Finished out front

Okay, just a quick one - I'm having a barmy week, and next week will be the same - but I did want to share this while I had a sec. Take a look below and you'll see the finished front of the house!!! You'll have to excuse all the exclamation marks, but compared to the way it looked when we bought the place (take a look here), it's a MASSIVE difference. Major thanks go to our stellar contractors, Cera Stone, who pulled it all off on very short notice (thanks John!), and thanks too to our next door neighbours who kindly allowed us to park the skids of interlock bricks on their driveway while all the prep work was happening. Oh, the bricks - We went with the Charcoal Cobble Lite Paving Stone from Home Depot, laid in a nice and chic herringbone pattern, which works fantastically well with the facade of the house that the contractors painted in Farrow & Ball's dark and lovely Railings. I popped in a couple of close-up shots below so you could get a better look. And finally, how fantastic (and eco-efficient) are the Jeld-Wen windows and front door? Gotta fly, but what do you think?

Getting it going out front

The driveway is happening!!! Luckily our Plan B worked out (major thanks to my brill contractors), and on Friday a big yellow backhoe made fast work of excavating all the old concrete and aphalt. Believe me, I was happy to see it all carted away. The next day, a crew arrived and everything was levelled, then the forms were built and set in place for the concrete curbs that will run from the house to the sidewalk. Plus, for some extra greenery - and really because we don't need parking spots for 3 cars - the crew also built forms for a second raised planting bed. Then the Home Depot flatbed truck arrived with our delivery of the chic and simple charcoal grey interlocking brick I'd picked out (more on that soon). Finally, the concrete mixer showed and gingerly backed into the driveway, dumping 8 cubic yards to create a stable bed for the interlock and to fill the curb and planter forms. Oh, and did I mention this was in the midst of a busy neighbourhood yard sale that we were participating in? Thanks to a v. kind neighbour (hi Mrs Fong!), we were able to set up all our bits and bobs on a yard a couple of doors down while all the construction action was happening on ours...

Before the crew shows up to lay the interlocking brick in the next day or two the painter is here slapping up a couple of coats of Farrow & Ball's super durable and environmentally friendly Exterior Masonry paint in Railings on the facade of the house. Okay, I will admit to butterflies when it first started going up, but imho, I think it looks totally fantastic!

Where we were, and where we're at

Well, while the interior of the house has been completed for a while (you'll see the results in the August issue of Canadian House & Home!), the exterior of the house has been somewhat of a head-scratching work in progress. That first shot below shows the house in all its grimy pink curtained glory when we first bought it, the second, after the fantastic energy-efficient new Jeld-Wen windows went in during the midst of the reno (check out more reno snapshots here). The thing is, the driveway still looks pretty much the same, complete with tired asphalt and broken concrete.

So now I'm on a mission to get it looking at least passably attractive, though the main issue is the mammoth size. It's 20' x 30' with parking for 3 cars. Seriously. I'd been noodling around materials and decided initially on simple and modern exposed aggregate concrete (take a look here), and got a couple of quotes. Errr, one arrived at an eye-watering $16,000. So now we're Plan B-ing it and looking at different options. Oh, and did I mention I want to get this done in the next couple of weeks? Wish me luck.