My Little House in Pine Lake: Part 5 of 7: Outside

Between 1999 and 2006 I had a second job as editor of a magazine for a national nonprofit organization. Happily, it paid enough to allow me to finance a hundred projects to furnish, update, and beautify my little house.

I regret that I didn't document with photos the state of the house when I moved in and take photos of my many home improvement projects. Sadly, I don't have many before pictures. But I do have a couple.

Above is the rear of the house, north side. Note the tilted sunken-into-the-ground concrete steps and the lack of a door on the shed. And isn't that an attractive stump?

Here's the same spot after I put in a new back door and screen door, built a deck, made a brick-over-concrete-slab walkway, made and hung a door for the shed, replaced the porch light, and put up a gate and some fencing. I did all the work myself except for hanging the rear door. My old roommate Christine Curran did that. Sandra Cole and I put in the fencing.

Here's the way the front of the house looked just after I moved in:

The green bench is sitting on a concrete well cap; it was once the site of a little white gazebo.

Here's the front of the house today. The first photo shows the new door (about 2004) and storm door (2000). The porch light I installed has proven to be a bug accumulator; I have my eye on a nice art deco open-bottomed  light at Lowe's.

A new yard structure sits where the well was was and where, in the 1970s, a white gazebo stood. There are now faux crossbars in the upstairs windows, and a trellis to the right of the house hosts a profusion of ornamental honeysuckle. And of course my vintage Chicago traffic light holds court at the north side of the house.

The impatiens I planted in the window boxes last week are already growing and blooming. Note the stone slab in front of the stoop. Before I placed it there was a big step up.

Future front-of-the-house projects include installation of that art-deco porch light and a hard-wired doorbell, and I'm thinking of replacing the plastic window boxes with wooden ones of the same color.