#like why put a love triangle if everythings lame and boring

[evertriedsoywithyourpopcorn]

5 Reasons Roman Is Infuriating (And Why I DO NOT have a crush on him)

Chapter 5: To A Land Of Our Imagination

Read on AO3 

Chapter 1

Word count: 3471

Tw: Wounds, food, swearing

~~~

Logan planned the second date two days after the first. A picnic in the imagination, that Roman insisted on helping out with.

It took them quite a while to prepare everything. A red gingham print blanket in a field of many flowers on a hill, the sight of a rather giant disney-inspired castle in the far distance, mountains enveloping the horizons; very picturesque, certainly. He even offered to set up an orchestra off the side for them, but Logan declined. Logan was worried that they would get sunburnt due to the realistic touch that he brings, but Roman insisted that wouldn’t happen. And then Logan insisted that he didn’t know that it wouldn’t.

The banter was probably what took the longest time. It started with the back and forth about the likelihood of a sunburn, and then whether Thomas would typically tan or burn, and then it spiralled into nothingness. Obviously Roman made zero sense, but Logan was still determined to prove his point.

“No, Thomas should not get a surgical beauty mark. It’s pointless and expensive when you could have the same results with the smallest amounts of makeup.”

“But it adds character! All of the glamor girls have beauty marks! And besides, why put in the effort of putting on the beauty mark every day when you can just wake up that way?” Roman rebuttals, and Logan cannot begin to express just how stupid that argument is.

“A few seconds of a makeup pencil and maybe some powder isn’t that much effort. What would be an effort is spending a ridiculous sum of money on something he might regret and want gone. It would be a waste of resources for something thought of on a whim. That money would also go into the beauty industry, the industry that profits off of one’s self-hatred.” He argues, because yes, in a world where hating oneself is so common and so profitable, the most rebellious thing one can do is to learn to love themself.

“Makeup is also a part of the beauty industry.”

“It’s nowhere near as harmful and expensive though. It’s not just about insecurities, but also accentuating features that you enjoy in yourself. It also happens to be an art form, so I’m surprised that you’d even try that useless fact.”

Roman huffs. He’s probably not that interested in the beauty mark, but sometimes impulse can make you do stupid things. He does however look upset, and Logan hesitates.

“You know what you can do with makeup?” Logan asks, and they look at each other.

“What?” He asks, still pouting.

“Make many beauty marks. And change their locations when you feel like it.” He offers, and Roman lights up like that very dangerous chemical reaction Remus and himself attempted on bonding day.

“By the fourth musketeer, you’re right!” Roman touches his own face, lost in thought. “You could switch it up daily!”

It took a while longer for him to acknowledge what they were supposed to be doing, and then they were touching up the flowers (which is when Logan notices Bells of Ireland, sticking out amongst the other flowers, and assisting in integrating them into the green fields, like the flowers just popped up amongst nature. He believes Roman had summoned them around for him, and he can’t help but smile.) and then heading to the exit so Logan could get the ‘object of his affections’.

“Are you going to be in the imagination?” Logan asks him.

“Well, duh. I’ll obviously be out of earshot, but duty calls, and I have quests to attend to! Can’t have a realm without it’s heroes, right?”

“I guess not.” Logan nods. Roman’s going to play immersive make-belief then. Very well. That does usually help with Thomas’s motivation. Logan thinks of asking to join him sometime, and then decides that would most likely end horribly. Maybe Dungeons & Dragons would be a better solution.

He leaves Roman at the doorway, going to retrieve Patton. It isn’t very hard; he finds him in the living room holding a picnic basket and smiling brightly.

“That really, isn’t necessary.” He points to the basket. “We have food at the location.”

“What’s a little more? Besides, I have a little surprise to help with the planning.” He leans in and fake whispers.

Logan blinks. “A planner?”

“No, even better. But don’t guess. You know your old Patton-ership Person can’t keep a secret for very long.”

Logan groans at the pun, and they head back through Roman’s door to the imagination. It isn’t long before they reach the flowery hills (Logan wanted it to be accessible, to avoid an awkwardly long walk), and he sits down on the large blanket. Patton coos at the view, and the enchanting flower fields.

“Is Roman here?” He asks, looking around. He sets the basket down.

“He said he wouldn’t be nearby, and I trust his word, but he is in the imagination.”

Patton lets out a sigh in relief and sits down. “Okay. I just know he’d be mad if he found out, buuut…” He opens the petite basket’s lid, and like the objects from Mary Poppins bag sprouts Janus, arms held out dramatically.

“What is up losers? I’m here to foil all of your plans.” He lightly steps out of the basket, and plops down so they’re all facing each other in a triangle. “By making them better. You’ll thank me later.”

Although Logan is surprised, he isn’t really bothered. He’s quite similar to Roman in the theatrics, so perhaps he’ll prove to add ideas that would give life and a charming flair to his own.

“Very well.” Logan pulls out a notepad from god-knows-where. “Welcome to the ‘date’.” He does quotation marks with his fingers, and Patton leans excitedly to Janus.

“I think that’s what we’re calling it now. ‘Date’, but you have to do the thing with your fingers.” He does the finger quotations.

“What a lame concept. I love it.” Janus smiles. “I’m absolutely dreading spectating this ‘date’.” He does the finger quotations, and adds a little more emphasis on the word. At least he seems to be having fun.

“So. First step: The goal.”

“Find out if Roman really does have legs.” Janus answers at the same time Patton exclaims “Marry a pretty prince!”

“That was not supposed to be a guessable statement. And both of you are wrong. Patton, we do not have legal documents and cannot legally marry. The goal is to ‘woo’ Roman.”

“There may be or may not be a very easy solution for this.” Janus suggests, lounging back and checking his nails despite his gloves.

“What would be that solution?” Logan narrows his eyes at him.

“Oh I don’t know… Tell him how you feel.” He looks at him face-on, dead-serious.

“But… He most likely does not feel the same way. Besides, he wouldn’t like something so… Insignificant. He’s embodied himself after a prince, for Newton’s sake.” Logan argues, heart clutching painfully (metaphorically, obviously. If someone’s heart clutches painfully in real life, he recommends they go to a doctor and get it checked), and looking off into the distance, calculating the odds of rejection. He so far has not detected any signs or repercussions in the romance, and with Roman’s celebrity crushes being people like Adam Driver and Orville Peck, how is he supposed to compare? He can make a schedule planner less important than a social engagement.

“Oh come on, cheer up champ! I’m sure he’ll love it no matter what you do!” Patton encourages, giving him thumbs up. Logan looks at him, unimpressed.

“But will he really? These… Unnecessary feelings have rendered me even less functioning around him, so psychologically speaking, I’ve been even less perfect around him. He lives off the idea of a perfect, film-like life. Disney prince… Disney Relationship, Disney prince partner. Why would he like me? I look like a teacher.” As Logan continues his rant, now up and pacing, Janus shoots Patton a knowing look, and Patton eventually looks at him with an unknowing look.

“What?” Patton asks quietly, as Logan rambles.

“You don’t know?” Janus looks surprised.

“Know what?”

“Roman hasn’t told you about… You know…”

Patton looks at him, attempting to decipher what he means. Eventually, he quizzically does a limp wrist.

“No!” Janus whisper-shouts, exasperated. “Of course he’s gay. I’m talking about something else.”

“I’m lost.” He admits.

Janus leans in and whispers into his ear.

“Oh yeah! He has.” Patton gives him a thumbs up.

“I need a new style!” Logan turns and points at them, and they both display their shock easily.

“Dear god no. You’d look more out of place than Remus during the cosplay phase.” Janus jerks back, appalled. (Besting Remus in being out of place while he was in Thomas’s cosplay phase is nothing to roll your eyes at. Stripper Kermit is only one of many horrendous ideas that Janus has had the pleasure of being scarred by.)

“But think about it. You often see someone in a new light when they go through a big style change, whether they’ve changed as a person or not. When we altered our outfits for the first time, it was like a fresh new start. We were new, and more impressive models of our past selves of just three seconds before.”

“I see your point kiddo, but that just isn’t you! It’ll work against you in the long run if you try to be someone that you’re not.”

“Agreed. Seriously. Not to mention you’d be boring no matter what you wear; might as well be more comfortable doing it.”

Logan considers it. He nods, and sits down. “Alright. Thank you for your encouragement. I’m still not going to tell him outright.”

Patton raises his hand. “I have an idea.”

“Alright, hit us.” Janus looks at him.

“If you are to hit us, do it gently please. And preferably on the arm. I quite like these glasses.” Logan nods, accepting his fate.

“It’s an expression.” Janus side-eyes him, and gestures for Patton to start.

“How about… We leave the idea of telling him directly as an option, but also make a plan? That way, you have many options to pick from!” He encourages, looking like a parent bargaining with their toddler.

“That wouldn't be unreasonable.” Logan takes out a pen, and clicks it on. “Now, why don’t we start?”

By the time they leave the imagination, Logan has notes full of ideas. It’s a little bit difficult to have the best brainstorms without a literal embodiment of creativity, but both of them are bad ideas to invite for different reasons, and not being in charge of creativity doesn’t stop the rest of them from coming up with creative thoughts. (If that were the case, the same concept could be applied to himself, and it would have probably killed him by now if he were the only one with an ounce of logic.)

He steps into Roman’s room. Nice as always, if not looking slightly blank. Maybe he’s just used to the disorder now.

He rips out a separate paper, and leaves it on Roman’s cluttered desk, to notify him in the future that he is no longer in his realm. He catches a glimpse of other papers on his desk, and is that-

“Poetry?” Obviously, Logan does not want to disrespect his privacy, but he does read the line he has seen. It was quite good. It seemed to be about jealousy, but he’s not the best at deciphering emotions, so he isn’t completely sure. He also catches a few typos.

He stands straight again, paces a little bit and just as he's about to sink out, he hears the imagination door open.

Roman stumbles in, heaving and drenched in sweat. He looks dull and lifeless, until he looks at Logan. It’s like a switch goes off, and he looks like his usual self again.

“Heading out?”

“That’s right. The date just ended.”

“That’s wonderful! How did it go?” He asks, strutting over, trying hard but failing to hide a limp.

“Are you alright?” Logan looks at him, and the standard first aid courses that Thomas has taken in his lifetime start kicking in.

"I'm-" And a poorly concealed wince. "Okay. Just a scrape from the dragon witch. Nothing a happy pappy prince can't handle."

"That's not something you usually say." Logan squints at him, taking a step closer. "Did you hit your head? You're starting to sound like Patton. I'm not leaving here until you let me help you."

"Ugh, fine." He flails out his arms, and then jerks them back in pain. "But seriously, how did it go?"

"It went well. Thank you for the Irish bells. We discussed things that one would do in a romantic setting, and then we dispersed. There will be another date fairly soon. I just stayed to drop off a note on your desk to inform you of our departure."

His eyes go wide. "My desk? Did you read any of my writing?" He asks, sounding panicked, with a hint of defensive nature.

"I did, actually. Not on purpose, I'm sorry. It was a poem that I believe is about jealousy. I read the third paragraph. It was quite well done." Logan bashfully admits.

"Oh. Thank you." He offers a small smile.

Logan suddenly remembers the wounds. "Now. Let's get to fixing you up. Do you have any cuts? Scrapes? Open wounds?" As he sits Roman down and checks over his injuries, he can't help but hurt a little bit on the inside. Roman's self preservation seems to have left him a long time ago, and he always gets reckless. He can't seem to let anyone see his weakness, and that's perhaps what he and Logan have most in common; although, Logan hasn't been injured physically in quite a while.

He finds a first aid kit (in Roman's nightstand. How concerning.) and helps patch up his wounds. Thankfully, Roman wasn't fully lying, as his injuries mainly consisted of bruises and mild cuts, but Logan made sure to take care of them all the same.

"I just realized." Roman whispers, eyes closed as Logan puts a band-aid on his arm.

"That's a new concept."

Roman ignores that. "You've done so much for me over the last while. To be fair, you always do things for me, but this week... Teaching me how to bake, leaving out cookies for me, which were heavenly by the way, thank you, helping with nail polish even though it was on your bed, this... It's quite a lot. I feel like I haven't done enough for you."

"Oh come on, don't metaphorically sell yourself short. This whole time, you've helped me set up my dates with Patton. Many of them, in fact. I had been nervous to tell him, and you helped me the whole way along. I am quite grateful for your contributions, Roman." Logan chuckles a little bit, because although expressing your gratitude for something that you don't care about may seem pointless, Roman still put in all of the effort. He did the planning, the setup and design, and wherever he was needed, he'd be. Logan had heard that he even managed to convince Remus to keep the funky business away from the 'dates'. That's quite a lot of work, and Logan appreciates every second of it.

"Nooo but that isn't enough! I want to take you somewhere special to thank you."

"Really Roman, that isn't necessary-"

"Thomas!" Roman screams into his ceiling. "You know how you're free in three weekends!? Yeah, well you're going to a planetarium now! Bring friends so you don't look like a loser." And sure enough, he can feel that Thomas has got the idea.

Logan's heart metaphorically explodes out of his chest with how strong it's beating. Thomas hasn't been to a planetarium in ages. It isn't really Logan's role to suggest activities on the fun side, so he's kept to himself, silently hoping for another side to bring it up. They have spare money for it. And here it is. In three weeks from now.

"That's... I don't know what to say. Thank you." He clutches the first aid kit to his chest.

"Well duh thank me, but it's okay. It's payback." Roman gives him two band-aid speckled thumbs up. "Consider it a date."

Uh-

Hm. Well, there goes Logan. On the floor. Dead.

