house numbers, sconces & porch stuff....

Our front porch is one of the reasons we bought our house.  It's large, wraps around the side of the house, and is concrete which I didn't think at first I would like but it's really smooth, and feels nice when you walk on it in your bare feet.  I also like that it doesn't have a railing around it which makes it feel so open.  The kids were into skateboarding a lot last summer and before we had any furniture they loved just going back and forth across the front.. and then they realized they could jump off the end of the porch on their board and onto the lawn so that became the skateboard trick of the summer.

OK.. anyway we needed to buy some porch furniture so we started with a nice sectional set that we purchased at Costco online (it's called the hampton).  It's really comfortable and fits well on the porch.  We may buy another one for the other side of the porch.. I also would like to get a table for the side porch but haven't found one I like yet.

On the driveway side of the house we put up a temporary piece of lattice just to give us a bit of privacy from our neighbor but mainly to support the climbing rose that is growing there.. by end of summer it was pretty well covered with the rose bush.  I found this nice wood lattice from latticestix.com that I would like to use... but still figuring out what we want there.

Part of the plan to spruce up the front of the house entailed getting some new house numbers to replace the colonial 1970's looking ones that were there and also replacing the crazy giant sconces with something that had cleaner lines. The house numbers are basic pin mounted bronze numbers - they do the job and look better than the old ones.. the sconces are from restoration hardware (braxton sconce).   We still want to replace the door bell, mail slot and either get a new storm door or at least update the hardware.  That's where we are with the front of the house for now... 

bathroom design and finishes

This is the new layout of the bathroom...  we relocated the toilet (basically it is directly opposite where it used to be)  there are low walls at either end of the tub which have a sill on them and then glass will be surrounding the tub. 

The finishes in the bathroom are pretty simple; white subway tile wainscot on the walls and 1" honed carrera marble in a hexagon pattern on the floors.  Below are some progress photos...we are not 100% complete yet but it's fully functional.. just some minor items (and the glass) to be finished.  So I will post nearly complete photos soon!

we bought a house...

So we finally bought a house after having looked a few years ago, then stopped looking and found one that pretty much had everything we were looking for in a house.. except a fireplace. It has great bones but had been neglected over the past 20 years or as the realtor put it had suffered from "deferred maintenance". For the most part, that's ok with us as we prefer to make it our own anyway and the less crap that was done to it over the years the better.

On Sept 1st the renovations began, mostly minor but it already looks much better and more like us. I thought this might be a good way for those who are interested to see the progress or if nothing else for myself to review where we started and how far along the progress is coming.