Showing posts with label porch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label porch. Show all posts

3.14.2014

Cottage garden...

Our little house is pretty simple, so I like the gardens and porch to be the same.  Most of the furniture is thrifted, found or made and that suits us just fine.  Instead of flower beds that wrap the house and yard, we have two simple corner beds and a porch of various potted plants with an herb garden.

Travis just finished up laying the slate on the porch this past weekend...


Yesterday we he got out into the beds and did a bit of sprucing along with hanging the feeder/planter.



A trip to Home Depot to gather a few plants...


Even for Texas, the recent weather was rough.  I was so excited to go outside and see these blooms on our Meyer lemon trees.  Hopefully they will produce some lemons this year!


This is the back corner bed on the right side.  It has a hummingbird bush and a couple of Iris'.  We just trimmed it out with a few pink and blue flowering plants...




In the opposite corner bed is our pink Crepe Myrtle.  Travis planted some bulbs a while back and they are starting to come up...


We also added a few seed patches of lavender and chives...


 Under the Crepe Myrtle is our memory rock for George & Gracie.  They died after ingesting part of a Sago Palm.  Those plants are very popular in our area, but also toxic.  We had no idea or we never would have had one in our yard.  Putting them down was one of the most painful things my husband and I have ever had to do.  I cried for months.


The mint still peeks up here and there.  I pretty much let it run amuck.  You never know when you may want a snip for a recipe or lemonade...


Then there are the patio pots.  I am a garden in a pot kinda gal.  Low mess and little fuss...










That's what's going on out back.   It was so lovely to spend the day outside- even if I was just doing a lot of pointing out to Travis where things needed to go and taking pictures ;)

10.27.2013

Making shutters...


I adore shutters on a home.  Maybe it's my Southern roots, but they just add charm to any cottage or castle.

current shutters...


However, I never felt as if our shutters fit the style of our cottage.  Also, they were builder grade cheap, cheap, cheap and kind of did this wonky bowing thing in the middle.

So this weekend we decided to fix all that...because I am beyond blessed to have a handy husband who doesn't think twice when I casually ask, "Hey, would it be a super big project deal to make some new shutters for the front of the cottage, because I really need something new to put up on the blog and I hate the shutters we have?"  Nope, he doesn't even blink at long run on sentences like that.

He just replies with, "Sure, I'll head to the hardware store now."   Some girls get roses- I prefer the sight of this:

Bonus- it doesn't dry up and die in a vase!


So being the magic handy man he is, he set to work on constructing some new/old rustic style shutters.

We started with some planks of wood measuring 1x6x72

Then we cut it down to 1x4


We then positioned the wood planks how we wanted them to look finished.  Three planks was the most width we could accommodate with the space we have.  We added three horizontal planks to go across the shutter.  We added a small space in between each piece to allow for swelling/shrinkage and give it more of a rustic look.


Then came the measuring, wood gluing and nail gunning...we evenly spaced the three horizontal pieces across the shutter.







Finally, it was my turn to do my paining thing...


Sherwin Williams Iron Ore...


Much happier with the overall look, and a huge thank you to my very favourite handy-man ;)
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