~~~

"More sophisticated and logical word for fuck."

Logan slams open Virgil's door, just as he's putting the last details on his embroidered spider web jacket.

"Dude, what?" Vrigil turns to him, only to see Logan laying on the floor, malfunctioning.

He goes over to the lifeless form. “Logan… You, like, never come to me with your emotional problems. I can’t help people. Do you want me to tease you? Because I can totally tease you.” He pokes him, and Logan rolls over to face the ceiling.

“It’s because I never have emotional problems, Virgil. I believe in you to keep a secret however.”

“Is this about the planetarium Thomas just planned? Because I can totally see why he shouldn’t go, with all those people around, judging his every step, and the chance of being separated from his friends, or seeing someone familiar and it’s just awkward..”

“No, I agreed to the idea. I had wanted to go for quite a while.”

“Does it… Have to do with Roman?”

“Of course it has to do with Roman. Even now, he is still the largest thorn in my side.”

“Apparently you’re a masochist then. So, what’s up with him and the planetarium?” Virgil circles him, seeming bored but willing to hear the story.

“He was the one who suggested it. In fact he said to  ‘a date’.”

“Ahh. So you are here for emotional issues.”

“It’s not an emotional issue. I simply wanted to tell you that I think it is an optimal time to tell Roman about my newfound fondness for him.” He sits up, and Virgil gives him a hand to stand.

Virgil chuckles. “It’s not bad to ask for help, Logan. But that does sound like a good idea, or whatever.”

“Of course it’s a good idea.” Logan says, hand bouncing up and down at a rapid pace. He looks like he’s sweating. Virgil squints.

“But you’re nervous.” He observes. “And you want to talk about it with someone.” He holds up a hand before Logan can protest. “Ah-ah. Don’t lie to me on this one. Sit down.” He takes out a chair, and then looks at Logan. “You know what, maybe not in my room.”

So they go to Logan’s room, and he explains his plans, and some worries, and Virgil nods along and agrees.

“By the way, have you been seeing the way Roman’s been acting lately?” After Logan seems to have finished with ideas, and they were just sitting together, Virgil speaks up.

“No? Perhaps. He did want to make cookies, which is odd for him, and he called me kiddo, if I remember correctly.” Logan recounts the last few days. He’s not completely sure. Roman has always been a slight enigma to him.

“See, that’s what I’m talking about. A few days ago, he came into the living room, and he was wearing a polo! If it weren’t for the colors, I would’ve thought he was Patton. And then.” Virgil stares at Logan, who looks impassively back at him. “Just yesterday, Remus told me that he dumped some of his posters into the trash.”

“Ah, perhaps he’s finally taking advantage of his wall space.” Logan says quite proudly, in a room where there are many cork boards on every left-over piece of wall he has open.

“No, you don’t get it. When’s the last time you’ve seen his room without posters?”

“To be honest, I don’t remember.” Logan admits. Virgil nods along, his eyes staring at him intensely. “Because I barely ever go into his room.” Virgil slumps. “Listen, Virgil, the concern is appreciated, and I support you continuing to collect evidence on this matter, however, it sounds like he’s trying something new out. I have no reason yet to be concerned.”

“Okay, whatever.” He gets up from his chair. “I hope you feel better, nerd. Catch you later.” He salutes, and just sinks out.

Logan continues to stare at where Virgil once was, thoughts jittering. Is Roman really acting that strange? He almost sounds like he’s trying to become Patton. Maybe he’s looking to renew his look for Thomas? He had been rather heart-broken when he misinterpreted Thomas calling him his hero. He also likes costume changes. Maybe he’s preparing something.

