Now it is time to take a look at what may be my favorite parts of the house: the front and backyards!
Front yard
Most rowhouses in DC that are centrally located have little, if any, front yard. Most of the time, the houses are built nearly up to the sidewalk. We are extremely lucky to have a little patch of land in front of the house, which puts us an appropriate distance away from the sidewalk so that we can easily people watch! It’s one of the many reasons that I have always loved the houses on this street. And you can ask Mike or my brother Angelo (and probably a few others) about my obsession with this street. For the past several years, I’ve forced them to walk down this street whenever we ventured towards the U St neighborhood so I can longingly adore the cute, little houses that have usually been out of our price range. And now by some crazy timing and luck, we own one!! I have to constantly pinch myself.
Nearly all of the houses on the block were originally the same layout as ours. Our house is the only one on the block with a front porch, which was built by Missy’s grandfather sometime in the 1920’s. The rest on the block have bay windows. I personally prefer the front porch - it’s lovely to sit out here, protected from the elements. When we bought it, it was this deep, red color which I also love because the rest of the houses on the block are much lighter in color. At this point, I don’t think we’ll ever change the color. I do wonder how long it has been this color though.
You can see that our front yard is mostly made up of rocks at the moment. We are planning on planting grass and fixing it up in the fall. Thankfully, Mike has a green thumb since I kill most plants I own.
Mailbox
Just inside the screen door is a black iron old-timey mailbox! Having grown up in Florida, I am not used to seeing such old everyday pieces. I’d never seen one of these before we moved in; Mike had to explain to me what it was.
The top has a slot for the mailman to push mail through. The front has a little loop for a lock that the owner would put on. Once mail was in the box, the owner could undo the lock and open the top lid. Sadly, this little mailbox is not in use now. Our mail goes through a boring slot in the screen door. Yawn.
Backyard
It’s really just more of a concrete driveway, but it is deep enough to fit two cars.
There is a door leading out from the kitchen and from the basement.
We are going to turn half of the driveway into a patio space and keep room for just 1 car. In fact, we were going to have a housewarming party in June with a makeshift patio, but then our neighbor started construction on an extension which is going to extend their basement as well. So we decided it wouldn’t be a good idea to have a bunch of people over while there is an 8 foot hole next to our “patio”.
Hopefully we’ll be able to have a housewarming when the new parting wall is built in a couple of months.
So this concludes the tour of the current state of the house, in nearly the same state that we bought it in. Now the exciting part starts: decorating, renovations, and all those wonderful things! It’s going to be a slow evolution but should be a fun one!
Blog notes
I added some comments functionality using a service called Disqus which I’m not very familiar with. So if you all start using it and see wonky things, let me know!