I’m taking a detour from Kitties, Bunnies & Chickens today, to celebrate the one-year anniversary of opening the Pink House to guests. I love before & after pictures so I have a few here for you enjoyment.
Summer 2014
We purchased this great little house that was right next door to us. It was quite lovely as it was, but I had a desire to own a pink house so we went to work making it happen.
Summer 2015
As you can see, we didn’t change much about the appearance of the front except for paint and a bit of landscaping. It was a pretty house to begin with, but now it had the look we wanted to give the charm of a tiny vacation doll house.
Mostly cosmetic changes
The back of the house, however was a different story. We saw the potential for a back yard and covered parking, so my handyman, financier, and love muffin, Jim Burlingame got to work with pen and graph paper to make a new design. PS–He would really hate me calling him “love muffin” but he doesn’t read my blog so I can get away with murder.
Great potential
We wanted to do these things to the back: Cover the porch, move the stairs to the side, build a two-car carport/storage shed/golf cart bay, move the picket fence, pull up the parking pavers to make a patio area, sod the former parking space, extend our privacy fence next door to create a private back yard and make a paver pathway to our back yard gate.
Step one: move the wide stairs and make narrow steps on the right side.
Step two: cover the porch. (I have these guys’ number if anyone wants it. Good workers and easy on the eyes!)
Move the picket fencing
Begin framing the carport
Pour the carport
How’d these get here???
relocate picket fence
Carport roof, golf cart shed & storage room
Jim & I put all this sod down. No, he didn’t yell at me too much….NOT!
Laying the patio–You want this guy’s number too! Boomba was absolutely great.
BA-DA BOOMba!
Laying the golf cart pad
Paver pathway to my back yard gate, sod, dog wood tree. Almost done!
Needs just a bit of paint and landscaping…
SWEET!
Whew! It took about four months to complete all the construction, but when we were finished…
Voila!
Psssst–For dramatic effect, go back to the original picture of the back yard to compare.
The carport is tiny, but we’ve had two large SUVs parked here at once. We wanted to make the smallest parking area possible so as not to overpower the scale of the house. This is basically the smallest it can be and still remain code. The advantage of moving the parking all the way to the left and making a yard out of the former parking pad is that we now had a large private yard where the pavers used to be.
And a covered porch sheltered from rain and sun.
OK, since this post is critter-free, I’ll put one in just for fun.
Strike a pose Rowdy!
Stay tuned for tomorrow when I do “before & afters” for the inside.
🙂
KittyBunnyChicken 
So very beautiful!!!! Can’t wait to experience it!
See you tomorrow Debbie!
Who will be the next guest?! Beautiful job on outside. I remember from previous blogs how darling the inside is. You rocked it, Deb.
Aunt Carol, I invited my dear pal Debbie Vail and her husband Walter to come and have a romantic night in the Pink House. They both work really hard and I hope they can have a fun and restful evening. 🙂
Isn’t the proper term, “stud muffin”? Jim might like that better.
Beautiful little house, by the way!
OK he’s a love AND stud muffin. 🙂