Townhouse Exterior Reveal

We are so happy to start finally showing you photos and reveals of our new home.  Our landscaping was finished last week when we were away, and we love how it turned out.  As a refresher, we bought this place the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day last year and started demo a few weeks later.   It had been on the market over a year and had no offers.  Why?  Because it needed a ton of work, and most baby boomers don’t want to take on such a project.  We love a challenge and decided to just do it! We replaced pretty much everything from the roof to the basement floor.  We basically built a new house within the brick walls.  Now, today we are showing you the freshened up exterior with its new windows, paint, lights, and landscaping.  Still missing is the fence.  We had parts of it removed during construction so we could park a dumpster on the front lawn, and also, so we could bring in cranes to lift a steel beam into place. The missing fence will be reinstalled the first week of January. And the pots don’t have plants in them yet.  I’ll fill them in the sprung.

 

I couldn’t wait to show you.  Here it is.  The same landscapers who did our courtyard did the front yard.  When they worked on the courtyard, it was 90 degrees, and when they did the front, it was in the 20’s and 30’s.

(before)

Here’s what it looked like before we began.  It was tired because the previous owners lived here 19 years and did nothing.  The landscapers removed a lot of soil to even out the lawn.

We chose Naval by Sherwin Williams in a high gloss for our front door.  It’s the perfect navy and is darker than what you are seeing in this photo. Later on you will see how that color weaves its way throughout our home.  Pure White by Sherwin Williams is on all of the wood.

I love navy and black together, and so we used black hardware by Baldwin.  We used Baldwin (formerly known as Baldwin Brass) throughout the house.  The previous door knob was colonial and a simple round design.  I love a lever, and we went with a simple lever that matches the hardware on the inside.  We did keep the original front door.

I have shown you our mail closet from the inside.  This is where the mail goes in.  This cover is by Baldwin, and I bought it here.

My favorite new addition is our house number plaque.  (I edited out the number.)   I wanted it to look like the house numbers we have seen in London, and this one is pretty darn close.  You can buy it here.

I like a big exterior light.  It bothers me to see a beautiful house with lights that are too small.  I actually found a formula to help determine the proper light size and followed it when selecting these lights.  The glass is beady so that it won’t show dirt, and I see from this photo that the light could have used a good dusting.  Whoops!

And we love our Ring doorbell.  If you have thought about getting one, you will be so glad that you did.  It gives us great piece of mind even though we have a security system.  It would also make a great Christmas gift.  You can buy one here.

I like plants with shiny leaves that stay on all year.  We selected boxwoods, hollies, and laurels.  We saved some oak leafed hydrangeas and transplanted them.  We are hoping they will survive.

The courtyard wall got climbing hydrangea, but it is dormant right now.  We might add a few espaliered trees in the spring to the wall.

The only prickly plants are arborvitae which we planted to add some privacy on the side of the house.  You can see the red maple that we planted to replace the tree that we cut down illegally.  It’s the one that got us in trouble with the historic commission.  You can read about my summons to appear before the historic commission here.

 

Here’s a portion of our fence.  I will show you more photos when the rest of the fence and gate are back.

 

We will enjoy watching this all grow and fill in over the years.  I’ll probably plant some annuals in the summer and will enjoy seeing the color against the lush greens.

 

Take care.

 

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