Color me mud

While I was visiting friends recently we watched their neighbor speed paint the trim on his house. It was pretty inspiring. About a month earlier my neighbor had given the outside of my house a concrete skim coat and it was drying a little blotchy so when I got home I decided I should have a speed paint session of my own.

Before and afters below.

Just after Thanksgiving, 2006. Way before I bought the house. That tree, by the way, is gone gone gone. So is the green door, the awning, the flag, the plastic chair and the chain link fence.

From the real estate listing in June, 2010

Getting a little grungier last year. But those flowers were pretty.

Skim coat applied.

And the final layer.

Dig It

More things are happening in the backyard. Some were planned, some were not. Here's how it looks right now.

 

Hey Marvid, can you see the hose? Thanks, it's a great gift. 

Close up of the 4 square beds. The hydrangeas on the bottom right have had a tough time during this hot hot hot summer. 

Even though the neighbor's tree provides a decent amount of shade, the sun and drought have taken their toll on them. They might do better in the empty bed on the left where there's even more shade. Man, you can see some sunburned brown leaves in there.

This patch grew on its own. After clearing out a ton of weeds and transplanting some grass stalks from other parts of the garden (where they also popped up) into this area, this bed really filled out. I love ornamental grass but I'm not sure this is the right choice for this spot. It's very tall and doesn't have a ton of interesting character.

This little peanut is a butterfly bush. Butterflies have already visited and birds seem to like it too. It should grow into the size of the bed.

This is at the back of the yard, against the garage wall. The flowers move from yellow to blue to pink to purple but the pinkies and purples are a little shy right now.

These are right next to the pretty blue delphiniums. My hope is that they'll bust open into sweet little pink flowers and fill in that section with some color.

Don't know yet what's going to happen over here.

But the plan for the weed haven against the fence is to fill it with lilacs.

There are a couple of potted plants up on the back porch. This one didn't do so great. It actually died before I got it into this pot. I thought there was a chance it would resurrect. It did not.

And in the front of the house the hydrangea in the pot is doing really well. This is how it looked back in May when it first bloomed and had a crazy deep purple color. 

The blooms then turned green and deep burnished magenta. Now some new blue flowers are appearing. A little psychedelic but this is a great plant and I'm super happy it's still alive.

And here's a cute little trash can that came from a garage sale. It's super handy for getting rid of all the flyers and circulars that people leave on the front porch.

And in the front

The guys who did the back also pulled out the mess in the front. Now there's a little patch of green sunshine at Huron.

Hydrangeas and Ranunculus

The work in the yard is happening. There's a lot to do back there and progress has been interrupted by the rain but I think another 2 or 3 days of heavy lifting should do it. Then the yard will be prepped for planting. 

In the meantime, here's a look at what's happening on the front porch. I love hydrangeas and ranunculus. Two of my favorite flowers. 

Front Of House

Back in 1888, when the embers from the Great Chicago Fire were still burning hot in people's memories, someone decided to build a row of pitched-roof brick cottages along Huron street.  In the 1960's some of the home owners got so tired of banging their heads on their sloping attic ceilings that they scraped their pitched roofs, built up their side walls a couple of feet and created a whole second floor of livable, inhabitable space.  My house and the one next door went through their remodels around the same time and while my neighbors opted to use wood for their build-up my owners used brick in the front and back and wood with siding on the sides of the house.  The picture below shows my house on the left, my neighbor's remodeled home and on the right a house with long-suffering owners who don't mind squat-walking through their attic as they pull out and put away boxes of Christmas decorations every year.

Now, lest you think my neighbors have left their halloween decorations out through New Years Day, this is an old picture taken before work was started on the house.  I love these decorations and hope they put them out again next year.

Huron, the beginning

So I bought a house a couple months ago.  At first I ignored it, pretending like it didn't exist.  I had massive anxiety about the purchase and during the 9 weeks it took to get city permits issued I refused to admit to myself that I had even bought it.  I continued living in the apartment I've been in for eons and put the house out of my mind.  But once the permits came through and the contractor started the demo I was hooked. The place is being gut rehabbed and the process is a blast. So far so good, anyway. Goal is to finish by the end of February so keep your schedules open for a house warming party in spring of 2011.