Building Up a Wall

Happy belated Mother’s Day to all the wonderful mothers out there! We had a really great Mother’s Day. We got to spend Sunday evening with some of the closest’s mothers in our lives. Mother’s Day this year was at our house. The guys did most of the work… which meant that they cooked for us. We had a Mother’s Day BBQ… the first bbq of the season!  Woohoo!! The weather was great and everything was delicious! I wish I took a picture of the spread! The best part of the day was spending time with the family. I hope everyone enjoyed it!!

This weekend we (actually Jimmy) completed another “to do” for the house. The front of our house is pretty ugly. The first thing you notice when walking up the stairs to the door is this:

Isn’t it scary? We think it is pretty scary looking. It’s probably one of the first things anyone notices! It was screaming for a MAJOR makeover! Jimmy’s parents pretty much asked us everyday when we were going to fix it. So this weekend was the weekend for that makeover.

We contemplated what would be the best way to fix this hideous entryway. We thought we would be able to powerwash all the paint of and then repaint it. 

Most of the homes in the neighborhood  have siding. This was an idea we really liked. I tried to convince Jimmy to put up siding and have it painted black(I have an tiny obession with black, we can talk about that later.) Jimmy decided to look around for some other ideas and came across some brick tiles he liked. And like a good husband, he gave me the final say on what would be done.

We went to a few places and Jimmy showed me what he found. I really liked his choice of style bricks, but not the color. So I told him to go a lot lighter color than he had planned. He ended up finding the perfect brick tiles! He placed the order Friday morning and picked up the tiles after work. Now that was fast!!

Jimmy started working on some of the prep work Friday evening. He took the numbers and trim. Then after I came home, we put up the cement board. Here is a picture with the cement board in place:

Then we called it quits. Since it was too dark to work. We decidedto finish up the work Saturday. We got up bright and early to start the work. The weather wasn’t the best Saturday. It was cold, dreary, and drizzling here and there. Jimmy started to place the tiles to get an idea of how it would look and what he would need to cut.

Here is the wall halfway done:

After Jimmy tiled the bottom half of the wall things got a little tricky, because of the siding. Jimmy would end up cutting some of the tiles that didn’t fit  and then start putting in random pieces to fill in any gaps. This brick tile was pretty forgiving. The bricks are pretty randomly spaced and sized. Of course this is where I come to the nit pick about where he would need to fill in.

As we got closer to the top we started to realize that we might not have enough tiles to finish the project. Jimmy had to be very wise about using the tile sparingly. Closer to the top of the wall we had make a hole in the cement board for the lighting. Jimmy cut the tile and tiled around the hole perfectly. Here is what it looked like:

The hardest part of the wall was completed and this is what the wall looked like after it was completely covered in brick tile:

Here is what Jimmy looked like after he was done:

His mom got a kick out of how “white” he looked. I think it was time for him to hit the shower and relax a bit. Later that day Jimmy installed the light. He is the final picture of our new brick wall:

What do you guys think? Was it worth the effort? Should we have done something different? Is there anything else we should do this wall or the front of house?? 

Post a comment below and let us know what you think! We love hear from all of you!