Rentervation Update: Nesting Mode- Carport

Part of getting ready for Pumpkin has been getting our house more settled in for us. I mention it in a post here from back in January. Just to reiterate, we never really planned on being in this house for this long. We always thought that we would be in a more permanent living situation after a few years but alas, the recession got us sidetracked. We decided that we need to make do with where we are, especially considering that it is a pretty nice place, without making huge changes that would not transition to a house when we do move.

So in late 2010 I decided to make a list of projects that I wanted to tackle. Most of them were more in the realm of purging and organizing and it was really overwhelming. I thought these tasks would double to make me feel more comfortable, and make the task of moving easier whenever we got to.

About two weeks after starting the first project (which I will post about later), I got pregnant and that put everything into perspective. On the one hand, it sidetracked things for a few months while I was down for the first trimester, and on the other it gave us some serious motivation to tackle things we probably never would have gotten to. It is all about making this house work for us now that we are a family and not post college graduates or young married couple.

I am going to start posting about the projects we have done but keep in mind, most of them are not huge changes to you all, but major for us. We will start at the first thing you see at our house, our carport. I know that sounds so exciting!

We have this small little area in our carport where you enter our house. I have tried for a few years to make it look nice and have plants but they always died and we got lazy. This year I was determined to make it look nicer. I started by just buying plants at Lowes but when I went to put them in pots, I saw all the other work that needed to be done. I ended up moving out all the furniture (at 20 weeks pregnant), sweeping, rearranging, repotting and then washing everything down. It took a few hours but it looked so much better. I am proud to say that 2 months later and my plants are still kicking.

Before- We had dead plants, pine needles that landscape people always blow into our carport, and everything was covered in dust and pollen from the spring.



After- Swept out the whole carport, reorganized old containers, got the hose out for the first time in years to wash everything off, and repotted the new plants.


Like I said, it does not look like much in pictures but it really make us feel happier when we come home to pretty flowers everyday.