Logan hopes that Roman will be alright in the end. And that he himself will be as well. He takes a deep breath. He can do this.

~~~

Taglist: @crossiantgay 

[symmratgiftexchange]

Satya Vaswani Smile

Hey @threepointonefourmakesxai ! I went and made you a fic based off of your request. Thank you so much for participating in this event! I hope you enjoy this and I hope you have a wonderful new year!

You can read your story either under the cut or over on my AO3!

Junkrat fucked up.

He didn’t know when exactly, or even how. But at some point this which for whatever the reason he fucked up things with Symmetra.

She was still working next to him in the labs. But she would hardly look at him! And when she spoke to him she was so clinical and curt. More so than usual. So much that it’d finally dawned on Junkrat that Satya was intentionally trying not to speak with him. That she was mad with him.

And Junkrat had no idea what he did.

Maybe a year ago he wouldn’t have cared. He definitely wouldn’t have worried over apologizing, he wouldn’t even bother with any of that nonsense. He would have just ignored the lady, brush her aside just as quickly as she was ostracizing him, call her another one of those stuffy suits, cause a few pranks to get a rise out of her then just… move on with his life.

But this wasn’t just some lame old suit. This wasn’t a faceless nobody who he’d just go on to forget. This wasn’t even the same woman he’d met when they first joined the team, a woman he assumed would always judge him and never see him as more than a criminal or a coward. This was Satya Vaswani, this was Symmetra. And ‘Metra had come to be one of the most precious people in his life. The only person who shared that title was Roadhog.

So if Symmetra was mad at him than he needed to figure out a way to win back her favor or die trying!

First he tried to figure out what the hell he even did wrong.

He was tempted to just go ask her but whenever he got close to Symmetra she’d either glower at him, or worse yet her face would stay completely neutral and she’d just raise a single eyebrow, as if daring him to take another step closer and see what would happen. And while not always the safest person on the Overwatch team he at least had enough self-preservation to know he ought to avoid Symmetra. At least until he had a plan of fixing whatever he did and apologizing.

So without knowing exactly what he did wrong, Junkrat began formulating a way to make things up to Symmetra. He started off by trying to think of all the sorts of things he knew the woman actually liked. In the time they’d come to know one another and even develop a relationship he’d learned there was a lot more to Satya “Symmetra” Vaswani than met the eye.

For example, everyone who was anyone knew she was an amazing architect but her fascination went much deeper. She adored art, especially in the 3rd dimension in all its forms such as sculpture, CGI and architecture. And it was more than just art appreciation of simply liking art a lot. For Symmetra that 3rd dimension was a special interest of hers. Going as far as to memorize the names of many great artists as a child and study their styles and inspiration. Even to this day if someone brought the subject up Symmetra could talk for hours on end about art. Many times Junkrat had gotten so caught he almost fooled himself into liking art too just because of how much passion Satya had for the stuff! And it was that dedication and good eye in Junkrat’s opinion that had helped Symmetra become an even greater architect. She didn’t just see boring towers waiting to be built in over-crowded cities. She saw art and beauty. She wanted to inspire people the way old artists had inspired her.

Also despite being such a regal, poised woman, Symmetra loved to stim. Junkrat had seen her fiddle with a few physical things before, a pen, an object she’d just built, but she stimmed the most with her hard light. It reminded Junkrat of a man he’d known back in Junkertown who would wind up old strings in his hand into all different kinds of shapes. Symmetra would do so with her blue lights, turning them this way and that until they created these different crystals or towers of interwoven triangles. Whenever she had down time, or felt nervous, or found herself trying to focus intently on a project, like clockwork her mechanical hand would begin glowing and she’d set off forming light structures. And while most of the time Symmetra’s stim shapes were just nonsense pattern’s that built nothing, sometimes Junkrat caught her making little intricate crystals or flowers.

She also loved tea, whenever the two of them went out to a café it was a given that while Junkrat got his boba, Symmetra would get her own cup of tea. Though unlike his own iced, half sweet brew, Symmetra preferred a cup of warm freshly-brewed stuff without any sort of milk or sugar. And while she usually got similar things, a few times when she claimed to want to “treat herself” she would order these special brews that came in a glass pot where you could watch as a flower slowly bloomed in the tea or little pearls of dry leaves would unfurl in a nice little showy display.

She also had a soft spot for kids. So worst comes to worst, Junkrat could bring a kid like Efi along with him to make sure Symmetra didn’t do anything rash in front of the children. She always wanted to make a good impression on kids, always acting polite and listening to what they had to say.

And while she wasn’t very good at caring for plants she still appreciated how they looked and their ability “to seem so simple but truly be so complicated on the cellular level” as she put it.

Oh, and even though it could make her homesick at times she still adored Bollywood. The music, the outfits and costumes, the dancing, the movies, all of it!

So at least Junkrat had that, now all he needed to do was figure out what pieces he could use to make things up to Symmetra.

Most of the things he could recall didn’t seem to fit together in any perfect pictures. However Junkrat was nothing if not an inventor. And it was his specialty to take small things that seemed like nothing to others and turn them into something they couldn’t ignore… usually bombs. But he knew that he could figure out how all these small pieces of Symmetra’s interests could fit together into something so great she would have no choice but to stop being mad at him!

Two days later he finally got something and was ready to show it to Symmetra, along with what he hoped would make a good apology.

Symmetra had been in the middle of creating a new model when Junkrat slid a cardboard box in front of her, disrupting her hard light.

“What is this Junkrat?” She asked in a humorless dry tone.

Trying not to lose his cool, Junkrat cleared his throat. “Uh, why don’t you open it up and find out?”

Sighing through her nose, Symmetra dispersed the light from her gauntlet and began unwrapping Junkrat’s gift. He’d done a quick sloppy job taping the box closed, Junkrat expected her to at least comment on the crummy job he did wrapping. But she didn’t say anything. She just continued to silently unwrap the box until she could finally pull the tabs apart and see what Junkrat had given her.

Inside was what could probably be best described as an oversized desk ornament. A shelf if you were feeling generous. Held together by a metal frame a few pedestals branched out from a base. Each branch seemed to be molded to look like shining towers in Utopaea, though rather than the shining silver and gold of the city these were made from a more rustic metal that had been painted orange and blue. And within each “tower” were different hollowed out spaces. Some of which were already taken up by packages of floral teas or little succulent plants. And scattered all about the little towers were photos and cut pictures. Some Junkrat had found of different cities Vishkar had constructed like Utopaea or Oasis, others that seemed to just be the more natural landscapes of India, but mostly there was pictures taken of their base in Gibraltar, and of all the people the pair now considered friends.

“Tah-dah!” Junkrat sang, making jazz hands. “A little something to remind ya of home!”

Symmetra was trying to keep their face neutral. But Junkrat had seen the look of surprise on her face as she’d taken the little city out of its box, and how that spark of joy had yet to leave her eyes as she ran her hand along the lovingly crafted towers, modeled after her own work.

“This is indeed a fine show of craftsmanship.” Symmetra said in a bored tone, not even her voice reflected that happiness Junkrat had seen in her eyes. But as she turned her head to Junkrat, she tried to remain serious. “What on earth prompted you to build such a thing?”

“Oh you know, I couldn’t help but notice you’ve been… eh, off these past few days. And I thought, I ought to make’ya something nice and… cheer you up?”

Symmretra raised an eyebrow, though she had yet to let go of the little city. “You spent all this time making this thing just to cheer me up?” She asked, repeating his own words.

“Also, I uh, I wanted to apologize.” Junkrat said nervously, hand subconsciously going to rub at the back of his head. He could hardly look at her and waited for the other shoe to drop.

“So yeah, I’m real sorry ‘Metra. About all… that?”

Whatever small look of happiness on Symmetra’s face seemed to instantly die as she looked at him directly. For a moment Junkrat was horrified that she was going to smash Junkrat’s gift on the ground but instead she set it down gently in the center of her workbench. Her constant, emotionless gaze however did little to make Junkrat feel any better.

“Tell me Junkrat, do you know why you’re sorry?”

And here it was. The moment Junkrat had been trying to avoid. He honestly had no idea what’d he’d done to piss her off. His best bet was he broke something on accident, but he couldn’t recall smashing anything recently. Plus everything in Symmetra’s side of the workshop seemed to be in good condition. His only other guess was that maybe she thought he smelled or something, but he’d been staying on top of his hygiene more recently. Besides that he had nothing. Absolutely nothing.

“Uhhhhhhh-”

All at once that calm exterior was dropped and Satya glowered at Jamison with a fire normally only left to the battlefield. “You completely humiliated me in front of my Vishkar associates!”

“Oh, that’s what that was? When the hell’d I do that?”

“Last Tuesday. I was in the middle of a call with my associates to update them on my work. And I’d explicitly asked that everyone stay out of the workshop while I made my call. And not only did you walk through! But you were completely shirtless and scratching yourself!”

Everything finally fell into place, Junkrat wanted to say something more thought-out but all that came out was “Ohhhhhhhhhh…”

“I can’t believe you!” Symmetra continued, massaging her temples. “After you left I was reprimanded for your lack of dress code, or professionalism of any sort! It was so humiliating!”

“Hey at least you weren’t the one runnin’around shirtless!” Junkrat tried to joke, the only reaction he got from Symmetra was another glare. Though she was already starting to lose that fire from moments before. “And Overwatch don’t even have a dress code. No one’s ever got on me case for not wearing shirts before.”

“I know, and there is no policies here on how to dress.” Symmetra agreed. “It’s just, I feel like as I’ve been here I’ve grown more lack with my own self-discipline… And my meeting was another harsh reminder that I still have responsibilities. A vision to uphold”

Junkrat frowned. “That sounds like Vishkar talk.”

“Well, I do owe them my entire career.” Symmetra argued. “My education… The opportunities they gave me. My whole life even.”

“Nah.”                                                                  

“No?”

“I don’t agree with that.” Junkrat said. “I think no matter how you would’a ended up right here doing what you’re doing. Whether you got roped up with a fancy company or not.”

“But without Vishkar’s training I wouldn’t know how to manipulate hardlight.” Symmetra said.

“No, I mean bigger than that.” Junkrat continued. Reaching over to grab the little city he’d built her. “No matter how, you’d find a way to do what you do. Sure you can get trained or whatever but you got something bigger than all that. You got a mind. You got ideas and dreams. And you do what you do to make things happen. And you wanna help people. Like really help people.”

Symmetra said nothing, watching as Junkrat placed the city back onto her workbench, sliding it closer so she could see some of the pictures of their Overwatch team.

“So I’m sorry I made an ass of myself in front of those suites. But you know what? I don’t care about any of those blokes! And I don’t think you should either. Cause no matter what you’re already lightyears ahead of those bastards, no matter how they try to drag you down and make you feel bad!”

“You really think so?” Satya asked.

“Sure!” Jamison said, suddenly realize he’d gotten so loud as he talked that he was practically shouting.

But then, for the first time in days, Jamison saw Satya smile, and he knew everything he’d said and done had been worth it.

“Thank you Jamison…”

“Any time darl!”

[grimelords]

I realised I finished writing up my January playlist and then forgot to post it, so I’m doing it here and now at the tail end of February. It’s 3 hours of good music, complete from A$AP Ferg to ZZ Top. Please enjoy.

​Dream House - Deafheaven: I started the year off with extreme mental anguish at the realisation that Sunbather is five years old this year and that I am thusly one million years old and have wasted my youth. That aside, Dream House is still an incredible song. It does what the best songs do and speaks directly to the teenaged part of your brain that thinks nobody will ever understand you like this song does right now. It is an overwhelming experience, the whole album is, and very good for having an embarrassing amount of emotions while you're driving alone and it's very loud.

Hold My Liquor - Kanye West: When this song came out I remember someone said the best musical moment of 2013 was when you couldn't tell the difference between Chief Keef and Justin Vernon on this song and I'm inclined to agree.

Melody 4 - Tera Melos: I've talked about this album at length in these playlists and probably featured almost every song at this point but I'll just say, what I like so much about this song is how it moves so effortlessly between a very melodic almost pop-punk type chorus before disintegrating into stop start mathematics and back again before you even notice.

B Boy (feat Big Sean & A$AP Ferg) - Meek Mill: I don't know how the fuck he did it, but somehow Meek Mill got a bunch of rappers who are normally nothing amazing (Meek included) to operate at the absolute top of their game for whole verse each. Highlights especially are 'I got commas on commas on commas, and I ain't talkin about a run on sentence!' 'put my P up on her head like that bitch is reppin Philly, and I wheelie in the pussy like my n**** meek milly' and the immediate about turn of A$Ap Ferg saying 'You thinkin' Khloe don't know me, I'm in the car dashin' haters/I'm in the Kardashian, get it? I'm lyin', can't I pretend?/They say fake it 'til you make it, well let the fakin' begin!'

Shabba REMIX - A$AP Ferg, Shabba Ranks, Busta Rhymes, Migos: This song's a good example of how many different flows you can get to work over one beat, and how much it improves the song. Ferg is so fast and so varied, then Migos even it out with straight triplets for most of their verse before Busta kills it by just doing absolutely everything. Great job everyone.

Attak (feat. Danny Brown) - Rustie: I normally can't stand Danny Brown but he kills this song. I still have a lot of feelings about Rustie, who showed so much promise for being the weirdo that dance music needed before presumably watching HudMo make a million producing for Kanye and friends and deciding to remove every interesting element from his music to make it palatable for rappers. That is, at least, my theory. This song is great, but every other song on this album is an example of this approach not working and instead producing boring, half assed songs where nobody's at their full potential.

Ultra Thizz - Rustie: Compare it to this, the busiest song in the world. The way the melody of the bassline that sounds like it's about to swallow you whole contends with the synth melody AND the pitched up vocal melody for your attention, they all come it at once and trade barbs before being superseded by a fuzzy, inscrutable guitar solo which fades out and leaves us back at the start. What I love about this song is the absolute maximalism and hypercolour sounds, combined with the only simple melody being the big chord stabs that centre the piece combine into a total sensory experience. Not to mention the rhythms, where absolutely every part of it seems to be slightly stranger than you expect, constantly dropping one beat before or after you expect - your first clue is the snare build at the start suddenly splitting into triplets.

If I Were A Carpenter - Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash: My girlfriend showed me this song and it unlocked a third of the triangle in my brain where this song, Wichita Lineman by Glen Campbell and The Engine Driver by The Decemberists make a sort of trinity of songs about having a job and thinking about Wife. They're all very very good too.

12 Bricks - OG Maco: Outside of the famous video, which is very good, this song is also incredible. Another in the pantheon of songs with extremely minimal instrumentation where the vocal performance is so good it doesn't need anything. The slight delay makes all the screaming and wooing toward the end just pile on top of each other in waves building the texture up until it finally levels out.

Requiem Para Um Amor - Toquinho: I really cannot get enough of the organ in this song. I don't think I've ever heard a classical guitar/electric organ duet before and now I'm hungry for more.

You Can Be A Robot, Too - Shintaro Sakamoto: This song appeared on my Discover Weekly playlist and I'm not really sure why but it's very good. I can't tell if it's actually a children's song or just playful like one but I appreciate it either way. When it started playing from the playlist the album cover was a cartoon of a kid surrounded by robots, but when I tried to add it to a playlist the art changed to a green picture of a skeleton playing a lap steel guitar with an explosion in the background, which felt very cursed to me.

