is a photo of the side and back yard taken last spring.   

The gray wooden thing on the right is a compost bin that met the side of the garage.  The wooden gate leads into the back yard which is fenced with simple wire fence good for keeping dogs in the yard.  This summer it became clear that the compost bin had reached the end of its usefulness and Ben and a neighbor tore it down.  That opened up the question of replacing the wire fence with something more attractive.   

We didn't want to block the view from the side yard towards College Avenue so we chose this lovely iron fence which is made right here in Boulder.  The iron units are hammered into the ground eliminating the need for post holes and the supplier was willing to do the installation for just a bit more than the cost of the fence so we're having him do the work.  

I'd wanted a fence between us and our back neighbor ever since we moved in.  Unlike the side where the iron fence will go, we didn't want to preserve the view.  The work of this fence would be to block the view and make the yard feel more private and enclosed, or as they say now, "like an outdoor room."

Initially we thought that Ben & Paul could do the job but soon learned that digging post holes in Colorado's rocky soil was hard work that even my strong husband didn't care to tackle. So in a month or so a crew will be out to do the work.  This is the type of fence we're putting in.

This captioned photo might help you imagine of what we plan for the yard.

It's always fun to have new projects underway.  I'll be sure to show you the "after" photographs!