Three Aesthetic Improvements

A couple weeks ago Kenny said to me while we were standing in the backyard "We have three aesthetic improvements happening soon." I looked at him confused and asked "What are you talking about?" Ah, his answer made sense, while just slightly offensive to me, but I'll forgive him.

#1 -- Getting the exterior of our house painted. We've wanted it painted since we moved in over 2 years ago and we finally reached that home improvement project on our list. I knew what I wanted it to look like in my head and I am excited to say the final result is perfect. I LOVE, love, love the paint job so much.

Before:

Kenny put up some new trim pieces to help even out what was already up. Those are the brown colored boards around the windows.

After:

It was painted in Gauntlet Gray from Sherwin Williams.  It was the truest medium/dark gray I could find. I didn't want a blue gray, green gray, brown gray or purple gray...I just wanted plain gray. In some light it does have a blue hue or sliver hue to it, but mainly it's just gray and I love it.

I don't think you can really tell in the before pictures, but we really wanted to minimize the trim around the windows and door. Before they were painted in the trim color. We painted them the same color of the house and we got exactly what we wanted! The odd trim around the windows, door and garage is almost invisible now. 

What I really, really love most is our black front door. I love our black front door so much that I can't even explain to you how much I love it. I wish I could see it from the inside of the house, because I just want to stare at it. Not to mention I also love the clean white gutters and the clean soffits that we can see from inside the house. I think that this is my 2nd favorite house project that we've completed. The first being the kitchen then this.

Rite Painting, owned by Mark Lane, did the work for us. I would recommend them to anyone. The two guys who worked on our house were super fast, incredibly efficient and detailed in their work.  I'd say they did just about a perfect job and in less then 4 days of work.

#2 -- We cut down two large Douglas Fir trees in our backyard. When we moved into the house we had these two trees limbed up a quite a bit. We finally decided after much debate to just take them out all the way and let the sunlight really in. I'd like to mention that I've been called a tree hugger once or twice in my life and cutting down two perfectly good trees was something that I didn't take lightly. We've planted over 12 new trees in our front and back yards since moving in, so I feel we've done our far share of "mitigating" for the two tress we took out and now we have sunshine. Lots and lots of bright sunshine (when there is sun) all day long in our back yard.

Arbor Barber worked on the trees both times. I would also recommend them for any tree work you may have. 

Before:

During:

 Arli and Shane very much into all the action outside.

After:

We have quite a few more projects to do in the backyard this summer, but in the meantime we look forward to playing outside in the sunshine.

#3 -- Getting my hair cut off. Now this was the one aesthetic improvement I could take as offensive, but I like the change, so I'll let it slide.

It's been a busy couple weeks over at our house. It tends to make the days and weekends fly by. We can't wait for chance to enjoy some of our new aesthetically pleasing things in our lives.