Amarillo - Exterior Front - After Pictures

And now the after pictures of the front exterior of the house -

Doesn't the house look so much happier now!?!?  I decided I wanted to have the house painted yellow so Mike and I drove around with a paint deck and stopped at a yellow house we liked the color of and matched their paint to a paint in the paint deck. The shutters and front door were painted black and the trim was painted white to match the new garage doors.  The other changes that took place were replacing the driveway and sidewalk with new concrete edged in brick pavers which looked very nice, a new tree to replace the dead tree, new bushes and new grass.  Mike still gives me a hard time about having old boxwoods torn out just to be replaced with new boxwoods.  You might ask, "Why such a little tree Sharon?".  The answer is that a tree the size we had planted costs about $250 and a tree double that size costs about $750.

Why did I pick such boring garage doors?

I guess I was more concerned about staying within my budget (usually a good plan when renovating), but now I see these garage doors in the picture and think they are pretty dull. Even windows in the doors would have livened things up a bit. Live and learn. We never quite decided what to do with that "nook" either. I understand the new owners have done something in the "nook", but I'm not sure what.

New outdoor light, mailbox, house marker, door hardware, brick step and plants.  The fact that the first sidewalk joint line was not straight really bothered my obsessive-compulsive mind - 

Originally, there were shutters on the porch hiding a painted decorative iron railing where the post is now.  We removed the shutters, left the iron railing and simply wrapped the railing with a new post.  The beadboard on the porch ceiling was there originally and added some personality -

Two of the children from the neighborhood and I had great success planting tulip bulbs -

Next up - the process involved in buying a foreclosed property.