About a month ago, I mentioned that tackling the neglected area on the side of our house was on my short list. It’s a long, narrow strip of dirt (about 4 x 36 feet!) right next to our neighbor’s driveway.
And it’s kind of weird because that line along the concrete is the property line. Where I come from, property lines are vague distinctions far off in the grass, not five feet from the side of the house. But it is what it is. Luckily, they are nice neighbors.
My dad kicked off improving the space by burying a drainage pipe last month, and I’m using that as a spring board to motivate myself to finish off the space.
First things first (well, easy things first): painting the short length of PVC drain pipe sticking up above ground. The pipe is great and doing its job, but the obvious white PVC-ness of it all was looking cheap. And that printed label on the pipe wasn’t super attractive.
After wiping the pipe clean, I masked off the area with a couple pieces of cardboard. I wrapped a newspaper around the aluminum downspout and kind of shoved it inside the PVC, but I didn’t use tape anywhere!
Then I used everyone’s favorite spray paint, Rust-oleum’s oil rubbed bronze. It’s a paint and primer in one and it adheres to plastic (important!). It’s not exactly a match to the brown downspout, but I’m OK with that. I just wanted the PVC to look like metal or clay or something other than white plastic, and the oil rubbed bronze color blends nicely.
See what I mean? Much better! This is one of those details that takes five minutes, and that no one but me is ever going to notice on its own, but it affects the way the area looks as a whole.
Disregard all of those weeds and the spray paint on the dirt. We’ll save those for next time.
