Tax Return Well Spent

What better way to spend our tax return this year than to put it right back into the house?!  We decided to invest in the biggest eye sore on the property... the two car garage.  I am happy that we can now actually call it a garage.... rather outbuilding that it was when we first moved in it.  It was quite the eyesore... dirt floor, no door, and more carpenter bees than you care to ever live within just a few yards of.   I know, I know, it actually sounds like it could be a nice rustic barn.... but not so much.  We tried to embrace the rustic feel, but it just didn't fit with the style of the house or the neighborhood not to mention you could see through the walls in many places and a lot of the boards were either rotting away or having holes eaten into them by our friends the carpenter bees.

The good news was that it at least it had good bones.  Last summer we poured a concrete floor and added the door which in my mind officially allowed me to call it a garage.  And this year we decided to complete the project by residing the entire building with Hardie Plank and some fancy trim that I can't remember the name of, but you don't have to paint.  We hired our friends Francis and Louis, master carpenters, to do the job.  The majority is complete, the only finishing touches that Rob and I have to do is to paint the garage door white, add some shutters, and landscape.  I was going to wait until then to unveil the final product, but I am just too excited with the current results at this point not to share!

April 2011 (after the door and floor were added)

May 2011 - A Work in Process

June 2011 - The Almost Final Product (minus landscaping, painting of the doors, and shutters)