Home Makeover: Exterior Edition

I realized a few weeks ago that Pete had 10 extra minutes in his schedule each week, so I asked him to take on a home project I'd been wanting to do for awhile: painting the shutters (and buying some new ones), and re-doing our front door. He cheerfully obliged, and between this effort and a new roof, thanks to hail damage when that mini-tornado came through our area a few months ago, our house got a facelift!

After several weeks of this...
... well, maybe only 1 hour of work for the rest of us, and several hours of work for Pete (spread out in 10-minute intervals), the project is finally done.

As is Colsen's side-project. He loved going out to "fix things with Daddy" at every opportunity! This was his creation -- it is now called a Cow.

I thought ahead of time that I should take some "BEFORE" shots... and I actually did just that! And then, my plans were thwarted for the umpteenth time, thanks to a computer crash, and all the pictures were lost. (I've had a lot of thwarted plans lately. Maybe I need to go to Hog-Thwarts school. Sorry -- I couldn't resist... I read Harry Potter recently)

Anyway, I went back through my archives and pulled out a couple of pictures of our house the way it used to look.

So here are the BEFORE shots:

....and the AFTER shots:

I thought it was particularly thoughtful of my mums to decide to bloom just in time for the "after" pictures! Just like they do when they show makeovers on TV!