Raver - Burial: This song has always stood out to me on Untrue because of how straightforward the beat is. Under anyone else's control this would be a normal song but instead it's this incredibly detailed, messy piece of work that feels like looking at a house song through a dirty window. I also have no proof at all to back this up but in my mind the xylophone line is sampled from Donkey Kong 64 or possibly Banjo Kazooie.

Cavalettas - The Mars Volta: I remember reading a bad review of this album when it came out that was mad because it pulled 'the most egregious studio trick in recent memory' by having the whole mix except for one guitar get sucked down into a wormhole multiple times, including the bass getting physically detuned until you can hear the strings slack before resuming as normal a second later. In my opinion it's incredibly funny and it sounds good so more bands should do it. Also the other day I saw the drummer Thomas Pridgen comment on Omar Rodriguez's instagram 'check ur dms bro'. Imagine being in a band with someone for a decade and not having their number, insane.

Flash Back - Rustie: Honestly I cannot get enough of this bassline. This song is another good example of what I was talking about with Rustie dumbing his melodies down after this album, the main line in this winds around and around itself in this loping confused rhythm and against the bass that's also syncopated it just ends up sounding like hypercolour, which is a feat for a song that's basically just those two melodies against each other for the bulk of it with some plastic choir stabs throughout.

Heaven - DJ Sammy: What an absolute perennial banger. Can you believe this AND Boys Of Summer were on the same album? Incredible stuff DJ Sammy. I've been meaning to make a playlist of all the 90s/2000s lame rave songs that are secretly very emotional and have definitely inspired absolute emotional turmoil in ravers the world over like this Better Off Alone and Heaven Is A Place On Earth, but for now just enjoy the Bryan Adams classic as reimagined by DJ Sammy.

Stalking To A Stranger (Planets Collide Remix) - The Avalanches: I owe this song a lot because it not only for me into Hunters And Collectors, who it turns out have far better and angrier songs than Holy Grail, but it also turned me onto Vertigo/Relight My Fire by Dan Hartman which is sampled at the start. When this song came out it was the first new Avalanches song in a decade or so and nobody knew what to make of it because suddenly Avalanches songs just have screaming men in them, which was very good.

Miracle - Kimbra: I think that very soon everyone is going to figure out that Kimbra has been the pop genius the world needs and she's been here all along.

Wayfaring Stranger (Burial Remix) - Jamie Woon: Jamie Woon got a raw deal in my opinion. He had a song remixed by Burial, and then Burial co-produced Night Air for him and he was the king of dark and mysterious British dubstep wave, but then James Blake and everyone else came along and sort of overshadowed him totally. Now that whole movement is sort of clouded because of how quickly 'dubstep' came to mean 'skrillex', and for some reason the only place this song is on Spotify is a compilation called The World's Heaviest Dubstep, Grime & Bass.

Chanbara - At The Drive-In: A lot of writing about At The Drive-In focuses on how they never really captured the ferocity of their live shows on record until Relationship Of Command but the absolutely big screams on this working against the salsa bongo rhythms is an amazing thing. I also kind of prefer the weedy half-clean guitar sounds on this and their first album especially to Relationship of Command's crunchier sound, it feels like it gives a lot more space to the weird noodling melodies that come and go.

All Medicated Geniuses - Pretty Girls Make Graves: The intro of this song absolutely blew my 15 year old math rock mind with how simply it transitions from the snare on the beat to the snare off the beat. It is endlessly fascinating to me because I am a dummy. Every part of this song is amazing to me, from the big swing band bassline behind the guitar that's sort of just screaming through the verses and absolutely on its own journey through the chorus to the drums for the reasons I already mentioned but also the way they keep everything straight and absolutely refuse to indulge the guitar's worst math impulses.

Dangerous - The xx: I really love the horns in this song, and the big air raid sirens toward the end. It is still shocking to me that The xx transitioning to making upbeat bangers worked out for them but I'm so glad that they did.

Running - Bully: I was listening to a podcast about water management policy and infrastructure called Water You Talking About because I am young and cool and for some reason they were using the chorus of this song where she goes 'I'LL ADMIT IT! I GET ANXIOUS TOO!' as their theme song in an episode which is I suppose appropriate but also really made me laugh.

Simultaneous Contrasts - Warehouse: The singer in this band has my new favourite voice, it's amazing. She sounds like she's eaten a belt sander or something. I love the way the guitar line follows her vocals up in the chorus and also just how extremely busy the whole band is around her. They remind me of some kind of alternate universe Life Without Buildings where she's pissed off instead of just beguiling.

Light Up The Night - The Protomen: There's no reason this band should be good. They wrote a rock opera based on the story of Megaman inspired by Queen and Bruce Springsteen and it actually turned out incredible somehow. Unfortunately since this album came out almost a decade ago all they've done is a couple of live albums and covers albums, so I may never get the resolution I crave on the story of Thomas Light and Joe and whoever.

Tonto - Battles: Here's what's so good about this song: it spends 2 and a half minutes winding up to a huge centrepiece that's over way too soon and then the next 4 minutes slowly slowly slowly winding down to absolute zero. It's like the opposite of how to write a good song but it's absolutely enthralling.

Wall Street - Battles: Around a minute into this, there's two snare hits where it sounds like it's part of a roll that got digitally muted that I am obsessed with. Every part of this song is incredible, but the drums throughout alternate between sounding like he's desperately trying to keep up and sounding like pure power and total command. I especially love the big brassy snare sound that comes up from underneath occasionally to pull the brakes. The performance of this song that Battles did for La Blogoteque is one of my favourite videos on youtube.

Every Single Line Means Something - Marnie Stern: For about a week this month I developed a quiet mania about John Stanier from Battles filling in on drums in the Late Night With Seth Myers Band (for some reason), and then I found out that Marnie Stern is apparently in that band as well and it really threw me for a loop. I don't really know why this was such an incredible thing or why I focused on it so much, maybe something I need to figure out, but it reminded me of this great song so that's a positive. This is some of my favourite work Zach Hill has ever done because he's being forced to play pretty much a normal backbeat for a lot of this song and it feels like he's been cursed by a witch. The amount of power he's putting out for such a straightforward idea is incredible. Of course because it's Zach Hill he's also doing the absolute most in every other part of the song. I haven't even mentioned how much I love Marnie on her own song! Anyway, listen to this whole album.

Hacker - Death Grips: I never got into the hype around Death Grips when they were the thing, and haven't really investigated their discography past this album, but this song is an absolute masterpiece and probably everything you ever need to know about them. Lyrically between this and 'I've Seen Footage' there's a pretty neat summation of their worldview, paranoid because your existence is inextricably linked to the internet and everything that entails, 'having conversations with your car alarm'. 'make your water break at the apple store,'

Pass The Word (Love's The Word) - The Mad Lads: I was looking up where the sample's from in Hilltop Hoods' Chase That Feeling and it turns out it's this song. Try to listen to this whole intro. He's trying to give a sermon but his dumbshit friends simply will not shut the fuck up for fully three whole minutes. Other than the intro the song is very, very good.

Monkey Time '69 - The Mad Lads: I also found this other song by the Mad Lads called 'Monkey Time '69', which to me is the definition of comedy.

She's Got Guns - The Go! Team: New Go Team album! Unfortunately nothing on it sort of lived up to the promise of the first two singles Mayday and Semicircle song, but this song is still a hit. The way this is mixed is so good, the brass behind the massive bass and spacious drums and the vocals sort of backgrounded within it all, very appealing.

Coast To Coast - Tune-Yards:It feels weird that a Tune-Yards song can be this smooth. A sort of apocalyptic, politics is ruined, new york is sinking, funky smooth jam.

Cattle And The Creeping Things - The Hold Steady: I've never listened to much of The Hold Steady outside of this album because I don't feel like I really need to, it's got everything I'd ever need. Sorry to always to talk about drums but the amount of reverb on them in this song makes them sound absolutely huge and I really love it, especially in the last verse they just become massive. Also I went through a long period of being obsessed with the lyrics of this song, it's a good distillation of this whole album's christian cult/drugs in middle america story and it is completely my shit.

Losing All Sense - Grizzly Bear: There's something about Painted Ruins that's impenetrable to me. I keep listening to it and only absorbing about one song at a time, totally loving that song and then ignoring the rest of the album. Now it's Losing All Sense.

Blue Cheese - Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile: This song is like Kurt Vile in his purest form, just sort of strumming and talking about whatever the fuck. The best part of this song is when they go 'woo hoo!!!' then he whistles a little bit and then says 'here come the lone ranger!' in an elvis voice and plays a solo that sounds like he's tuning his guitar. Also right at the end you can hear someone's phone message tone going off.

Catch Me If You Can Theme - John Williams: John Williams didn't have to go as hard as he did with the Catch Me If You Can theme. I have this in my head all the time. I love the rapid shifts in this recording, because I guess it's functioning as the overture so he's just cycling through every different variation he's got in his aresenal.

I've Seen Footage - Death Grips: It's good that Death Grips' most popular song is about how the internet melts your brain There's a good quote from Zach Hill about where the title came from: 'The line “I’ve Seen Footage” was from a conversation I had with this street-person dude in Sacramento named Snake Eyes. A friend of ours recorded him on the porch in a conversation– he didn’t know he was being recorded. He was all fucked up on drugs and shit, just rattling off all this crazy information. He was talking about structures on the moon. I mean, I talk about those things, too. So we were talking about moon structures, and Snake Eyes says, “I’ve seen footage! I’ve seen footage of it!” And I was like, “That’s good!”

The Bucket - Kings Of Leon:It seems impossible that Kings Of Leon were a really good band at one point but here's the proof.

Standing Next To Me - The Last Shadow Puppets: I'm a truther for Muse ripping off Knights Of Cydonia from The Age Of The Understatement by The Last Shadow Puppets but that's a post for another time. This is a perfect song in my opinion. The absolute pace of it, the minimal drums that are just sort of accenting the strumming, the huge sweeping strings elevating the whole thing, the fact that it's over in just over two minutes. Incredible.

Jesus Just Left Chicago (live) - ZZ Top: Nobody believes me when I tell them but ZZ Top are very good. I have a fantasy about this song that ZZ Top were ringleaders of a sort of revival blues cult and this song is gospel to them. Jesus did really leave Chicago and he's heading towards California and we will be here waiting for him. You may not see him, but he sees you and he loves you. This and the La Grange recording are absolutely furious for live recordings, I love how much crowd noise there is in it throughout, they are truly fucking loving it.

La Grange (live) - ZZ Top: Especially here, my god they love it. La Grange is a good song because it's just a good riff and one verse of nonsense lyrics that are just an excuse to go the fuck off for the remainder. The huge drum fill and the 'have mercy everybody!!' is massive, the solos are ferocious, and somehow this song that feels like it could jam out for 15 minutes is reined in and tightly structured and has somewhat abrupt end.

Barracuda - Heart: Hey remember Guitar Hero? Cause I had ptsd flashbacks when this song came on during I, Tonya.

Bloodmeat - Protest The Hero: I don't know how exactly Protest The Hero pivoted from a concept album about a goddess(?) being executed(?) and bringing about a new genderless utopian age(?) to their second album opening with this very bicep emoji classic metal song about the mongol hordes slaughtering all who oppose them, but good for them I suppose.

Born On A Day The Sun Didn't Rise - Black Moth Super Rainbow: The drums in this song have no place being that huge. Black Moth Super Rainbow are good and I can't believe I hadn't listened to them in years until I woke up with this song in my head one morning, like an omen.

Been Drinkin' Water Out Of A Hollow Log - Mississippi Fred McDowell: Literalyl every Mississippi Fred McDowell song sounds exactly the same which is good because if it works why change it. In my understanding this song seems to be about a man dying of hunger and thirst on purpose to meet god, which is very good to me.

Listen here.

[mathematicianadda]

First proofs: Thales and the beginnings of geometry

Proof-oriented geometry began with Thales. The theorems attributed to him encapsulate two modes of doing mathematics, suggesting that the idea of proof could have come from either of two sources: attention to patterns and relations that emerge from explorative construction and play, or the realisation that “obvious” things can be demonstrated using formal definitions and proof by contradiction.

Transcript

How did proofs begin? It’s like a chicken-or-the-egg conundrum. Why would anyone sit down and say to themselves “I’m gonna prove some theorems today” when nobody had ever done such a thing before? How could that idea enter someone’s mind out of the blue like that?

In fact, we kind of know the answer. The Greek tradition tells us who had this lightbulb moment: Thales. Around the year -600 or so. Hundreds of years before we have any direct historical sources for Greek geometry. But we still sort of know what Thales proved, more or less. Later sources tell us about Thales. History is perhaps mixed with legend in those kinds of accounts, but key aspects are likely to be quite reliable. More fact than fiction. Let’s analyse that question, the credibility question, in a bit more depth later, but first let’s take the stories at face value and see how we can relive the creation of deductive geometry as it is conveyed in these Greek histories.

So, here we go: What was the first theorem ever proved? What was the spark that started the wildfire of axiomatic-deductive mathematics? The best guess, based on historical evidence, goes like this. That love-at-first-sight moment, that theorem that opened our eyes to the power of mathematical proof, was: That a diameter cuts a circle in half.

Pretty disappointing, isn’t it? What a lame theorem. It’s barely even a theorem at all. How can you fall in love with geometry by proving something so trivial and obvious?

But don’t despair. It is nice, actually. It’s not about the theorem, it’s about the proof.

Here’s how you prove it. Suppose not. This is going to be a proof by contradiction. Suppose the diameter does not divide the circle into two equal halves. Very well, so we have a line going through the midpoint of a circle, and it’s cut into two pieces. And we suppose that those two pieces are not the same. Take one of the pieces and flip it onto the other. Like you fold an omelet or a crepe. The pieces were not equal, we assumed, so when you flip one on top of the other they don’t match up. So there must be some place where one of the two pieces is sticking out beyond the other. Now, draw a radius in that direction, from the midpoint of the circle to the place on the perimeter where the two halves don’t match up. Then one radius is longer than the other. But this means that the thing wasn’t a circle to start with. A circle is a figure that’s equally far away from the midpoint in all directions. That’s what being a circle means.

So we have proved that two things are incompatible with one another: You can’t be both a circle, and have mis-matched halves. Because if you have mis-matched halves you also have “unequal radii” and that means you’re not a circle.

So a circle must have equal halves. Bam. Theorem. It’s a boring result but a gorgeous proof. Or a suggestive proof. It’s a proof that hints at a new world.

Thales must have felt like a wizard who just discovered he had superpowers. “Woah, you can do that?!” By pure reasoning, by drawing out consequences of a definition, one can prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that certain statements could not possibly be wrong? That’s a thing? That’s something one can do? Wow. Let’s do that to everything! Right?

So that’s how Thales discovered proof. As best as we can guess.

A few other theorems are attributed to Thales as well. I want to bring up one in particular that I think is also a kind of archetype of what mathematics is all about.

The theorem we just saw, about the diameter bisecting the circle, perfectly embodies one prototypical mode of mathematical reasoning. The pure mathematics paradigm, you might call it. Logical consequences of definitions, proofs by contradiction. That kind of thing. Thales’s proof really hits the nail on the head with that whole aesthetic. We’ve been doing the same thing over and over ever since. A modern course in, say, group theory, for example, is just Thales’s proof idea applied five hundred times over, basically.

Now I want to take another one of the results attributed to Thales, and I want to argue that it is emblematic of another mode of mathematical thought. It’s a second road to proof. This second way is based more on play, exploration, discovery, rather than logic and definitions.

