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Thursday, May 9

The San Gabriel House :: the exterior

I have just about gone cukoo crazy with all these before and afters this week.  But I'm not done yet.  Here's another one for you.  

You see, while we were busy renovating the interior and backyard at the San Gabriel house, this happened.  And sadly, yes, those are our overgrown bushes and yes, that is a piece of plywood we were using as a garage door.

SG Exterior Bushes

Remember I mentioned that we finally hired some help to do the weeding in the backyard?  Well, when they were done back there, they got busy on our pint-sized front yard.  Here's the house in its' still ghetto fabulous state, but it looks way better without all those weeds.

SG Exterior weeded

I can't even imagine what our neighbors thought was going on over at our place.  Here we are trying out some paint colors.  And yes; we painted the entire exterior.  BY OURSELVES.

SG Exterior Paint Choices

You're probably not going to believe this, but we never did replace that plywood with a proper garage door.  Instead, we decided to let the new homeowners deal with that expense and in the meantime, we got a little crafty. My creative, superstar husband (who was still my boyfriend back then) had the brilliant idea that we should add some decorative molding to the plywood.  Again, our friend Google helped us out.  Do a search for "mid-century garages" and you'll find a ton of cool images.  This one stuck out to us and served as our inspiration.

SG Exterior Garage Inspiration

So one afternoon, Biff did THIS.  Bam!  In my book, that man is seriously brilliant.

SG Exterior Garage Redo_2

We painted the exterior of the house and as I mentioned in an earlier post, we also painted the aluminum window casings.  Scroll up and look at the before photo.  The black on the windows makes a huge difference.  Even though it was an enormous pain in the ass, it was cost effective and looked great.  

SG Exterior landscaping

The San Gabriel reno taught me so much about myself.  I'm physically stronger than I ever believed and can handle more stress that I thought was humanly possible.  AND I love gardening!  Who knew?  

SG exterior gardening

May I have a drum roll please?  Ta daaaaah!!  Here she is all cleaned up pretty.  I love the way the black mulch tied in with the window casings, house trim and garage molding.

SG Exterior After

I remember the day I took this photo.  The sun was just starting to go down and Biff and I had been working on the house all day.  We were so exhausted yet so excited.  Within a month, we had placed the house on the market.  It sold 6 days later.

SG Exterior After Wide Shot

A sweet family moved in...a husband and wife with two children and one on the way.  We've only driven by once since we moved.  We were over on that side of town and just couldn't help ourselves.  It was nice to see that they've been taking care of our little front yard.  And of course, they replaced that plywood garage door.  I imagine they've made some other upgrades inside the house too; hopefully they put in a sprinkler system in the backyard.  Watering back there was a total nightmare.  

Selling the San Gabriel house was a necessity and in a time when people were sitting on real estate for months, we know how fortunate we were to have made such a quick sale.  Moving from there broke my heart though.  Biff and I fell in love while fixing up that lil' disaster of a home; we created something amazing there and I like to say it's all that spackle and paint that is going to hold us together forever.  

Are you in love with where you live?  And if so, what is it about your home that you love so much? 

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