Look how far we've come!

I don't have too many pictures of what the outside of the ranchero looked like when we bought it. It was white, it was run down, the grass was tall and the weeds were taller. It overlooked a swamp. The first owners had lovely gardens from what I heard, the second owners were hippies (and not in the good sense) and removed everything good and left railroad tie steps, rotting wood  and weeds in their wake.

After we painted the house, we took down this horrid porch/portico thing that was natural wood and came up to the roof line We kept the bottom part and put up a railing (yes, we took down the sun piece in front) . The walkway circled around the porch for some reason and there were two sets of stairs- again, for no good reason. We removed the second set of steps and the brick pavers that went to them..

This picture was after we removed the rotting door by the garage and replaced it with a steel one. You can't really see, but the walkway from the drive to the second door is wood planks and rotten.. this shows what the front used to look like (even this picture has been cleaned up from when we originally got here!)
 
 

I dug in new beds and the Mr. replaced the rotten wood with a step. I did my inner mason thing and added a walkway to the second door with the stones I took out of the front roundabout...

Then we raised up the limbs on our pine trees in front and put up a fence on the road. It keeps most of the deer out of the yard, and all of the balls inside the yard. It now comes all the way around the three trees and makes a backwards "L" so the gardens are not seen by the road at all...

The picture below is how the front looks now. The porch is white, with vintage rusty metal chairs. The dogwoods have come in a bit too much and need to be cut back, but the area they cover used to be dirt (no grass would grow there) so this is a major improvement. We also installed shutters on every window.

So, there it is, just some of the improvements we've done in 6 years. Sure, we could have done it faster, but we did this all ourselves- in between the birth of the little farmer, my cancer, my Dads cancer and heart problems, my husbands fathers death AND the death of our septic system.  I think we did ok in the big scheme of things....

series 3- the backyard and the river!

You've come a long way baby....

Installment one of an ongoing series!

We moved into Casa De Ranchero 6  1/2 years ago. It was a rundown, ramshackle rancher on an odd piece of property overlooking a swamp. It was in our price range, in an area we wanted and close to my parents and due to my cancer and the impending birth of the little farmer that was something we wanted. 

Inside you can tell no one had lived in it for over 3 years- or cared about it for over 15. The tri color shag carpet in the dining room was sticky, there was no furnace (and it gets mighty cold up here in the woods!) , no landscaping, plastic trim and fake wood doors and no light fixtures. It did have a finished (1970's) basement and three bedrooms, and the teeny tiniest kitchen I had ever seen. If we knew what we were up against, I doubt we would have done this again, but that boat has passed now and we are knee deep in this project.

First, we had to paint the house. The siding was in bad shape and needed to be worked on. I chose a dark green for the house to make it blend more into the environment and stand out amongst the white houses in the area.  I like the size of the weed in this photo a lot!

Then I painted all the horrid dark brown cabinets in the kitchen white. Sorry I have no brown cabinet photos- 6 years ago I didn't have a digital camera(!)-We removed the carpet from the kitchen floor and the upper solid cabinet doors and we made this-

We added another cabinet on the side of the stove, beadboard, butcher block counter tops on the one side, I got a new white fridge, dishwasher and stove. We also put in a new vinyl floor. I took down the country not so cute wallpaper and painted.

This ends installment one of the ongoing reno saga of case de ranchero....

series 2- outside!