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modern farmhouse

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modern farmhouse

the faux martha

modern farmhouse

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Those are my dream houses, this is my house…

our hosue before

August 2013, the day we closed on the house

white house green roof during

I took this photo this morning.

So far we’ve removed the shutters, painted the door (but I’m saving for a pair of wood doors with lots of glass) and taken out all the overgrown plants. Since we bought the place, our focus has been on the inside of the house and the barn. And today all the stuff from the porch is piled on the right over there on the patio so we can pressure wash the porch.

old back porch

Feast your eyes on my modern farmhouse back door. Because of the placement of our driveway, no one ever comes to our front door, so basically, this is our front door.

You are currently greeted by a plywood window in our door, satellite dish, and old lantern coming out of the ground that is either always on or always off (no switch!) stairs that desperately need to be replaced, plastic “rock” wall under the porch, and the porch itself is falling off the house. Welcome!

It’s not all shiny craigslist viking stoves and cute white poufs out here.

We have an honest to goodness fixer upper and Chad and I are no Joanna and Chip. We take it month by month, paying cash as we go, hiring Sean as often as possible to contribute his expertise.

It’s ugly out here a lot of the time. We bought this place knowing it would take a long time to get to everything on the list.

Sometimes I know we are geniuses, other times, it’s clear we are idiots.

crooked porch

When we bought the house, we knew the back porch was crooked.

But we also knew at the time it was more of a cosmetic issue. Instead of fixing the porch (and the heat and air in the upstairs) we redid our kitchen. It was the right choice.

Besides heat rises so the boys rooms stay pretty warm in the winter and we have some little window a/c unites for the summer–it’s not perfect or pretty or even photogenic but it works and we aren’t in debt.

 

broken door

But then our back door broke a few weeks ago.

We bought a new back door and realized we’d have to cut it all crooked to make it fit our crooked back porch and that felt wrong. Time to fix the back porch, time to find a door that works with a large dog door, time to find new hardware, time to get a new porch light.

fixer upper

And for your viewing pleasure, here are some other views of the exterior of our house.

fixer upper

We have a 30 year old vinyl pool in the back yard, another thing at the top of our list to completely redo one day. I love the idea of a pool. I hate the reality of having a really old pool with everything wrong with it.

neter's house

modern farm house

And if you are wondering where the Barn is compared to our house, it’s right back there behind the porch furniture.

Sometimes every building, driveway, telephone pole and structure here feels like it was put in the exact worse place.

Sometimes you know that once you get the stuff done you hope to do, all that other stuff won’t be an issue.

DSC_6426

It’s not pretty but it’s progress.

 

I’ll share more once we finish some work on the back porch.

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