Nowhere-Near-The-Curb Appeal

This weekend our full-on assault on the unruly backyard continued.  We bought a weed-whacker with a brush-cutter attachment and Ray attacked some of the crazy overgrowth at the back of our property.  I'm not really one for yard work (I have an irrational, if not entirely unfounded, fear of bees), so my contribution to our backyard beautification project was to paint the exterior doors on the back of our house.

When we first toured the house, I remember thinking that the back of it was completely hideous, and I've been meaning to dress it up for some time.  The French doors in the dining room were pale primer-gray inside and out-- they're security doors, and since they were close enough to white (I guess), nobody ever bothered to paint them.  I painted the insides with our trim paint about a week after we closed, and then I completely spaced on the outsides until this weekend.  There was also an unpainted primer-gray security door on our little shed under the covered patio, and I attacked it first.

Here's a before of the shed door:

Since you can't really tell how filthy it was in that photo, I'll pride a close-up of the doorknob:

Gross.  So anyway, this weekend it got a coat of primer and two coats of our front-door color (a dark, purpley brown-- I would've loved to go full-on plum, which I think would look awesome with our olive-green house, but I wasn't brave enough when I bought the door paint way back in August.  Maybe someday).  I somehow managed to forget to take an after photo, but you'll get a wide shot shortly.  You'll just have to wait.  Are you holding your breath?

Anyway, here's a shot of the French doors pre-paint job:

And post-paint:

Do we need to clean up our yardwork shoes?  And that old paper bag full of fireplace ashes?  Absolutely.  And the awful plastic light fixtures (you can see the left-hand one at the top left of the photo) need to be replaced with something that isn't patently hideous.  Still, I'll call this an improvement.

Wide shot:

See those weird ladder-y things on the left of the doors?  They were attached to the wall in the linen closet before I made it over.  Not sure what do do with them, but I do know I need to get them off the porch.  And the foam cooler and navy bin covered with painter's tape need to move to the shed-- they're full of grilling supplies.  But we're making progress.

Plans for the back porch obviously include the aforementioned cleanups and new light fixtures, and I'd like to get two big topiaries for either side of the door.  Eventually we'll get a weatherproof table and chairs.  I'm not sure what else to do with the deck, as it's a pretty awkward space, but I'll be on the lookout for ideas.

Here's a shot of the most of the back of the house, including the covered patio:

See?  It's just not cute.  Painting the doors made it look much more finished, but as you can see, we need to do some serious landscaping around the porch and along the foundation.  Some bushes, maybe?  Azaleas?  Perhaps a huge rhododendron between the kitchen windows?  And please try not to mind the cardboard on the patio-- I always use a big piece of old cardboard (I think that one's a RAST box) as the command center while painting, and I'd just finished all the doors.  The cardboard is awesome because it stops drips, gives you a worry-free place to set your paint cans / lids / church keys / brushes / rollers / roller trays / paint-y paper towels / paint stirrer, and allows for nice quick cleanup.  If you remember to clean it up, that is.

Speaking of landscaping, here's a quick shot of a poodle in his natural habitat: freshly bushwhacked weeds at the back of our property.

Yeah, we have a lot of work left to do.  But we've done a lot, and we're making progress one marathon weed-whacker session at a time.