In the past eight years we have done sooo much to this house, both inside and out. I thought it would be great to share our "re-decorating", room by room. Well, since this was actually my first house, we have probably redecorated a few rooms more than once already. I love to decorate and always have tons of ideas. But in the last year, I guess you can say I've focused in more on redecorating to the style of the house (colonial) while continuing to add our own personal touches. Now that we have started doing this, I hope to show before and after pictures when ever possible. But there might be some rooms where I just never thought to get the before, so you won't get the full impact of the change, but you'll get the idea. It is not our plan to go full colonial style, just use it as a basis by which to design and decorate our house after. A touch of yester-year, if you will.

What made our colonial house even more beautiful was the fact that it had a wrap around porch with 3/4 gazebo at the end of the side. In this first picture, we still had our summer flowers in bloom and you'll notice a very large tree at the corner of the house. This tree, although lovely and provides great privacy of the porch, really takes away from the wrap around porch.

We had our roof reshingled (well, my husband did the whole job -tear off and put on!) in a brown and had purchased new outside lights in brown, all this prior to deciding on the black shutters. It sort of bugs me but it's something I'll have to live with now. Although it's not too bad.
You'll also notice between the two pictures that we have actually pulled some things from our garden near the house (mainly a small tree). This was in the beginning a full butterfly garden that I planned the layout myself. It was a great garden and one year we were visited by over six varieties of butterflies -it was so exciting!
Our pathway was originally a square "L" shaped pathway and we hated it. When we finally decided on an idea, we had had our our pathway re-done and landscaped in front, along with having some winter interest added to our yard -this was prior to both pictures. Well, when that was done, the landscaper did not know of my full butterfly garden and some of it was destroyed. It still has some elements for the butterflies but not nearly as many flowers as before. So both pictures above is what was left of the butterfly garden, the one large butterfly bush still remains but as I said, we pulled the small ornamental tree -to me it looked like a lollypop on a stick.
Come summer, our plans are also to pull out the very large tree at the corner of the porch. For us, I think it'll be a big shock in how the house looks but we really want to highlight our wrap around porch, (1) because no one else in our neighborhood or surrounding neighborhoods have anything like this and (2) it is a unique feature on the colonial style house. It almost gives it a victorian style touch.
Obviously once the big tree is pulled we'll have to come up with some landscaping to accent the porch, but not cover it up. Our house is a project we love working on and I look forward to sharing our changes with you. So tell me what you think -leave a comment.
1 comment
I love your wrap-around porch! And yes, the makeover really does credit to the style of your house.
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