Gratuitous Eye Candy: A Before-And-After Montage

I don't know if you all like before and after pictures, but they're kind of my porn. (Not that I've ever seen porn, Mom.) I swear I could spend the whole dang day on sites like Better After. So in honor of my lust for home makeovers—and to give you all a little glimpse of some smaller but still worthy upgrades we've made recently—allow me to share this lovely mish mash of B-and-A pics.

Let's begin in the front yard, shall we? When we bought the house (and actually for months upon months after that...) the big swath of yard next to our driveway was a combination of weeds, decades old, dilapidated rose bushes, and totally unruly geraniums. It's no wonder a snake lizard took up residence there and tried to kill me during the clearing out process.

After pulling out all the vegetation, oh I think maybe THREE TIMES, we finally laid out landscape fabric and planted everything we'd picked up at the nursery. Hopefully in the spring those monstrous artichoke plants will give us lots of good stuff to eat.

Yes some of the blue fescue grasses we bought died. But the yard's still better than ever before!

The guest room is the one place in the house that has stayed largely the same since our first "move in." It's a cute space (at least I think so) but definitely needed (and still needs) some sprucing. We started by replacing the light fixture, which I'm sure was installed the week the original owners moved in in 1959...

So menacing. This light totally plays with a Ouija board
and eats moths for dinner.

A trip to IKEA, and the room was transformed.

So much cuter, right? This light wears pink nail polish and
likes karaoke bars.

The next project was turning what had been a sort of blankish wall (there was one picture, then three) into a mini gallery of family pics and collected art. Mr. W thinks it's a bit much, but I totally dig it. One of these weekends, I plan to DIY a little bench to put under it so guests have a nice spot to stick their suitcases when they stay.

Are those baby pictures of the chickens? Why yes they are.

Finally, we had a big before and after situation when Mr. W decided to partially demo the cute little bathroom featured at the very top of this post.

We had been planning on totally remodeling it—moving its door into the hallway and reconfiguring the floorplan—but I thought we might wait awhile. Nope. We're back to temporarily being a one-bathroom residence again. But I think this one will move much faster (*crosses fingers*) and hopefully I'll be posting a new "After" sooner than later.