The example I want to use to make this point is what is indeed often called simply “Thales’s Theorem.” Which states that any triangle raised on the diameter of a circle has a right angle. So, in other words, picture a circle. Cut it in half with a diameter. Now raise a triangle, using this diameter as one of its sides, and the third vertex of the triangle is on the circle somewhere. So it looks like a kind of tent, sticking up from the diameter. And it could be an asymmetrical tent that is pointed more to one side or the other. No matter how you pitch this tent, as long as the tip of it is any point on the circle, then the angle between the two walls of the tent at that point, at the tip, is going to be a right angle, 90 degrees. That’s Thales’s Theorem.

How might Thales have proved this theorem? We don’t really know that based on historical evidence unfortunately. But let’s consider one hypothesis that makes sense contextually.

We must imagine that Thales would have stumbled upon the proof somehow. We are not trying to explain how someone might think of a proof of this theorem per se. That’s the wrong perspective because it takes for granted that in mathematics one tries to prove things. What we need to explain is where this vision to prove everything in geometry came from in the first place. How could someone have struck upon Thales’s Theorem unintentionally, as it were, and through that accident become aware of the idea of deductive geometry?

Indeed Thales’s Theorem is not terribly interesting or important in itself. If you had this vision of subjecting all of geometry to systematic proofs, why would you start with this theorem, or make this theorem such a center piece, as Thales supposedly did? You wouldn’t.

The interesting thing about Thales’s Theorem is not that is was one of the first results to which mathematicians applied deductive proof. Rather, the interesting thing about it is that it was the occasion for mathematicians to stumble upon the very idea of proof itself, unintentionally.

There’s a story about Thales falling into a well because he got so caught up in astronomical reasoning that he forgot his surroundings. It’s recorded in Plato: “While he was studying the stars and looking upwards, he fell into a pit. Because he was so eager to know the things in the sky, he could not see what was before him at his very feet.”

A legend maybe, but the discovery of Thales’s Theorem must have been a little bit like that too. Discovering mathematical proof must have been like falling into a pit. You are looking in one direction, and boom, suddenly you find yourself having accidentally smashed face first into this completely unrelated new thing that you didn’t know existed.

How could Thales’s Theorem be like that? Among all the world’s theorems, what makes Thales’s Theorem particularly conducive to this kind of fortuitous discovery of proof?

Here’s my hypothesis. In this age of innocence, before anyone knew anything about proof, people still liked shapes. The had ruler and compass. They used these tools for measuring fields and whatnot, but they also liked the aesthetic of it.

They were playing around with ruler and compass. Playing with shapes. After five minutes of playing with a compass you discover how to draw a regular hexagon. Remember? You probably did this as a kid. Draw a circle, and then, without changing the compass opening, run the compass along the circumference. It fits exactly six times. A very pleasing shape.

We know for a fact that people did this before Thales. There are hexagonal tiling patterns in Mesopotamian mosaics from as early as about -700.

Dodecahedra are another one of those things. The dodecahedron is like those twelve-side dice that you use in Dungeons and Dragons and stuff like that. Do-deca-hedron, it’s literally: two-ten-sided. So twelve-sided, in other words. Twelve faces, each of which is a regular pentagon. These things are in the archeological record. People made them of stone and bronze. A couple of dozen of dodecahedra from antiquity have been found, the oldest ones even predating Thales. They were used perhaps for oracular purposes, like tarot cards or something. Or maybe for board games, who knows?

In any case, my point is that people were interested in geometrical designs for various purposes: artistic, cultural, and so on. Not just measuring fields for tax purposes. And they were clearly working with instruments such as ruler and compass to make these things.

It’s easy to arrive at Thales’s Theorem by just playing around with ruler and compass, trying to draw pretty things. Start with a rectangle. Draw its diagonals. Put the needle of a compass where they cross, right in the midpoint of the rectangle. Set the pen of the compass to one of the corners of the rectangle. Now spin it. You get a circle that fits perfectly, snugly, around the rectangle.

But look what emerged. A diagonal of the rectangle becomes a diameter of the circle. And the rectangle pieces sticking out from it are precisely those kind of “tent” triangles that Thales’s Theorem is talking about. This suddenly makes the theorem obvious.

Why is Thales’s Theorem true? Why does any of those “tents” raised on the diameter of a circle have a right angle? It’s because it comes from a rectangle. Any such tent is half a rectangle. This is a powerful shift of perspective. By looking at the triangle this way we reveal hidden relationships, a hidden order in the nature of things. Certain angles must always be right angles by a sort of metaphysical necessity, as it were. Our eyes have been opened, maybe for the first time, to the existence of these kinds of necessities, these kinds of hidden relationships that are out there for the thinking person to uncover.

So the key is this shift of perspective that the triangle is “really” half a rectangle. Suppose instead that we had been stuck in the point of view is that we are staring at a triangle inscribed in a circle. Then the kinds of associations and ideas that suggest themselves to us are not so useful for proving this theorem. From that point of view, if you were looking for a proof, what would you do? Maybe you would for example connect the midpoint of the circle to the tip of the triangle. So now you have two smaller triangles. What are you going to do with those? Something with angle sums and so on? Or maybe you would be tempted to drop the perpendicular instead from the tip of the triangle, and then you can use the Pythagorean Theorem of the two small triangles you get.

These kinds of things are not what we want. Those kinds of approaches quickly become too technical. This was supposed to be the beginnings of geometry, remember. You are not supposed to use a bunch previous results for the proof. It should be a proof from first principles. A proof before all other proofs.

The idea that the triangle is “really” half a rectangle is different. It transforms how we look at the diagram. It changes the emphasis. It changes what we think of as primary. Now the rectangle comes first, and the triangle second, and the circle last. The theorem actually isn’t so much about circles at all, so to speak, from this point of view. The circle is just a kind of secondary artefact.

With this proof we are like artists. We take a step back from the canvas and tilt our heads and have this epiphany. And the epiphany was made possible by the way we had played with these ideas previously. We were just playing around with ruler and compass, we explored triangles and rectangles and circles with an open-minded affection. Epiphanies like Thales’s Theorem emerge from this play. Inspiration comes naturally in that context.

Unlike those other boring proofs I alluded to, that were based on cutting the triangle up and throwing the book at it: angle sums, Pythagorean Theorem, everything we can think of. That’s an uninspired approach, a brute force approach. It lacks that aesthetic inspiration, that epiphany of revealing the true nature of the triangle, and its other half that it was destined to be reunited with.

Geometry could not have started with these kinds of by-the-book proofs, because they only make sense after there is a geometry book to begin with. But geometry could have started with the epiphany type of proof. So that’s a way in which someone like Thales might have arrived at the idea of proof through playing around with ruler and compass.

Perhaps you are familiar with “Lockhart’s Lament”: a great essay on what is wrong with mathematics education. Go read it, it’s available online. It is interesting that Lockhart uses this very example to make his point. He describes how his students discovered Thales’s Theorem basically the way I’m saying that Thales might have done so. He also eloquently captures how this is so much more satisfying than a dry by-the-book proof.

It’s not for nothing that history and education go together on this point. Proof must have started with a compelling aesthetic experience or wow moment. There was no other way at the time. There was no one to force Thales to memorise facts for an exam. Discovery compelled him to value mathematics. If we want to foster intrinsic motivation in our students, it’s a good idea to consider what made people fall in love with these ideas in the first place. First love is always the purest and most innocent. Modern textbooks are like arranged marriages forced upon the students. But history always has the true love story.

Nevertheless, for all this, you might still think that Thales’s Theorem is a bit boring. Something something is always a right angle. So what? Who cares?

As I tried to argue, it was probably not the theorem per se that was impressive to Thales and his contemporaries, but rather the idea that there is such a thing as theorems and proofs at all. There are hidden truths out there that can be uncovered through reasoning. Remarkable.

But in fact even the theorem itself is quite interesting. Let me show you something cool you can do with Thales’s Theorem.

There’s an ancient legend about Queen Dido. Daughter of the king of Tyre, a major city in antiquity. You can still see the ruins of this ancient city in present-day Lebanon. At a certain point Dido had to flee, because of court intrigues. Murders and betrayals and so on. So she grabs a couple of diadems off her nightstand, maybe a chest of gold she put aside for a rainy day, and hastily sails off into the night. With hardly a friend left in the world.

She has to go all the way to present-day Tunisia, thousands of kilometers away, and try to start over somehow, in a manner befitting a royal. Using her treasure chest, she strikes a bargain to buy some land. As much land as she can enclose with the skin of an ox, the story goes. So she cuts the ox hide into thin strips and ties them together, and now what? So now she has this long string, which she can use as a kind of fence to seal off the land she wants.

But what shape to make it? A square, a rectangle, a triangle? No. Dido knows better. Perhaps her royal education included mathematics. Make it round. That’s the best way. The circle has the maximal area among all figures with a given perimeter. Or in this case, since she was by the ocean: a semi-circle, with the shoreline as a natural boundary on the other side.

Let’s prove this. That the semi-circle is the best choice. I’m going to prove this by contradiction: Suppose somebody has fenced in an area that is not semi-circular; then I can show how to make it better: how to move the fence so that the area becomes even bigger, without adding any more fence.

Ok, so you have the shoreline, that’s a straight line. And from one point on the shore, going inland you have this fence which then comes back down and meets the shore again in some other point. So together with the shoreline it closes off a certain area.

Suppose this shape is not a semi-circle. If it was a semi-circle, Thales’s Theorem would apply. And it would tell you that this angle, what I called the tent angle, at any point along the fence would be a right angle. So if the shape is not a semi-circle, there must be some point along the fence where this angle is not a right angle.

I say that making this angle a right angle improves the amount of area covered. You can picture it like this. So you have this shape enclosed by the fence: imagine that you have that cut out of cardboard. And on the perimeter you have some point marked where the tent angle is not a right angel. So on your cardboard you have that triangle drawn: a triangle consisting of the straight shoreline on one side, and the two lines from its endpoints going up to meet at the tent point on the perimeter.

Let’s cut that triangle out of the cardboard. So you’re left with two pieces: whatever bits that were sticking out from the triangle sides. Now move those two pieces so that you make the tent angle a right angle. This means moving the endpoints along the shoreline. As you move the two points on the shoreline, you change the angle at which the two cardboard pieces meet. The two cardboard pieces meet in a single point, the tent point, and that’s like a hinge that can open or close to a bigger or smaller angle. So you slide these things around until that hinge angle becomes 90 degrees.

Note that you didn’t change the perimeter this way. You just moved the same amount of fence around.

But you did increase the area enclosed, in fact. Because if you have two sticks of fixed length, and you want to make the biggest triangle you can with those sticks, the best way is to make the angle between them a right angle. That’s quite clear intuitively. You know that the area of a triangle is base times height over two. So if one of your sticks is the base, then to maximise the area you want to maximise the height, that is to say the perpendicular height going up from the base, which is obviously done by pointing the other stick straight up at right angles.

So what this proves is that, for any fence enclosure that is not a semi-circle, you can make a better one. You can move the fence around and make the area bigger. So the semi-circle is the best solution, and all other ones are less good.

I don’t know if you could visualise all of that. But maybe try reconstructing this argument for yourself later. It really is very intuitive and beautiful.

So what’s the moral of the story then? Mathematically, it is an answer to the “so what?” question regarding Thales’s Theorem. It may have seemed like a boring enough theorem, but here we see it in action in a beautiful and unexpected way, as a key ingredient in this proof about how to enclose land. Who would have seen that coming?

This suggests that mathematics has a kind of snowballing or self-fertilising aspect to it. Thales’s Theorem, what’s the big deal? Just some boring observation about a triangle in a circle. May not seem like much. But one thing leads to another. Once Thales’s Theorem is a thing to you, you start seeing it in other places, unexpected places. Like this problem about area. You wouldn’t think it was related, but the more mathematics you do, the more connections you find.

Pick any theorem, no matter how boring, like Thales’s Theorem, and you can find these amazing things where the boring theorem is actually a key insight that opens entirely new ways of thinking about seemingly unrelated problems. That’s mathematics for you. No wonder it caught on like a bug among the Greeks, once they got the ball rolling. One moment you stumble upon some random result like Thales’s Theorem, and the next thing you know you’re seeing mathematics everywhere.

So that’s the mathematical moral of the story. Now we must go back and say something about the historical side of all this. What do we really know about Thales and his theorems and Queen Dido and all that? How much is history and how much is legend?

If we start with Dido, that story comes to use primarily through Virgil. The Aeneid, the famous epic poem. That was written in Roman times, around the year -20. But it is referring to historical, or supposedly historical, events that took place even before Thales, maybe two centuries before Thales, so -800-ish. We have Virgil’s version, that’s what has come down to us, but he is just stealing an older story. These things would have been around for centuries in Greek culture, in various literary and historical retellings that are now lost.

It is perfectly plausible that there really was such a historical queen, who really did flee her royal home in Tyre, and really did land on the north shores of Africa where she founded this new settlement, which was to become the great city of Carthage. Maybe indeed she even made the city walls semi-circular, who knows? It is perfectly conceivable that she might have wanted to minimise the perimeter for whatever reason, and that she might have known that a semi-circular shape was optimal for this purpose.

But at that time there would not have been any mathematical proofs of this, like the one I sketched above. The proof I outlined is from Jakob Steiner, in the early 19th century. From Greek times we have a different proof of this result. So they were certainly very much aware of the result, that the semi-circle is optimal, if perhaps not the particular proof I suggested.

If the story of Queen Dido says anything about the history of mathematics, it probably illuminates most neither the time when the events took place, around -800, nor the time when the sources we have were written, around year 0. But maybe it says something about the centuries in between, where the story would have been passed on and reworked.

The story was marinated, as it were, in Greek culture. Maybe they were the ones who gave it a mathematical flavour. The shoe fits: The Greeks valued wise, aristocratic, well-educated rulers, who design rational policy for the common good informed by reason and mathematics. Maybe they let these ideals colour the way they retold the story of Queen Dido and her round city.

From this point of view we could also speculate that by the time Virgil comes around and writes the Roman version of the story, this appreciation of mathematics is no longer what it once was. Indeed Virgil doesn’t really spell out the mathematical optimisation aspect of the story. Dido is just a side character altogether. His epic is about Aeneas, who is on a quest that will eventually lead to the founding Rome.

Aeneas is shipwrecked and blown ashore at Carthage, Dido’s round city. Dido falls in love with him, but he does not return her love. He sails away and Dido kills herself because of her broken heart. Morris Kline concludes the story: “And so an ungrateful and unreceptive man with a rigid mind caused the loss of a potential mathematician. This was the first blow to mathematics which the Romans dealt.” Sure enough there’s plenty more where that came from.

