Mid Century Modern Curb Appeal Part 2

The weather has been a bit abnormal of late here in the Nati. Barring this past week of coldness including two freezing evenings, it had repeatedly rained on our planned painting weekends two weeks in a row. Prior to this first photo of the street view of our house, pre-primed, most the windows had been reglazed & I sealed all the material connections with silicone. Additionally our fence on the right side of the house that screens the trash has been removed.

Speaking of the trash, we're going to build a new screen wall. The second photo is of my mini mock up of a couple different 4" concrete blocks. The old fence can be seen behind, definitely a 'Gene it up' special, and in much need of replacement. The new electric meter is now on the side of the house adjacent to the downspout. We are thinking to build the new screen wall with the lighter colored block that has two holes. Taking the wall up to the window sill will provide an adequate screen height and the block coursing would align with the brick evenly at that height. The block also matches the concrete color of our porch and soon to be landscape walls.

Finally, a couple weekends ago the rain broke and we got down to some priming. In a few hours one morning I was able to get about halfway across the front of the house moving right to left as can be seen in the third photo. If you look close you can see some of the many cracks that were silicone injected. I feel like we spent eternity on prep work, completed with taping off around all the glass. We were also lucky enough to break the painted seal holding our storm door glass insert so that could be painted separately.

Stepping back a bit in the fourth photo reveals another curb appeal project in progress being our concrete landscape walls. We went back and forth debating whether to do the walls out of the same block as the screen wall or to pour concrete. Having poured the porch myself I thought this was another good project for me to 'weekend warrior' it up. My logic soon proved wrong. Our neighbors across the street were having their entire driveway repoured. A quick quote from their contractor was very reasonable with materials & tool already onsite an advantage for him. Better yet, having asked for the quote on a Friday, they would start the following day and pour on Sunday.

The walls are intended to be extensions of the front porch and will provide us with a nice area to landscape and add some color and depth to replace the lack of any real landscaping up close to the house. The walls align with the ends of the house and the front porch steps. The walls are 6" wide and 18" deep continuously on both sides with wire mesh. The fifth photo is looking toward our driveway, almost a 30' run of concrete wall. We were priming while they were building the formwork.

The sixth photo shows the end of the concrete wall enclosure returning to the house and where the new screenwall will be. I had them pour a small stem wall for me to mortar the new screenwall onto. This wall is merely an extension of the other landscape walls which are all kept level with the porch finish elevation. I have to say I'm glad we went with concrete, the original idea in lieu of the economical block that would have felt forced.

The final photos are of the concrete pour, an hour of pure excitement was had. There's always energy in the air when the concrete truck pulls up to pour. Getting to sit back and watch someone else do some work for us was pure luxury. The concrete walls would have taken me into winter to do on my own and these guys were lightning fast. Next up will be some more progress of our curb appeal project.