Thayer Reno
Outdoors:
more welcoming, more pragmatic, more protected
We wanted our outdoor spaces to be more welcoming ... both to people as they approach the house, and once they were visiting, undertaking a pretty big project to add a parking space: no more tandem parking!
We also made major investments in securing the home with new roofing, windows, doors, and a major overhaul of the exterior drainage system, to protect our home during times of heavy rain.
Added a fence & some lights
After reinforcing and repainting the pergola,
we also added lights.
The young passion fruit vine on the left-hand side has today been joined by a 2nd plant (one is purple passionfruit, the other yellow) and they have grown into a productive vine covering some of the pergola, providing a bit of (delicious) shade.
Wider, more welcoming steps
To make the home more inviting for evening guests (and for us), we demo-ed the original brick walkway and replaced it with a brand new series of steps leading to the house...
We also added lights to the steps, which is a nice touch at night.
Widened the parking pad to accomodate an extra car, plus new concrete slabs
The original parking situation required tandem parking for 2 cars:
In the front, we expanded the parking to accommodate 2 cars side by side. This required digging out the small hill (it was a lot of dirt, it required an excavator to dig out!)
We also replaced the outdated "stamped concrete" of the driveway with new custom-poured concrete slabs and volcanic rock.
New Roof
&
Windows
&
All doors
(interior and exterior)
Oh yeah we replaced all of those things too.
Re-creating + adding needed drainage to the side yard
So, fun fact: when it rained a lot, the water on the side of the house would just...
... sit there.
Not great. We were nervous that if it were to rain a lot, it wouldn't be great to have all of that water sitting there.
So to avoid any potential future issues, we ripped up the old concrete,
installed drainage pipes,
and then laid new concrete around the pipes. We also added better drainage from the back yard to go directly into these new pipes, to whisk water away from the backyard if needed.
(special guest appearance: the new A/C system, new hot water heater, and the trees right before I planted them!)