One can view this story as symbolic of this transition from the wise philosopher kings (or queens in this case) of the Greek world, who cherished mathematics and used it to improve the world. The transition from that to the heartless Roman, who only think of themselves and couldn’t care less about Thales’s Theorem. In the Greek world math nerds were considered attractive, but somehow these ignorant Romans didn’t think a geometer queen was girlfriend material at all evidently.

Ok, so the story about Dido and the round city and the optimisation proof and all that, it is very interesting in terms of the broader mathematical and cultural points its connects to, but in and of itself its is not directly history per se.

It’s different with Thales. That’s more fact than legend. As best as we can determine, Thales really did prove that diameter bisects a circle, most likely with the proof discussed above.

The sources that we have for this are far from perfect. Primarily Proclus, who was writing in year 450 or so, basically one thousand years after Thales lived. These kinds of late sources are hit and miss. They have no authority in and of themselves. Proclus was nobody. His own understanding of history and mathematics is very poor. A mediocre thinker, a mediocre scholar, living in a mediocre age.

Those are the kinds of sources that we have. Basically as authoritative as a factoid you read on the back of a cereal box or something.

But there is hope. Back in its glory days, Greece was just an outstanding intellectual culture. And some of the stuff about for example Thales can be traced back to then, which makes it highly credible. Aristotle’s student, Eudemus, wrote a history of geometry. It’s no longer with us alas. Ignorant ages neglected it and now it’s gone. But what a work that would have been.

These people knew what they were doing. Later people like Proclus are like some online rando posting half-baked ideas on blogspot or poorly informed comments on Facebook. That’s how credible they are.

But people like Eudemus is a very different story. That is more like a first-rate scholar at a research institution with all the infrastructure one could dream of: libraries, extremely knowledgable and intelligent colleagues with a range of expertises, broad financial and cultural support from the public and from politicians, and so on. Eudemus’s History of Geometry would be a proper “University Press” book, peer-reviewed to the teeth and with a nice dust-jacket blurb by Aristotle.

People like Eudemus were not in the business of passing on random gossip and unchecked factoids because they sound cool. They were proper scholars and intellectuals.

And indeed a lot of the stuff about Thales can be traced back to this lost source. When Proclus says that Thales was the first to prove that a circle is bisected by its diameter, the source of this is Eudemus. Hence it is very credible. This Thales stuff really happened. Actually that part about the diameter bisecting the circle is more certain than the part about Thales’s Theorem. Was Thales’s Theorem really Thales’s? Maybe. But we cannot trace that part specifically back to the best sources. Unlike the diameter bisection one and some other details. But contextually it makes sense.

The stories of Thales and the origin of geometry were evidently well known not only to specialised scholars but to the general Athenian public. Aristophanes the playwright uses the name of Thales as a symbol of geometry a few times in his plays. Just as today one might use the name of Einstein for instance to evoke the image of a scientist. Aristophanes has one speakers in a dialogue say: “The man is a Thales.” Meaning that the person is a geometer. Evidently the theatre-going public in classical Athens could be expected to understand this reference. Every educated person would know about Thales and the origins of geometry.

In fact, public respect for geometry and its history was apparently so great that Aristophanes even has one of his characters lament it as excessive, saying: “Why do we go on admiring old Thales?” What a time to be alive that would have been. When playwrights had to tackle issues such as there being too much respect and interest in mathematics among the general public. “Hey guys, maybe we need to cool it with how much we love geometry.” What a luxury problem. Hardly one that Hollywood blockbusters today have to grapple with.

Anyway, we should maybe not read too much into those isolated quotes. But the general intellectual credibility of this age is important. These very intelligent and serious people recorded in scholarly histories the accounts about Thales founding deductive geometry and proving that a circle is bisected by its diameter. That’s only some two or three hundred years after Thales, and in a direct lineage from him, probably with entire works by Thales still around in libraries and so on.

So there you go. The origins of proof and deductive geometry. We really do know quite a bit about it, and it’s a story worth knowing if you ask me.

from Intellectual Mathematics from Blogger https://ift.tt/2ArnKJc

[statusreview]

Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch

Beach house stuff is flying along, and we owe you guys a giant post (in the meantime you can see some pics on Instagram and Facebook) but we have some breaking porch news, which is that it no longer looks neglected and abandoned. Plus I got a little “creative” with the bushes so they’ll never die on me again. I don’t have a great “before” photo because it wasn’t something I ever thought to capture for posterity, but think dirty old doormat, dead plants, discolored brick, and spiderwebs (but not of the Halloween-decoration variety).

One thing that tipped us off to the problem was taking our annual First Day of School photos out in front of the door. We were looking at this year’s photos next to the previous year’s photos to see how much the kids grew, but another thing that caught our attention was the tragic progression of our fading front door mat. It’s like that thing was just begging to be put out of its misery, but it happened so slowly we didn’t really notice until we were reminded how it used to look.

So I ordered another extra-wide mat (this is the one we got). If you have sidelights or a double door, I can’t tell you how strongly I recommend a wider doormat. They can be a pain to track down, and aren’t super cheap (ours is the 30 x 48″ one for $79) but we found that any normal sized ones looked kind of dinky and unbalanced on our porch.

But the real stars of this refresh are the two evergreen trees in the black planters. We’ve had THE WORST time keeping plants alive here – so dead plants have been flanking the front door for 90% of the last 4.5 years. Every year we would buy something, it would fry from the insane direct sunlight our porch gets, and then the sad remains of the dearly departed plant would sit in the planter for a few months until we’d lather, rinse, and repeat that process. I tried annuals like creeping jenny and petunias (burned and died). Evergreens like boxwoods and dwarf spruces (burned and died even faster).  I’ve tried setting an alarm on my phone to water things every day. I’ve tried the upside-down wine bottle trick to water things. It was like a curse that refused to be broken… until now.

These evergreens can’t ever die BECAUSE THEY’RE FAKE!! After years of trying to make something (anything!) live in these planters I feel LIBERATED! These faux 36″ evergreens came into my life at the perfect time. I was at my wits end. And even though I worried they’d look lame and plastic-y, I was willing to roll the dice and try them.

You have to fluff them up when they arrive (they look sort of flat right out of the box) but they’re SO CONVINCING! The color is right. The large size is awesome. The price is way less than I’ve paid for all the things that have died on me in the past. I’m basically in love with these bushes and if loving them is wrong I don’t want to be right.

And yes, I plopped the little black pot that each tree comes in right into the dirt of our larger black planters (these are similar black planters if you’re looking). The real dirt around them just ads to the realism ;)

The last of the three things that whipped our porch back into shape was more subtle (which is my way of saying it was just deferred maintenance on our part). Since we had our pressure washer out to clean the brick on the back of the house after ripping off the deck, John sprayed down the front porch while he was at it because he wants to spray everything with the pressure washer.  Again, I don’t have a great “before” of this, but you can see the grime on the brick steps in this photo I found below.

There’s also this picture I took to show off my new fake evergreens on InstaStories. Look how green and mildewy the white railing looks. Yeesh.

We haven’t pressure washed this area since before we moved in over 4 years ago, so it was well overdue. The before and afters were pretty similar to what you saw in this post, but it was actually the first time we ever pressure washed the stone aggregate walkway. It’s one of those things you don’t realize you need until you see the difference it makes (in the photo below John had just done the outline and the diagonal stripe to show the improvement). How crazy is that difference?!

So this is how the porch looks, thanks to our new NEVER GONNA DIE plants, our new not-faded extra wide doormat, and a little stone & brick facial (aka: power washing).

I also have some percolating plans to update the portico a bit more, with chunkier trim around the triangle and squared off columns, kind of like this porch, designed by Lasley Brahaney that I found here (but I’d love to keep our Chippendale railings – so not this exactly).

In the meantime I’ll take the fact that it no longer looks like it’s hosting a spider meet & greet for the surrounding five counties. Although we did dress it up for Halloween (because fake spooky things beat ten thousand actual spiders).

Clearly a lot of this stuff is just seasonal, but if the kids have any say, the chihuahua skeleton (which we’ve affectionately named Skeleburger) will be there year-round. We also added a few pumpkins that we picked out with the kids and a few quirky “animal friends” (I can’t find an identical owl to link to, but this one would be awesome for Halloween too).

We’ve had this ceramic white rabbit a while (he’s out year round just to send the “ceramic animals are always welcome here” message to the neighbors) but he works for Halloween too. Although he’s definitely out-creeped by the black feather crow and our floppy little black feather wreath.

I know what you’re going to ask. How does Burger feel about Skeleburger. Does he love him? Does he loathe him? Well, Burger’s reaction can best be described as aloof and unimpressed.

Whenever he sees him he’s all, “Oh, it’s you. How boring.” He doesn’t just strut or sashay by. He makes a point of being straight up unimpressed. Sometimes he stops and yawns. This time he freaking stopped and stretched right in front of him. Like, “Look how long and flexible I am. You can’t even move. And why do you have ears if you’re a skeleton?!” It was a true demonstration of dog dominance.

So that’s what the porch is looking like these days. The spiderwebs might come back, and the mat might eventually fade, but I’m pretty sure the bushes are going to outlive us all.

Psst- Wanna see more outdoor updates & posts about naaaature? Here are a whole bunch from the archives. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch appeared first on Young House Love.

Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch published first on http://ift.tt/2r6hzQy

[endlessarchite]

Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch

Beach house stuff is flying along, and we owe you guys a giant post (in the meantime you can see some pics on Instagram and Facebook) but we have some breaking porch news, which is that it no longer looks neglected and abandoned. Plus I got a little “creative” with the bushes so they’ll never die on me again. I don’t have a great “before” photo because it wasn’t something I ever thought to capture for posterity, but think dirty old doormat, dead plants, discolored brick, and spiderwebs (but not of the Halloween-decoration variety).

One thing that tipped us off to the problem was taking our annual First Day of School photos out in front of the door. We were looking at this year’s photos next to the previous year’s photos to see how much the kids grew, but another thing that caught our attention was the tragic progression of our fading front door mat. It’s like that thing was just begging to be put out of its misery, but it happened so slowly we didn’t really notice until we were reminded how it used to look.

So I ordered another extra-wide mat (this is the one we got). If you have sidelights or a double door, I can’t tell you how strongly I recommend a wider doormat. They can be a pain to track down, and aren’t super cheap (ours is the 30 x 48″ one for $79) but we found that any normal sized ones looked kind of dinky and unbalanced on our porch.

But the real stars of this refresh are the two evergreen trees in the black planters. We’ve had THE WORST time keeping plants alive here – so dead plants have been flanking the front door for 90% of the last 4.5 years. Every year we would buy something, it would fry from the insane direct sunlight our porch gets, and then the sad remains of the dearly departed plant would sit in the planter for a few months until we’d lather, rinse, and repeat that process. I tried annuals like creeping jenny and petunias (burned and died). Evergreens like boxwoods and dwarf spruces (burned and died even faster).  I’ve tried setting an alarm on my phone to water things every day. I’ve tried the upside-down wine bottle trick to water things. It was like a curse that refused to be broken… until now.

These evergreens can’t ever die BECAUSE THEY’RE FAKE!! After years of trying to make something (anything!) live in these planters I feel LIBERATED! These faux 36″ evergreens came into my life at the perfect time. I was at my wits end. And even though I worried they’d look lame and plastic-y, I was willing to roll the dice and try them.

You have to fluff them up when they arrive (they look sort of flat right out of the box) but they’re SO CONVINCING! The color is right. The large size is awesome. The price is way less than I’ve paid for all the things that have died on me in the past. I’m basically in love with these bushes and if loving them is wrong I don’t want to be right.

And yes, I plopped the little black pot that each tree comes in right into the dirt of our larger black planters (these are similar black planters if you’re looking). The real dirt around them just ads to the realism ;)

The last of the three things that whipped our porch back into shape was more subtle (which is my way of saying it was just deferred maintenance on our part). Since we had our pressure washer out to clean the brick on the back of the house after ripping off the deck, John sprayed down the front porch while he was at it because he wants to spray everything with the pressure washer.  Again, I don’t have a great “before” of this, but you can see the grime on the brick steps in this photo I found below.

There’s also this picture I took to show off my new fake evergreens on InstaStories. Look how green and mildewy the white railing looks. Yeesh.

We haven’t pressure washed this area since before we moved in over 4 years ago, so it was well overdue. The before and afters were pretty similar to what you saw in this post, but it was actually the first time we ever pressure washed the stone aggregate walkway. It’s one of those things you don’t realize you need until you see the difference it makes (in the photo below John had just done the outline and the diagonal stripe to show the improvement). How crazy is that difference?!

So this is how the porch looks, thanks to our new NEVER GONNA DIE plants, our new not-faded extra wide doormat, and a little stone & brick facial (aka: power washing).

I also have some percolating plans to update the portico a bit more, with chunkier trim around the triangle and squared off columns, kind of like this porch, designed by Lasley Brahaney that I found here (but I’d love to keep our Chippendale railings – so not this exactly).

In the meantime I’ll take the fact that it no longer looks like it’s hosting a spider meet & greet for the surrounding five counties. Although we did dress it up for Halloween (because fake spooky things beat ten thousand actual spiders).

Clearly a lot of this stuff is just seasonal, but if the kids have any say, the chihuahua skeleton (which we’ve affectionately named Skeleburger) will be there year-round. We also added a few pumpkins that we picked out with the kids and a few quirky “animal friends” (I can’t find an identical owl to link to, but this one would be awesome for Halloween too).

We’ve had this ceramic white rabbit a while (he’s out year round just to send the “ceramic animals are always welcome here” message to the neighbors) but he works for Halloween too. Although he’s definitely out-creeped by the black feather crow and our floppy little black feather wreath.

I know what you’re going to ask. How does Burger feel about Skeleburger. Does he love him? Does he loathe him? Well, Burger’s reaction can best be described as aloof and unimpressed.

Whenever he sees him he’s all, “Oh, it’s you. How boring.” He doesn’t just strut or sashay by. He makes a point of being straight up unimpressed. Sometimes he stops and yawns. This time he freaking stopped and stretched right in front of him. Like, “Look how long and flexible I am. You can’t even move. And why do you have ears if you’re a skeleton?!” It was a true demonstration of dog dominance.

So that’s what the porch is looking like these days. The spiderwebs might come back, and the mat might eventually fade, but I’m pretty sure the bushes are going to outlive us all.

Psst- Wanna see more outdoor updates & posts about naaaature? Here are a whole bunch from the archives. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch appeared first on Young House Love.

Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch published first on http://ift.tt/2qxZz2j

[truereviewpage]

Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch

Beach house stuff is flying along, and we owe you guys a giant post (in the meantime you can see some pics on Instagram and Facebook) but we have some breaking porch news, which is that it no longer looks neglected and abandoned. Plus I got a little “creative” with the bushes so they’ll never die on me again. I don’t have a great “before” photo because it wasn’t something I ever thought to capture for posterity, but think dirty old doormat, dead plants, discolored brick, and spiderwebs (but not of the Halloween-decoration variety).

