The remodeling continues ...

This time, to the outside of the house.  Here is how the house looked when we moved in, and for the next 2 years that we lived here.

I knew that all of those evergreen hedges had to go.  For my sanity, if not for curb-appeal.  But we also felt like the front door needed a more welcoming entry.  I wanted to have a walk-way and steps going from the front door to the curb, not forcing every guest to walk up an icy driveway.  So we started ripping things out ...

Even the dirt was an improvement, right?  Sure opened the entry up.  Then we hired a designer whose work we had seen around town and he had some fun ideas for the rest of the remodel. 

The old cement came out to make way for the new walkway ...

Then the new porch and columns started going up.

New windows went in, the finish work went up and it started looking pretty darn great.

When we first asked the designer what he thought we should do to update the look of the house (aside from ripping out the fetzer bushes), his first recommendations were to get new windows and paint the brick.  I was all on board with painting our house, but Mike had some understandable reservations.  Once you start painting brick, there's no going back.  We drove and drove and drove around many neighborhoods, trying to find painted brick houses that we liked and could imagine on our house.  And we finally found one …. the exact color and style of what we wanted for our house.  We talked to the owner, who was so kind and shared every detail of her remodel.  It gave us the urge to make the leap on our house.  And we couldn't be happier that we did.  Here is the end result….

One more before and after ….