New Year, New Roof, New Lights

 Westside Wholesale provided some of the materials for this post, but the opinions are my own.

Good morning friends!  I've blogged a bit about our big housing project, and I think it's time for a bit of an update.  We're making great progress!  In fact, we're almost "done" which basically means that we're switching over to the point where the rest of the stuff will be things we're doing ourselves.  Things like painting, landscaping, and decorating.  Yay!  Today I'm going to show you the before and after pictures of the front of our house, which--thanks to Westside Wholesale--is looking a whole lot brighter these days!

A few months ago I showed you this picture of the plans for our home addition.  The addition created a roof line that looked a little bit funky on paper, and I was worried it might look a bit weird in real life.  For a quick refresher, let me remind you what our house looked like before the addition:

This is our house when we bought it a few years ago (pardon the old grainy picture.  I forgot to take a new picture before we started our project). Note the chimney, and flat roof line.  

Now let's talk about the plans.  Things looked just a little bit funky on paper.

So how does it look now?  After a new roof, new roof line and chimney removal--it looks like this:  

What do you think?  Better?  I hope so.  I think I like the new composite shingles better than the old tile ones.  I also think the roof line looks a lot better in real life than it did on paper.  Phew!

As far as curb appeal goes though, my house still has a way to go.  That's where Westside Wholesale came in.  They sent me some products from their lovely Malibu lighting collection to help me take the first step in improving my home's curb appeal,  My favorite item is this lovely solar lantern. It's big, and totally perfect to sit on the front porch or a side table in the backyard.  

The thing that I really like about solar lighting is that it looks nice and is super easy to install.  

It was really as simple as unpacking, popping the stake on, and sticking them in the ground.

I found these lights to be bright, but not too bright.  Westside Wholesale has a bunch of great lighting solutions.  I added these pathway lights to my flower bed:

They look nice, especially at night.  In fact, I like them so much that I can't wait to add them to our backyard landscaping plans.  I'm imagining a flower bed lining the back fence lined with these little guys and lots of trellised plants or grapevines. 

I also added a few fence lights to my backyard fence and a few spotlights near some trees.

 They add just a little bit of light, but I think that they will add a nice ambiance once we have the backyard ready for entertaining. For now thought I'm just enjoying the fact that both the front and back of my house is looking a little bit brighter:

 

It's nice to take some simple easy steps to making our "new" house have a bit more curb appeal.  Big thanks to Westside Wholesale for making this post possible and adding a little light to our house!

PS:I hope you enjoyed this little peak into our housing project, and I can't wait to show you the inside!  We're getting our new floors installed today, and I think it's going to be quite the transformation.  After a few months of feeling like we might never be done, it's so nice to see the LIGHT at the end of the tunnel. (haha, pun intended.  I couldn't help myself!)

Be back here really soon with more projects!