Love, Pomegranate House

I’m on a curb appeal kick. And it is totally unintentional. I mean, yes. Our house is in some desperate need of curb appeal. The above is how it looked when we first bought it. Imagine years of ignoring the state of your yard. That is what our yard looked like. It was bad.

Then, after discovering some serious issues with the trees, we had 17 removed. And 7 overgrown bushes. Yeah. Seventeen trees in that tiny front yard. Crazy town. We left 3 of the healthy trees and they are flourishing with all their newfound sunlight. And this is how you all last saw the front of our house. Trees removed, gutters full of leaves, and random black spot on the driveway. (What the heck is that!? I didn’t even notice it until I looked at this picture!) I didn’t even give curb appeal another thought. I was all caught up working on the inside of the house.

And then, on Valentine’s Day evening, the wind came. About 10pm that night the winds started to pick up. And they didn’t stop until the next morning. Gusts reached 110 mph. Tornado force winds. For about 9 hours straight.

Multiple choice question time! That night included:

1. Waking at 2am to the sound of something repeatedly smashing against the living room window
2. The hubs climbing up on a ladder in 110mph winds trying to pull our satellite dish down so it would STOP smashing into the window (it had blown off the roof)
3. The fire department showing up at 2:30am to help us after the swinging and smashing satellite dish started SPARKING
4. Watching a tree bend 45 degrees towards our roof with each gust of wind (and then watching 1/2 of said tree’s roots snap and pop out of the ground)
5. Chasing trash cans down the street at 4am.
6. All of the above.

The answer is all of the above. Talk about terrifying. And sleepless.

The next morning we went out to survey the damage. One side of our fence was cracked…

And all wiggly. Not good but not terrible. The window the satellite dish smashed into was fine but all the siding around it was smashed up and cracked. Our home insurance company was called.

Two days later, the winds came back again… with a vengence. Another night of 110mph winds and we woke to find this lovely sight. Our once wiggly fence was now more of a ramp for the neighbor’s 4 dogs and less of a partition. Thank you aspen tree for causing that one. It didn’t even bother to yell “timber” as it fell. Lazy tree.

There were also shingles all over the yard. Woo. No fence. Holes in my siding. And parts of my roof missing. Score. It was an awesome few days. *coughsarcasmcough*

Needless to say, all of this damage lead to 2 trees being removed, a new fence…

And a new roof. Oh yeah, and new pieces of fascia. Some of those were missing too. Thank you Mr. Crazy Wind Storms. The smashed siding pieces also got replaced. It was a busy month and a half.

All of those exterior improvements put me in the curb appeal mindset. So I’ve been running with it. And because I’m running with it, I’m going to start up a DIY curb appeal tip series here on the good ole’ blog.

Tip #1: if mother nature decides to just about rip your home to pieces and your insurance company gives you the moola to fix it… get a new roof, fence and siding. (I promise that future tips will be more realistic. And budget friendly.)

But boy does a new roof help improve curb appeal! This is how our new roof is looking these days in all of its pewter gray glory! So much better than the dusty brown it was before. I’m loving it. And as you can see, we have already made quite a few other changes that I’ll be sharing more details of in the coming days. Yay for our home slowing being downgraded from the “haunted house“!

Have you been working on any curb appeal updates on your home??