One thing that tipped us off to the problem was taking our annual First Day of School photos out in front of the door. We were looking at this year’s photos next to the previous year’s photos to see how much the kids grew, but another thing that caught our attention was the tragic progression of our fading front door mat. It’s like that thing was just begging to be put out of its misery, but it happened so slowly we didn’t really notice until we were reminded how it used to look.

So I ordered another extra-wide mat (this is the one we got). If you have sidelights or a double door, I can’t tell you how strongly I recommend a wider doormat. They can be a pain to track down, and aren’t super cheap (ours is the 30 x 48″ one for $79) but we found that any normal sized ones looked kind of dinky and unbalanced on our porch.

But the real stars of this refresh are the two evergreen trees in the black planters. We’ve had THE WORST time keeping plants alive here – so dead plants have been flanking the front door for 90% of the last 4.5 years. Every year we would buy something, it would fry from the insane direct sunlight our porch gets, and then the sad remains of the dearly departed plant would sit in the planter for a few months until we’d lather, rinse, and repeat that process. I tried annuals like creeping jenny and petunias (burned and died). Evergreens like boxwoods and dwarf spruces (burned and died even faster).  I’ve tried setting an alarm on my phone to water things every day. I’ve tried the upside-down wine bottle trick to water things. It was like a curse that refused to be broken… until now.

These evergreens can’t ever die BECAUSE THEY’RE FAKE!! After years of trying to make something (anything!) live in these planters I feel LIBERATED! These faux 36″ evergreens came into my life at the perfect time. I was at my wits end. And even though I worried they’d look lame and plastic-y, I was willing to roll the dice and try them.

You have to fluff them up when they arrive (they look sort of flat right out of the box) but they’re SO CONVINCING! The color is right. The large size is awesome. The price is way less than I’ve paid for all the things that have died on me in the past. I’m basically in love with these bushes and if loving them is wrong I don’t want to be right.

And yes, I plopped the little black pot that each tree comes in right into the dirt of our larger black planters (these are similar black planters if you’re looking). The real dirt around them just ads to the realism ;)

The last of the three things that whipped our porch back into shape was more subtle (which is my way of saying it was just deferred maintenance on our part). Since we had our pressure washer out to clean the brick on the back of the house after ripping off the deck, John sprayed down the front porch while he was at it because he wants to spray everything with the pressure washer.  Again, I don’t have a great “before” of this, but you can see the grime on the brick steps in this photo I found below.

There’s also this picture I took to show off my new fake evergreens on InstaStories. Look how green and mildewy the white railing looks. Yeesh.

We haven’t pressure washed this area since before we moved in over 4 years ago, so it was well overdue. The before and afters were pretty similar to what you saw in this post, but it was actually the first time we ever pressure washed the stone aggregate walkway. It’s one of those things you don’t realize you need until you see the difference it makes (in the photo below John had just done the outline and the diagonal stripe to show the improvement). How crazy is that difference?!

So this is how the porch looks, thanks to our new NEVER GONNA DIE plants, our new not-faded extra wide doormat, and a little stone & brick facial (aka: power washing).

I also have some percolating plans to update the portico a bit more, with chunkier trim around the triangle and squared off columns, kind of like this porch, designed by Lasley Brahaney that I found here (but I’d love to keep our Chippendale railings – so not this exactly).

In the meantime I’ll take the fact that it no longer looks like it’s hosting a spider meet & greet for the surrounding five counties. Although we did dress it up for Halloween (because fake spooky things beat ten thousand actual spiders).

Clearly a lot of this stuff is just seasonal, but if the kids have any say, the chihuahua skeleton (which we’ve affectionately named Skeleburger) will be there year-round. We also added a few pumpkins that we picked out with the kids and a few quirky “animal friends” (I can’t find an identical owl to link to, but this one would be awesome for Halloween too).

We’ve had this ceramic white rabbit a while (he’s out year round just to send the “ceramic animals are always welcome here” message to the neighbors) but he works for Halloween too. Although he’s definitely out-creeped by the black feather crow and our floppy little black feather wreath.

I know what you’re going to ask. How does Burger feel about Skeleburger. Does he love him? Does he loathe him? Well, Burger’s reaction can best be described as aloof and unimpressed.

Whenever he sees him he’s all, “Oh, it’s you. How boring.” He doesn’t just strut or sashay by. He makes a point of being straight up unimpressed. Sometimes he stops and yawns. This time he freaking stopped and stretched right in front of him. Like, “Look how long and flexible I am. You can’t even move. And why do you have ears if you’re a skeleton?!” It was a true demonstration of dog dominance.

So that’s what the porch is looking like these days. The spiderwebs might come back, and the mat might eventually fade, but I’m pretty sure the bushes are going to outlive us all.

Psst- Wanna see more outdoor updates & posts about naaaature? Here are a whole bunch from the archives. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch appeared first on Young House Love.

Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch published first on http://ift.tt/2qCHnUt

[additionallysad]

Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch http://ift.tt/2gfZ4pL

Beach house stuff is flying along, and we owe you guys a giant post (in the meantime you can see some pics on Instagram and Facebook) but we have some breaking porch news, which is that it no longer looks neglected and abandoned. Plus I got a little “creative” with the bushes so they’ll never die on me again. I don’t have a great “before” photo because it wasn’t something I ever thought to capture for posterity, but think dirty old doormat, dead plants, discolored brick, and spiderwebs (but not of the Halloween-decoration variety).

One thing that tipped us off to the problem was taking our annual First Day of School photos out in front of the door. We were looking at this year’s photos next to the previous year’s photos to see how much the kids grew, but another thing that caught our attention was the tragic progression of our fading front door mat. It’s like that thing was just begging to be put out of its misery, but it happened so slowly we didn’t really notice until we were reminded how it used to look.

So I ordered another extra-wide mat (this is the one we got). If you have sidelights or a double door, I can’t tell you how strongly I recommend a wider doormat. They can be a pain to track down, and aren’t super cheap (ours is the 30 x 48″ one for $79) but we found that any normal sized ones looked kind of dinky and unbalanced on our porch.

But the real stars of this refresh are the two evergreen trees in the black planters. We’ve had THE WORST time keeping plants alive here – so dead plants have been flanking the front door for 90% of the last 4.5 years. Every year we would buy something, it would fry from the insane direct sunlight our porch gets, and then the sad remains of the dearly departed plant would sit in the planter for a few months until we’d lather, rinse, and repeat that process. I tried annuals like creeping jenny and petunias (burned and died). Evergreens like boxwoods and dwarf spruces (burned and died even faster).  I’ve tried setting an alarm on my phone to water things every day. I’ve tried the upside-down wine bottle trick to water things. It was like a curse that refused to be broken… until now.

These evergreens can’t ever die BECAUSE THEY’RE FAKE!! After years of trying to make something (anything!) live in these planters I feel LIBERATED! These faux 36″ evergreens came into my life at the perfect time. I was at my wits end. And even though I worried they’d look lame and plastic-y, I was willing to roll the dice and try them.

You have to fluff them up when they arrive (they look sort of flat right out of the box) but they’re SO CONVINCING! The color is right. The large size is awesome. The price is way less than I’ve paid for all the things that have died on me in the past. I’m basically in love with these bushes and if loving them is wrong I don’t want to be right.

And yes, I plopped the little black pot that each tree comes in right into the dirt of our larger black planters (these are similar black planters if you’re looking). The real dirt around them just ads to the realism ;)

The last of the three things that whipped our porch back into shape was more subtle (which is my way of saying it was just deferred maintenance on our part). Since we had our pressure washer out to clean the brick on the back of the house after ripping off the deck, John sprayed down the front porch while he was at it because he wants to spray everything with the pressure washer.  Again, I don’t have a great “before” of this, but you can see the grime on the brick steps in this photo I found below.

There’s also this picture I took to show off my new fake evergreens on InstaStories. Look how green and mildewy the white railing looks. Yeesh.

We haven’t pressure washed this area since before we moved in over 4 years ago, so it was well overdue. The before and afters were pretty similar to what you saw in this post, but it was actually the first time we ever pressure washed the stone aggregate walkway. It’s one of those things you don’t realize you need until you see the difference it makes (in the photo below John had just done the outline and the diagonal stripe to show the improvement). How crazy is that difference?!

So this is how the porch looks, thanks to our new NEVER GONNA DIE plants, our new not-faded extra wide doormat, and a little stone & brick facial (aka: power washing).

I also have some percolating plans to update the portico a bit more, with chunkier trim around the triangle and squared off columns, kind of like this porch, designed by Lasley Brahaney that I found here (but I’d love to keep our Chippendale railings – so not this exactly).

In the meantime I’ll take the fact that it no longer looks like it’s hosting a spider meet & greet for the surrounding five counties. Although we did dress it up for Halloween (because fake spooky things beat ten thousand actual spiders).

Clearly a lot of this stuff is just seasonal, but if the kids have any say, the chihuahua skeleton (which we’ve affectionately named Skeleburger) will be there year-round. We also added a few pumpkins that we picked out with the kids and a few quirky “animal friends” (I can’t find an identical owl to link to, but this one would be awesome for Halloween too).

We’ve had this ceramic white rabbit a while (he’s out year round just to send the “ceramic animals are always welcome here” message to the neighbors) but he works for Halloween too. Although he’s definitely out-creeped by the black feather crow and our floppy little black feather wreath.

I know what you’re going to ask. How does Burger feel about Skeleburger. Does he love him? Does he loathe him? Well, Burger’s reaction can best be described as aloof and unimpressed.

Whenever he sees him he’s all, “Oh, it’s you. How boring.” He doesn’t just strut or sashay by. He makes a point of being straight up unimpressed. Sometimes he stops and yawns. This time he freaking stopped and stretched right in front of him. Like, “Look how long and flexible I am. You can’t even move. And why do you have ears if you’re a skeleton?!” It was a true demonstration of dog dominance.

So that’s what the porch is looking like these days. The spiderwebs might come back, and the mat might eventually fade, but I’m pretty sure the bushes are going to outlive us all.

Psst- Wanna see more outdoor updates & posts about naaaature? Here are a whole bunch from the archives. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch appeared first on Young House Love.

[lukerhill]

Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch

Beach house stuff is flying along, and we owe you guys a giant post (in the meantime you can see some pics on Instagram and Facebook) but we have some breaking porch news, which is that it no longer looks neglected and abandoned. Plus I got a little “creative” with the bushes so they’ll never die on me again. I don’t have a great “before” photo because it wasn’t something I ever thought to capture for posterity, but think dirty old doormat, dead plants, discolored brick, and spiderwebs (but not of the Halloween-decoration variety).

One thing that tipped us off to the problem was taking our annual First Day of School photos out in front of the door. We were looking at this year’s photos next to the previous year’s photos to see how much the kids grew, but another thing that caught our attention was the tragic progression of our fading front door mat. It’s like that thing was just begging to be put out of its misery, but it happened so slowly we didn’t really notice until we were reminded how it used to look.

So I ordered another extra-wide mat (this is the one we got). If you have sidelights or a double door, I can’t tell you how strongly I recommend a wider doormat. They can be a pain to track down, and aren’t super cheap (ours is the 30 x 48″ one for $79) but we found that any normal sized ones looked kind of dinky and unbalanced on our porch.

But the real stars of this refresh are the two evergreen trees in the black planters. We’ve had THE WORST time keeping plants alive here – so dead plants have been flanking the front door for 90% of the last 4.5 years. Every year we would buy something, it would fry from the insane direct sunlight our porch gets, and then the sad remains of the dearly departed plant would sit in the planter for a few months until we’d lather, rinse, and repeat that process. I tried annuals like creeping jenny and petunias (burned and died). Evergreens like boxwoods and dwarf spruces (burned and died even faster).  I’ve tried setting an alarm on my phone to water things every day. I’ve tried the upside-down wine bottle trick to water things. It was like a curse that refused to be broken… until now.

These evergreens can’t ever die BECAUSE THEY’RE FAKE!! After years of trying to make something (anything!) live in these planters I feel LIBERATED! These faux 36″ evergreens came into my life at the perfect time. I was at my wits end. And even though I worried they’d look lame and plastic-y, I was willing to roll the dice and try them.

You have to fluff them up when they arrive (they look sort of flat right out of the box) but they’re SO CONVINCING! The color is right. The large size is awesome. The price is way less than I’ve paid for all the things that have died on me in the past. I’m basically in love with these bushes and if loving them is wrong I don’t want to be right.

And yes, I plopped the little black pot that each tree comes in right into the dirt of our larger black planters (these are similar black planters if you’re looking). The real dirt around them just ads to the realism ;)

The last of the three things that whipped our porch back into shape was more subtle (which is my way of saying it was just deferred maintenance on our part). Since we had our pressure washer out to clean the brick on the back of the house after ripping off the deck, John sprayed down the front porch while he was at it because he wants to spray everything with the pressure washer.  Again, I don’t have a great “before” of this, but you can see the grime on the brick steps in this photo I found below.

There’s also this picture I took to show off my new fake evergreens on InstaStories. Look how green and mildewy the white railing looks. Yeesh.

We haven’t pressure washed this area since before we moved in over 4 years ago, so it was well overdue. The before and afters were pretty similar to what you saw in this post, but it was actually the first time we ever pressure washed the stone aggregate walkway. It’s one of those things you don’t realize you need until you see the difference it makes (in the photo below John had just done the outline and the diagonal stripe to show the improvement). How crazy is that difference?!

So this is how the porch looks, thanks to our new NEVER GONNA DIE plants, our new not-faded extra wide doormat, and a little stone & brick facial (aka: power washing).

I also have some percolating plans to update the portico a bit more, with chunkier trim around the triangle and squared off columns, kind of like this porch, designed by Lasley Brahaney that I found here (but I’d love to keep our Chippendale railings – so not this exactly).

In the meantime I’ll take the fact that it no longer looks like it’s hosting a spider meet & greet for the surrounding five counties. Although we did dress it up for Halloween (because fake spooky things beat ten thousand actual spiders).

Clearly a lot of this stuff is just seasonal, but if the kids have any say, the chihuahua skeleton (which we’ve affectionately named Skeleburger) will be there year-round. We also added a few pumpkins that we picked out with the kids and a few quirky “animal friends” (I can’t find an identical owl to link to, but this one would be awesome for Halloween too).

We’ve had this ceramic white rabbit a while (he’s out year round just to send the “ceramic animals are always welcome here” message to the neighbors) but he works for Halloween too. Although he’s definitely out-creeped by the black feather crow and our floppy little black feather wreath.

I know what you’re going to ask. How does Burger feel about Skeleburger. Does he love him? Does he loathe him? Well, Burger’s reaction can best be described as aloof and unimpressed.

Whenever he sees him he’s all, “Oh, it’s you. How boring.” He doesn’t just strut or sashay by. He makes a point of being straight up unimpressed. Sometimes he stops and yawns. This time he freaking stopped and stretched right in front of him. Like, “Look how long and flexible I am. You can’t even move. And why do you have ears if you’re a skeleton?!” It was a true demonstration of dog dominance.

So that’s what the porch is looking like these days. The spiderwebs might come back, and the mat might eventually fade, but I’m pretty sure the bushes are going to outlive us all.

