spring's a-comin'

i can tell spring is coming becasue the people in my neighborhood are all starting to work on their houses. i always like watching what they all do. our 'hood is filled with beautiful old houses, most of which have been well kept and are shown the love on a frequent basis.

right now, i am watching the people who moved into the tiny brown bungalow last year try to decide what color to paint it. i have always thought this house needed to be a different color, as it has been all dark brown since we moved into the 'hood. i mean ALL brown--the trim, the brick, the wood siding--all of it. so when the new people moved in, they immediately won my approval by painting all the trim a light clean cream. and now they have long strips of different colors painted on the front siding--they are either going to pick a nice medium williamsburg blue or a darker cream. either one will be great, although i badly want to stop at their house and recommend that they go with the blue. i am SURE they are dying for my input.

i am also watching the people who added a new front porch onto their formerly box-like house last year, who have just stripped down to the wood to repaint their classic white and who are adding a second floor screened in porch. very cool.

and last but definitely not least, i am keeping my eyes on a complete renovation of a huge beautiful old house from 1918 that was in DESPERATE need of it. you should have SEEN what the former owners did when they redid the exterior of this house--EW!!! words cannot describe the madness that leads to the romoval of a second storey porch to add on huge oversized house high faux neo-classic ionic columns. but the new people--THANK GOD!--are taking it back to it's original double porched glory. the sad thing is that they keep getting vandalized--someone made off with their original copper gutters. further, and somehow worse, someone took an antique cast iron bathtub from inside the house! atrocious what some people do. but i am sure this place is going to look FABULOUS when they finish it. go cool people!

all of this makes me want a house to fix up. but i can wait--a good house is worth waiting for. :)