Outside | Hicks House

If you drove by the Hicks House a couple of months ago you wouldn’t really be able to tell anyone lived there. Blah boring white door, no landscaping, no real pizzazz. But that was before “Project Curb Appeal” started with the painting of the front door. And then the walkway went in, complete with glorious raised flower beds on either side of the front porch. Now it looks like this:

A little hard to see from there, not to worry I have some close ups. As this was a large and pretty permanent addition, we decided to hire this out and leave it to the professionals. (The fact that they could do this in three days and it would have taken us all Summer helped sway that decision as well.)

One thing that occurs when hiring out professionals unfortunately is a lack of communication or misunderstanding. It seems to happen without fail and we experienced it with this project as well. When we originally met with the contractor who would be doing the work it was November, we went over our wishes for a light gray curved walkway leading up to the stairs with a 90° herringbone pattern, a charcoal border and raised flower beds.

Luckily halfway through day 1 while Ken and I were both at work the contractor blew a fuse requiring him to call Ken who wisely asked for photos of the progress and was sent this:

Now if you’re not in the process of installing a walkway you wouldn’t know this because you wouldn’t have done hours of annoying research on stone patterns like we did BUT that is a 45° herringbone. Normally that wouldn’t be a huge deal except for the fact that in my mind the pattern gives the feeling of walking you past the porch rather than leading you up to it.

You may also notice that its straight. (Cue minor meltdown during my lunch break at work). After Ken played bad cop with the guy (i.e. “My wife hates this you need to fix it”) the contractor explained that the walkway wasn’t curved due to the fact that we didn’t want a gap between the flower beds and the walk so with the width of the walkway it was near impossible to make a curve. He did however agree to fix the herringbone pattern as well as the icky corners that we hadn’t even thought of. (If you look at the second picture there is a half block at the end of the walk and then the blocks turn the other direction)

When I came home from work that day I was met with this:

Look at those beautiful corners now!

Another day and a half of building the flower beds and finishing the flare out at the driveway and we are one step closer to curb appeal!

Next step flowers! I’d love to hear what you think, are you tackling any curb appeal projects this summer?

Why builders continue to use brass furnishings when building a house is beyond me. Every time I look at door knobs, hinges and lamps in the hardware store the brass is the same price as the nickel and oil rubbed bronze fixtures so it’s not a budget decision. It will forever remain a head scratcher to those of us destined to replace ALL THAT BRASS.

Anywhoo, last summer our outdoor projects included staining the deck, un-staining the house (oops), and attempting to tackle the lawn.

This year we are going to be making some more noticeable improvements to the curb appeal. The first step was painting the door blue, and you guessed it next we had to change out that lovely brass hardware.

This project was a bit more involved than when we replaced the knobs and hinges throughout the interior of the house. Because the door knob we selected had a deadbolt and the more sturdy handle holes had to be drilled. If you like the look here is the set we used: Schlage F62PLY619 Plymouth Handleset Keyed 2-Sides with Plymouth Knob, Satin Nickel (affiliate link).

Now for the step by step of how it was done. First remove the old door knob. The Schlage kits are great because they come with handy templates to let you know where to drill. Ken first drilled the hole for the bottom of the handle.

Then the bottom part of the handle was installed and Ken moved on to drilling out the hole for the deadbolt.

Once the deadbolt hole was drilled through front to back, a hole needed to be made from the inside of the door to the hole.

Then it then needed to be rotered using a door knob jig to create the cut out for the plate around the deadbolt.

A corresponding hole was also drilled and routered into the door frame to accept the deadbolt.

The plates were screwed in …

and Ta Da!!!!

Doesn’t it look fantastic?!

Next on the list for project curb appeal is a paver walkway and raised planter beds to line the front of the house. What do you think of this small update that makes a big difference?