Exterior Before & After

This one is a lot of pictures! Going through all of them, I didn't realize how much work just the outside was. 

Here is the front of the house before... 

Here it is after, yes, the grass IS dead again. It wasn't though until we stopped watering the front this summer. CA is in such an awful drought that we can only water Tuesdays and Sundays. We decided not to water the front at all because our pool uses a lot of water. We kept with the watering schedule in the back because that is where the kids and dog play. If we are out front, the kids play in the street. 

Here is the back yard before...

All the cracks on the back of the house and the pealing stucco...

Now the patio and back of the house after, the grass looks great because this was before the water rationing.

Yard before...

We ripped out the extremely short 4 foot fence to replace it with a taller one. During the 1 day we were without a fence I left to pick up the kids from school and came home to a car blocking my driveway. Since, I was on a bike, I couldn't block the car in. When I went to investigate, I hear a loud clunk and ran back to the front to find someone fleeing my yard. He was in the process of stealing our saw! At least he dropped it when he heard me looking around. We had been doing so much work that people had been watching and waiting for the perfect opportunity. It was a work truck from the guys that were repaving the streets out front of our house.

More before of the back of the house.

Here is the back now. The grass has been in much better shape. We are just barley keeping it alive. Hopefully we will get lots of rain this year and we can have our grass back. Plus, it's full of dog toys all the time now.

Looking toward the pool before...

After...

These next pictures are just the process. We couldn't decide between blue or green for the exterior. I love both colors but we ended up with green because it is less common.

The blue was pretty too.

Next decision, brown beams like the inside or white? We went with white.

It's always nice when the kids willingly help. They like to paint.

They actually helped a lot on this project. C stopped earlier then L. L loves to paint anything.

We were going to get all new exterior lights until I though, they might turn out nice with a little spray paint.

Painting them saved us a ton and they look great!

More of the back after the stucco is all repaired and most of the paint is on. We had a lot of helpers painting, Craig's parents did huge portions of it and we had one of our good friends spent a weekend painting the back of the stucco.

The front just looks so much cleaner!

After all this, the though of ever moving again is overwhelming. I hope we never have to!

Kristen