It's a Jungle Out There

We always enter our house through the garage, we never walk to the front door. In fact the front door is rarely used because technically you have to walk to the side of the house to get to the front door. You have to somehow open our gate without getting scratched, and then slide by the overgrown jungle that is the ivy. It's rather unwelcoming. The gate is also rusting and very ugly due to the fact that the paint is now dull and looks like chalk. Not only does the front entrance once you pass the gate feel unwelcoming but it's also confusing. You can see right into our back yard. People actually think that our entrance gate is actually the gate to our back yard and not to our front door. We need to remedy this somehow.

For the last 2 years Geoff and I have been debating whether we should remove the ivy from the fence or to just keep it there. Geoff wants to keep it and I of course want it gone. A couple of weeks ago we noticed that our neighbor was trimming his side of the ivy. Obviously he wants it gone. It hangs over into his yard a lot. We also noticed around this time that large portions of the ivy had started to die. There were big holes now forming in the ivy and we could now see our wood fence.

After seeing the lovely holes, Geoff finally gave in and we decided that it was time to remove all the ivy. With our plans starting to roll I decided that it's probably a good time to finally address all the issues of the front courtyard area. There are a lot of little things that need to be addressed. First, the gate is in dire need of a little face lift so I plan to remove the gate from its hinges and give it a good cleaning. With the help of a wire brush  I can make sure all of the surface rust is removed.  After the wire brush has had it's turn with the gate I will spray paint the now white and rusted gate turning it into an oil rubbed bronze beauty.  I am hoping that this gate will look pretty awesome after it's little makeover so we can keep it around for a few more years. Depending on how much help we get with the ivy the gate project will probably be finished before we even get close to removing all of our jungle.

After the ivy is gone we can focus our attention on repairing the wood fence. We already know that once the ivy is removed the wood fence is either going to topple over or have broken slats. We will need to fix which ever issue occurs since our neighbor has a dog and I am sure he doesn't want us looking into is yard or house. After all those steps have happened we can finally put up a  new section of wood fence that will block access to our back yard. It will be lovely knowing it will be harder to enter our backyard.

Another entryway issue that is long over due is the front door. Still having its original finger painted white wash paint job that came with the house. Its finally time to paint that door, now we just have to decide on a color.

We are hoping to get all of the ivy removed over the long Labor day weekend. Wish us luck that we don't take down the fence along with it.