scrubbedexpat097

I agree.

Rete

The grey is a nice color. I would definitely [re] that stunted tree from the front of the window. Either move it to the corner or leave it and plant shrubs/mini-trees in various downward sizes.

Friend did hers in that shade and the house looks great. Yours looks minimalistic. She dressed hers up with window boxes, both upstairs and downstairs, which makes a big difference in making her home look cozy and welcoming. In the winter she uses evergreen and pine boughs to dress up the boxes.

Rete

We had several home projects completed this summer. The porch columns had to be rebuilt and painted. Had the entire exterior of the house power washed and it looks great. I'm 1/2 way through redesigning the front garden. The gutters had to be removed and the soffits replaced and the gutters rehung properly this time. Very pleased with contractor we hired to do the work.

Steerpike

I agree.

From a 'looks' perspective, next thing I'd consider would be getting rid of those double front doors. Was a definite trend at one point but looks really dated now. Does help, I suppose, in moving big items in! I had to take my door off the hinges to get my new fridge inside!

How much did it cost for the paint job?

Edit to add - inspired by Rete's last post, I don't see any gutters on your roof. Is that true, or is there some fancy gutter system I'm not seeing? In AZ, they never use gutters at all, but in CA, I see gutters everywhere so it looks odd in your case.

markonline1

The doors are on our list, however, we have blitzed this house since we moved in, and I think we are now getting to the stage of planning stuff for the future. All the houses in this end of the street have those double doors. We’ll probably go single door when we replace them, but that’s not a short term project for us.
Price for everything was 13k apparently. That’s materials and labor. Never noticed the gutters before. No fancy system that I’m aware of. We’ll see what happens when it rains, but again, gutters would be low on the food chain right now I think.

zzrmark

Brick paved driveways are hugely labour intensive compared to concrete ones. I should have thought that the volume of pavers works out pricier than the same volume of concrete. Pulling a ratio out of the air with no knowledge of the cost of either but having experience of laying both I would be surprised if it were any less than four times the cost of a concrete drive.

If I had a driveway weeping to that extent my tiny brain would be wondering how much material under the slabs had been carried away...

Pulaski

I am sure you are correct - but Steerpike's pictures, and post were of "stamped concrete", not paving blocks or bricks.
I do wonder myself, but I don't think it was very much as the soil here is an orange-red, which stains concrete where it washes out, and there is little to no staining. That said, I was idly bouncing a golf ball on the driveway one day a couple of years ago as I walked up to fetch the mail, and I noticed one relatively small area where the noise the ball made on the concrete changed from the usual/ expected click, to an echoing hollow noise!

In any case it was that thought, of possibly washed out material, that provoked me to belatedly dig a drain.

Steerpike

I am 99.999% sure that they were real bricks. One house in the 'hood' looks like it has been empty for a while and has weeds growing between all the bricks (not just a few, which could be due to cracks) and if you look closely at one of the two driveways I posted, there isn't a flat section on the entire driveway. The road is at an incline, but the house is level. The drive transitions from the sloped road to the flat house while also, at the same time, rising several feet from the road. I can't imagine being able to 'stamp' a surface like that which varies in three dimensions. Another give-away is that some of the homes have missing bricks . I have seen stamped-concrete driveways, and I'm pretty sure I recognize them. But you never know ...

Pulaski

Wow, OK, sorry, we were definitely talking at cross purposes then.

And I would say that Zzrmark's estimate was likely conservative, so yeah, probably 4-5 times the cost of a plain grey concrete slab.

scrubbedexpat091

Not as grand as most of your projects, but I put the wooden thinger (not sure what its called) along the patio because the dog kept trying to jump off, she could wiggle her body under the railing there at the bottom, don't need her falling from the 2nd floor. Also planted 2 trees which will eventually get too big, but I will give them away when the time comes. She was a little annoyed when she saw what I had done.

Nutek

I see a candidate for the Puppy Dog thread.

username.exe

There's a puppy dog thread? *cancels plans for rest of day*

Jerseygirl

I recognize that fencing. Does the trick and great value for money.

zzrmark

I was on a site earlier this week where a concrete stamped driveway was laid, interesting to see it done as it's not something I've seen being done before. The lads took about as long to stamp the concrete as it took them to spread and screed it earlier that morning. Driveway ended up with a very aesthetically pleasing red/grey hue and a surface similar to split slate.
And yup, I was being very conservative in my guesstimate for pavers, I initially thought at leastb7 times the cost would be closer but erred on the cautious side. Suppose it depends upon the availability of cheap migrant cash in hand workers....

Pulaski

I don't have enough data to make a comparison, but in my limited experience of contractor quotes in the US, the rule seems to be to quote for labour based on 100% markup on the cost of materials - whether this applies to laying pavers I don't know, but that would be my first guess.. .... I was about to try to work out how much the concrete driveway pavers cost (materials) per sqyd, and thereby come to a "materials and labour" estimate before realizing that I don't have a recent quote per sqyd for a plain concrete slab, so I can't make the comparison.