Porch Work + Door Set

A few weeks ago (right at the end of summer camps and the first weekend post-running summer camps for two of us), the black-eyed susan vines were cut down off the porch. I'd been waiting for that weekend to cut them down and Trevor had the same idea since I came home on that Thursday to half of it gone and the next day it was all gone.

We cleaned off the porch and visited Home Depot to get some trim supplies. When we removed the floor-to-ceiling windows in the beginning of the year, we were so busy with things that we hadn't installed new trim at the base of the porch to replace where the old window trim met the porch floor. We installed that and scraped the window there and primed it.

I have some photots, but it doesn't look like much (over than the vines being gone. Michelle completely forgot what the porch looked like without the vines and hadn't realized how much space we were missing because of the vines.

Hopefully, we can get some time in the next couple of weeks to scrap, sand and prime some more of the house.

We also decided to change the red we were thinking for the exterior window trim. Something darker and more red than the one we were originally thinking.

Also, I picked up a Kwikset front door set from the Home Depot clearance section a couple months back for about $40 (I think?) instead of $160. Definitely looks better with a matching set on the door!

Updated Design

Design for the front yard and porch with the colors we chose to paint the house (the green here is darken than what we chose, but I'm lazy). The back of the house currently has these colors, but we were waiting to do the rest until after the new windows were put in.

Other than that, this is updated to show the new windows we put in (yay!) and I drew up a better door (so that it matches our actual door). And again, the porch columns and railing are an idea of what to replace the really crappy iron railing and columns with. Still deciding on column style, a basic square post or a boxed and bricked post, or boxed and bricked with a taped post top...

One of these days, I need to draw up a map of the garden idea and post it. It'll be easier to ID all the plants and locations with a top map. There's a lot of native plants and drought-tolerate plants along with fruit trees/vines (kiwi, avocado, orange, lemon, lime and California grapes). Although, we semi-recently added blueberries to the growing mix so the grapes might be replaced with those.

Replaced Old Windows

Alright, now that we have a big update to post...

We'd been planning on replacing the two front-facing windows. The house was built with floor-to-almost-ceiling windows on the front of the house, which were a little weird as the windows they were essential just two panes (one glass, one plastic) with a small wood wedge inbetween. Not really windows, not really attractive, not really sealed well, and not really nice to look through.

So, we called in our handyman Mike Ratto to help us put in our new Jeld-Wen vinyl prairie, energy efficient, windows. We were able to purchase higher rated windows since they were eligible for the EnergyStar Federal Tax Credit of 30% of their cost. Awesome.

Yesterday, one of our neighbors recalled why the outside pane was made of plastic. Apparently, a previous owner (not the last, but the one before them) was sitting in the dining room when someone threw a brick through the glass window, nearly hit him in the head, and broke his table. It was then that he replaced the panes in the windows with glass on the inside and plastic on the outside. Totally crazy.

Living Room


Dining Room



Original Floor-to-Almost-Ceiling Window Style (Living Room)
Mmm, foggy.


Old Window Removed (Inside Dining Room)


Old Window Gone (Outside Dining Room)


New Window Box Support Frame (Dining Room)


New Window IN! (DRoom)


New Window




Boarded up and waiting to get scraped and painted (and finish the trim on the dining room).
Not able to put in new redwood boards, so the areas under the two new windows are the only non-redwood siding boards on the house.



Textured Wall


Painted wall... and dirty floor.

And now the house is waiting for us to scrape and paint the rest of it. We had a scraping and painting party last summer for the back of the house.