Hicks House

From Builder Basic to Beautiful


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Spring has Sprung

Here is New England it is finally finally been feeling like spring the past week or so (freak snow storm or two aside).

Hicks House | April Snow

So you know what that means in New England? That’s right, yard work!

You may remember from some posts from last year like this one, this one, this one, and this one how last year we had a semi-dead/semi-crabgrass lawn.

Well now its all dead. Which may or not be better than crabgrass – we’re not sure, but what we know for sure is that as the onslaught of snow finally melted the neighbors all had green grass peeking through and we had brown. We are officially THAT house in the neighborhood, and most likely will be for another year or so.

With the long weekend Easter provided to Ken he decided to capitalize on the day off and take Thursday as well to get a leg up on the yard work. Before the lawn can be prepped to be re-seeded (most likely this fall) it needed to be de-rocked.

As you may or may not know the lot our home sits on used to be part of a Christmas Tree farm. When they leveled the lawn they left the majority of the roots in the soil (nice of them right). Along with all the roots were tons and tons of rocks. Many of the roots we pulled last year as they surfaced, but the rocks we left… until now.

Here is a picture of the front next to the driveway where you can see several piles of smaller rocks all around – and our lovely brown grass.

Hicks House | Rock Removal

In the back was a spectacularly large rock boulder that required the help of a friend of ours and his pick up truck to remove.

Hicks House | Rock Removal

So now the yard is de-rocked and awaiting a load of top soil to fill in all the newly created holes and level out the slump in the back that turns into a makeshift pond whenever it rains.

After all that hard work (that Ken did – I was at actual work not working nearly as hard) we unwinded by taking a wine blending class and creating our our custom Bordeaux wine blends!

Hicks House | Wine

Have you been taking advantage of the 50 degree plus days by getting out in your lawn? I’d love to hear what yard work you’ve accomplished!

Hicks House

 


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A Splash of Color

What color to paint the front door?  It’s such a big decision it sends the first impression that visitors and passerby’s see of your home.  It was such a big decision in fact that when the builder offered to paint the door for us before we closed we couldn’t come to a decision.  I even went so far as to PhotoShop different colors onto a picture of the house to help us decide.  In the end we decided to live with the house for a while and just had him paint it white.

white house with a white door - how ordinarily boring

white house with a white door – how ordinarily boring

close up

close up

After several months we finally came to the consensus that we wanted yellow. It’s such a happy color, how can you come home to a yellow door and not become instantly more upbeat? Now the only question was what kind of yellow?

This was our inspiration that I found our Pinterest.  We both loved it.  It’s from Beautiful MattersBlog

Inspiration Door

Inspiration Door

So we went to the paint store and looked at all the options of paint swatches and came to a decision.  I was slightly worried it may be on the bright side, but hey it’s only paint and the whole point is to get the door to “POP” right?

So I got to work cleaning the door with some mineral oil to get off any dirt and grime that was on it. (I read this is extremely important in order for the paint to adhere properly.) It turned out to be a LOT dirtier than I could have imagined.

look how dirty!

look how dirty!

Then I got ready to start painting – shook up the can to mix the paint properly and popped it open…

the first sign this might not go so well...

the first sign this might not go so well…

It looked awfully bright, but hey the inspo door is bright and you can’t always tell by what the color looks like in the can right? After all there is way more of it concentrated in a small little area and it always looks different once its dry. So I got to painting. Here’s the finished product:

close up

close up

far away

far away

My eyes! MY EYES!!! We couldn’t have possibly picked a color this bright! the swatch must have lied to us…

oh but we did pick it

oh but we did pick it

What were we thinking? I’ll tell you what I’m thinking now, I’m thinking I need a re-do. As its now the end of October and its getting too cold outside in New England I may have to wait until spring. It’s possibly it may grow on me in the next couple of months – stranger things have happened.

The bright yellow on bright white is just too much – the inspiration door is bright yellow on gray which helps tone it down… Rookie mistake!  We should have known better!

So what do you think is it too bright or just right? I’d love to hear your opinion!