1893 Victorian: The Exterior Makeover

I've been promising these pictures for a long time now and I finally found the time to get all these pictures together off the two cameras, my old laptop and my phone.  We've been working on this house for a long time!

Here she is in all her glory not long after we bought her in 2008.  If it looks like a cold, late Fall day, that's because it was.  Cold and rainy.  And the house was just as dreary as the weather.  She looks so sad with all her missing windows and porch lattice, peeling and weather-worn paint and the front porch steps that are being held up by one lonely nail and alot of tradition.

In late Spring of 2009, we started the huge task of addressing all the exterior issues.  First up was clearing that 100-year-old maple tree off the house (left side of the pic) and taking out the old chainlink fence and overgrown bushes.

This next picture was taken looking at the west side of the house from the edge of the 2 lots that came with the house.  The yard, in fact, is huge and awesome.  It would be a great place for a garden or orchard.

Even on this side of the house we see more signs of neglect:  more missing and boarded up windows, shredded roller shades and general disrepair.  But one good thing?  The roof wasn't leaking but it needed to be replaced. 

Here's a closeup of the attic window on this side of the house.  If you look closely, you'll see that many of those little square panes of glass are missing.  We would find many a squirrel skeleton in the attic because they were taking advantage of these openings to get inside into the warm attic.

If you look through the front porch in this next picture, you can actually catch a glimpse of our house just across the street.  Being so close would become really handy, as we spent almost every waking hour for the first year working on some project on this house.

Behind all the overgrown trees and bushes and the peeling paint, there were signs of a beautiful, old house just waiting for someone to bring it back to life.  This original stained glass window at the foot of the stairs is what made me fall in love with the house initially.

In the first year, we would completely tear off and rebuild the bottom of that big ol' wrap around porch with its curved railings, put a new roof on, replace the furnace, fix all the broken windows, replace all the windows in the attic with energy efficient windows, and scrape and paint all the wooden trim and windows.  In an upcoming post, I'll show you some detailed photos of the work in progress but, for now, how about a before and after side by side?

Click to biggify this picture!

What a big difference, huh?  I have really enjoyed seeing this grand old lady come back to life with some TLC.