The steps have been these huge concrete things that HomoDomi has hated forever. This summer, we painted them (brown and red ), and that was a vast improvement. But there's been no railing, of course, and it was both bare-looking and dangerous.To mask the width of the steps, we've put a big box around one side. We have to wait to paint the railings until it is drier and warmer -- we will mimic the look of the rest of the porch railing: green on the top and soft butter yellow for the rails.
And around the big box we'll put lattice to match the rest of the underporch look, too. Come summer, we'll set pots of flowers on it.It's hard to see in the photos (it is difficult to get far enough away to see the whole front of the house unobstructed), but the box, which seems heavy and unbalanced in these shots, works to balance the long stretch of porch on the right. In the summer, when the wisteria is fully leafed out, it will look much less bare. I am going to have to replant the left hand (north west) corner of the house, of course (there's a hydrangea there that has now been put in full shade and blocked from anyone's view).
Aside from the painting, there remains only the question of a cover for the box -- we waiver back and forth between galvanized steel, or copper ($160 more). I think long-run (i.e., after kitchen is paid for) it would look best with a copper top (bent over the edge of the box) and copper gutters across the front of the house, with a copper rain-chain hanging down the left corner (behind and over from the box). But we have to live with it for a while and get a sense of what's needed, not to mention a sense of what it will look like in sun and with greenery around it.
A same-spot shot of the porch from August.
A view of the porch from last July, long before the renovations, and in sunny summer.
3 comments:
Your grass is still green. Very envious.
Greener than in September. I'm having to pay attention to the seasons, here -- we have a great, but slow, growing season through the winter. Everything on the ground is green and mud brown, the skies are grey and the trees are bare. At the opposite end of the year -- well, more than opposite, in September -- the ground is dry brown and yellow, the skies are blue and the trees are green. A completely different climate and color-scheme.
I don't fly the flag, HomoDomi does. He is far from right-wing (flag-waving was claimed by the right-wing here, too, years ago). I believe that he views it as taking back the flag, as trying to make the point that you can be liberal and still proud of your country, or at least, not pro-terrorist.
However, it's not a terribly good lesson in patriotism, because the thing is out there rain and shine and nighttime. Not showing a lot of respect. HomoDomi and I have never discussed it. It puts me off, to be honest, and I'd rather not have it flying. But it's his house and his neighborhood.
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