Psst- Wanna see more outdoor updates & posts about naaaature? Here are a whole bunch from the archives. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch appeared first on Young House Love.

[interiorstarweb]

Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch

Beach house stuff is flying along, and we owe you guys a giant post (in the meantime you can see some pics on Instagram and Facebook) but we have some breaking porch news, which is that it no longer looks neglected and abandoned. Plus I got a little “creative” with the bushes so they’ll never die on me again. I don’t have a great “before” photo because it wasn’t something I ever thought to capture for posterity, but think dirty old doormat, dead plants, discolored brick, and spiderwebs (but not of the Halloween-decoration variety).

One thing that tipped us off to the problem was taking our annual First Day of School photos out in front of the door. We were looking at this year’s photos next to the previous year’s photos to see how much the kids grew, but another thing that caught our attention was the tragic progression of our fading front door mat. It’s like that thing was just begging to be put out of its misery, but it happened so slowly we didn’t really notice until we were reminded how it used to look.

So I ordered another extra-wide mat (this is the one we got). If you have sidelights or a double door, I can’t tell you how strongly I recommend a wider doormat. They can be a pain to track down, and aren’t super cheap (ours is the 30 x 48″ one for $79) but we found that any normal sized ones looked kind of dinky and unbalanced on our porch.

But the real stars of this refresh are the two evergreen trees in the black planters. We’ve had THE WORST time keeping plants alive here – so dead plants have been flanking the front door for 90% of the last 4.5 years. Every year we would buy something, it would fry from the insane direct sunlight our porch gets, and then the sad remains of the dearly departed plant would sit in the planter for a few months until we’d lather, rinse, and repeat that process. I tried annuals like creeping jenny and petunias (burned and died). Evergreens like boxwoods and dwarf spruces (burned and died even faster).  I’ve tried setting an alarm on my phone to water things every day. I’ve tried the upside-down wine bottle trick to water things. It was like a curse that refused to be broken… until now.

These evergreens can’t ever die BECAUSE THEY’RE FAKE!! After years of trying to make something (anything!) live in these planters I feel LIBERATED! These faux 36″ evergreens came into my life at the perfect time. I was at my wits end. And even though I worried they’d look lame and plastic-y, I was willing to roll the dice and try them.

You have to fluff them up when they arrive (they look sort of flat right out of the box) but they’re SO CONVINCING! The color is right. The large size is awesome. The price is way less than I’ve paid for all the things that have died on me in the past. I’m basically in love with these bushes and if loving them is wrong I don’t want to be right.

And yes, I plopped the little black pot that each tree comes in right into the dirt of our larger black planters (these are similar black planters if you’re looking). The real dirt around them just ads to the realism ;)

The last of the three things that whipped our porch back into shape was more subtle (which is my way of saying it was just deferred maintenance on our part). Since we had our pressure washer out to clean the brick on the back of the house after ripping off the deck, John sprayed down the front porch while he was at it because he wants to spray everything with the pressure washer.  Again, I don’t have a great “before” of this, but you can see the grime on the brick steps in this photo I found below.

There’s also this picture I took to show off my new fake evergreens on InstaStories. Look how green and mildewy the white railing looks. Yeesh.

We haven’t pressure washed this area since before we moved in over 4 years ago, so it was well overdue. The before and afters were pretty similar to what you saw in this post, but it was actually the first time we ever pressure washed the stone aggregate walkway. It’s one of those things you don’t realize you need until you see the difference it makes (in the photo below John had just done the outline and the diagonal stripe to show the improvement). How crazy is that difference?!

So this is how the porch looks, thanks to our new NEVER GONNA DIE plants, our new not-faded extra wide doormat, and a little stone & brick facial (aka: power washing).

I also have some percolating plans to update the portico a bit more, with chunkier trim around the triangle and squared off columns, kind of like this porch, designed by Lasley Brahaney that I found here (but I’d love to keep our Chippendale railings – so not this exactly).

In the meantime I’ll take the fact that it no longer looks like it’s hosting a spider meet & greet for the surrounding five counties. Although we did dress it up for Halloween (because fake spooky things beat ten thousand actual spiders).

Clearly a lot of this stuff is just seasonal, but if the kids have any say, the chihuahua skeleton (which we’ve affectionately named Skeleburger) will be there year-round. We also added a few pumpkins that we picked out with the kids and a few quirky “animal friends” (I can’t find an identical owl to link to, but this one would be awesome for Halloween too).

We’ve had this ceramic white rabbit a while (he’s out year round just to send the “ceramic animals are always welcome here” message to the neighbors) but he works for Halloween too. Although he’s definitely out-creeped by the black feather crow and our floppy little black feather wreath.

I know what you’re going to ask. How does Burger feel about Skeleburger. Does he love him? Does he loathe him? Well, Burger’s reaction can best be described as aloof and unimpressed.

Whenever he sees him he’s all, “Oh, it’s you. How boring.” He doesn’t just strut or sashay by. He makes a point of being straight up unimpressed. Sometimes he stops and yawns. This time he freaking stopped and stretched right in front of him. Like, “Look how long and flexible I am. You can’t even move. And why do you have ears if you’re a skeleton?!” It was a true demonstration of dog dominance.

So that’s what the porch is looking like these days. The spiderwebs might come back, and the mat might eventually fade, but I’m pretty sure the bushes are going to outlive us all.

Psst- Wanna see more outdoor updates & posts about naaaature? Here are a whole bunch from the archives. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch appeared first on Young House Love.

Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch published first on http://ift.tt/2uiWrIt

[endlessarchite]

Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch

Beach house stuff is flying along, and we owe you guys a giant post (in the meantime you can see some pics on Instagram and Facebook) but we have some breaking porch news, which is that it no longer looks neglected and abandoned. Plus I got a little “creative” with the bushes so they’ll never die on me again. I don’t have a great “before” photo because it wasn’t something I ever thought to capture for posterity, but think dirty old doormat, dead plants, discolored brick, and spiderwebs (but not of the Halloween-decoration variety).

One thing that tipped us off to the problem was taking our annual First Day of School photos out in front of the door. We were looking at this year’s photos next to the previous year’s photos to see how much the kids grew, but another thing that caught our attention was the tragic progression of our fading front door mat. It’s like that thing was just begging to be put out of its misery, but it happened so slowly we didn’t really notice until we were reminded how it used to look.

So I ordered another extra-wide mat (this is the one we got). If you have sidelights or a double door, I can’t tell you how strongly I recommend a wider doormat. They can be a pain to track down, and aren’t super cheap (ours is the 30 x 48″ one for $79) but we found that any normal sized ones looked kind of dinky and unbalanced on our porch.

But the real stars of this refresh are the two evergreen trees in the black planters. We’ve had THE WORST time keeping plants alive here – so dead plants have been flanking the front door for 90% of the last 4.5 years. Every year we would buy something, it would fry from the insane direct sunlight our porch gets, and then the sad remains of the dearly departed plant would sit in the planter for a few months until we’d lather, rinse, and repeat that process. I tried annuals like creeping jenny and petunias (burned and died). Evergreens like boxwoods and dwarf spruces (burned and died even faster).  I’ve tried setting an alarm on my phone to water things every day. I’ve tried the upside-down wine bottle trick to water things. It was like a curse that refused to be broken… until now.

These evergreens can’t ever die BECAUSE THEY’RE FAKE!! After years of trying to make something (anything!) live in these planters I feel LIBERATED! These faux 36″ evergreens came into my life at the perfect time. I was at my wits end. And even though I worried they’d look lame and plastic-y, I was willing to roll the dice and try them.

You have to fluff them up when they arrive (they look sort of flat right out of the box) but they’re SO CONVINCING! The color is right. The large size is awesome. The price is way less than I’ve paid for all the things that have died on me in the past. I’m basically in love with these bushes and if loving them is wrong I don’t want to be right.

And yes, I plopped the little black pot that each tree comes in right into the dirt of our larger black planters (these are similar black planters if you’re looking). The real dirt around them just ads to the realism ;)

The last of the three things that whipped our porch back into shape was more subtle (which is my way of saying it was just deferred maintenance on our part). Since we had our pressure washer out to clean the brick on the back of the house after ripping off the deck, John sprayed down the front porch while he was at it because he wants to spray everything with the pressure washer.  Again, I don’t have a great “before” of this, but you can see the grime on the brick steps in this photo I found below.

There’s also this picture I took to show off my new fake evergreens on InstaStories. Look how green and mildewy the white railing looks. Yeesh.

We haven’t pressure washed this area since before we moved in over 4 years ago, so it was well overdue. The before and afters were pretty similar to what you saw in this post, but it was actually the first time we ever pressure washed the stone aggregate walkway. It’s one of those things you don’t realize you need until you see the difference it makes (in the photo below John had just done the outline and the diagonal stripe to show the improvement). How crazy is that difference?!

So this is how the porch looks, thanks to our new NEVER GONNA DIE plants, our new not-faded extra wide doormat, and a little stone & brick facial (aka: power washing).

I also have some percolating plans to update the portico a bit more, with chunkier trim around the triangle and squared off columns, kind of like this porch, designed by Lasley Brahaney that I found here (but I’d love to keep our Chippendale railings – so not this exactly).

In the meantime I’ll take the fact that it no longer looks like it’s hosting a spider meet & greet for the surrounding five counties. Although we did dress it up for Halloween (because fake spooky things beat ten thousand actual spiders).

Clearly a lot of this stuff is just seasonal, but if the kids have any say, the chihuahua skeleton (which we’ve affectionately named Skeleburger) will be there year-round. We also added a few pumpkins that we picked out with the kids and a few quirky “animal friends” (I can’t find an identical owl to link to, but this one would be awesome for Halloween too).

We’ve had this ceramic white rabbit a while (he’s out year round just to send the “ceramic animals are always welcome here” message to the neighbors) but he works for Halloween too. Although he’s definitely out-creeped by the black feather crow and our floppy little black feather wreath.

I know what you’re going to ask. How does Burger feel about Skeleburger. Does he love him? Does he loathe him? Well, Burger’s reaction can best be described as aloof and unimpressed.

Whenever he sees him he’s all, “Oh, it’s you. How boring.” He doesn’t just strut or sashay by. He makes a point of being straight up unimpressed. Sometimes he stops and yawns. This time he freaking stopped and stretched right in front of him. Like, “Look how long and flexible I am. You can’t even move. And why do you have ears if you’re a skeleton?!” It was a true demonstration of dog dominance.

So that’s what the porch is looking like these days. The spiderwebs might come back, and the mat might eventually fade, but I’m pretty sure the bushes are going to outlive us all.

Psst- Wanna see more outdoor updates & posts about naaaature? Here are a whole bunch from the archives. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch appeared first on Young House Love.

Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch published first on http://ift.tt/2qxZz2j

[truereviewpage]

Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch

Beach house stuff is flying along, and we owe you guys a giant post (in the meantime you can see some pics on Instagram and Facebook) but we have some breaking porch news, which is that it no longer looks neglected and abandoned. Plus I got a little “creative” with the bushes so they’ll never die on me again. I don’t have a great “before” photo because it wasn’t something I ever thought to capture for posterity, but think dirty old doormat, dead plants, discolored brick, and spiderwebs (but not of the Halloween-decoration variety).

One thing that tipped us off to the problem was taking our annual First Day of School photos out in front of the door. We were looking at this year’s photos next to the previous year’s photos to see how much the kids grew, but another thing that caught our attention was the tragic progression of our fading front door mat. It’s like that thing was just begging to be put out of its misery, but it happened so slowly we didn’t really notice until we were reminded how it used to look.

So I ordered another extra-wide mat (this is the one we got). If you have sidelights or a double door, I can’t tell you how strongly I recommend a wider doormat. They can be a pain to track down, and aren’t super cheap (ours is the 30 x 48″ one for $79) but we found that any normal sized ones looked kind of dinky and unbalanced on our porch.

But the real stars of this refresh are the two evergreen trees in the black planters. We’ve had THE WORST time keeping plants alive here – so dead plants have been flanking the front door for 90% of the last 4.5 years. Every year we would buy something, it would fry from the insane direct sunlight our porch gets, and then the sad remains of the dearly departed plant would sit in the planter for a few months until we’d lather, rinse, and repeat that process. I tried annuals like creeping jenny and petunias (burned and died). Evergreens like boxwoods and dwarf spruces (burned and died even faster).  I’ve tried setting an alarm on my phone to water things every day. I’ve tried the upside-down wine bottle trick to water things. It was like a curse that refused to be broken… until now.

These evergreens can’t ever die BECAUSE THEY’RE FAKE!! After years of trying to make something (anything!) live in these planters I feel LIBERATED! These faux 36″ evergreens came into my life at the perfect time. I was at my wits end. And even though I worried they’d look lame and plastic-y, I was willing to roll the dice and try them.

You have to fluff them up when they arrive (they look sort of flat right out of the box) but they’re SO CONVINCING! The color is right. The large size is awesome. The price is way less than I’ve paid for all the things that have died on me in the past. I’m basically in love with these bushes and if loving them is wrong I don’t want to be right.

And yes, I plopped the little black pot that each tree comes in right into the dirt of our larger black planters (these are similar black planters if you’re looking). The real dirt around them just ads to the realism ;)

The last of the three things that whipped our porch back into shape was more subtle (which is my way of saying it was just deferred maintenance on our part). Since we had our pressure washer out to clean the brick on the back of the house after ripping off the deck, John sprayed down the front porch while he was at it because he wants to spray everything with the pressure washer.  Again, I don’t have a great “before” of this, but you can see the grime on the brick steps in this photo I found below.

There’s also this picture I took to show off my new fake evergreens on InstaStories. Look how green and mildewy the white railing looks. Yeesh.

We haven’t pressure washed this area since before we moved in over 4 years ago, so it was well overdue. The before and afters were pretty similar to what you saw in this post, but it was actually the first time we ever pressure washed the stone aggregate walkway. It’s one of those things you don’t realize you need until you see the difference it makes (in the photo below John had just done the outline and the diagonal stripe to show the improvement). How crazy is that difference?!

So this is how the porch looks, thanks to our new NEVER GONNA DIE plants, our new not-faded extra wide doormat, and a little stone & brick facial (aka: power washing).

I also have some percolating plans to update the portico a bit more, with chunkier trim around the triangle and squared off columns, kind of like this porch, designed by Lasley Brahaney that I found here (but I’d love to keep our Chippendale railings – so not this exactly).

In the meantime I’ll take the fact that it no longer looks like it’s hosting a spider meet & greet for the surrounding five counties. Although we did dress it up for Halloween (because fake spooky things beat ten thousand actual spiders).

Clearly a lot of this stuff is just seasonal, but if the kids have any say, the chihuahua skeleton (which we’ve affectionately named Skeleburger) will be there year-round. We also added a few pumpkins that we picked out with the kids and a few quirky “animal friends” (I can’t find an identical owl to link to, but this one would be awesome for Halloween too).

We’ve had this ceramic white rabbit a while (he’s out year round just to send the “ceramic animals are always welcome here” message to the neighbors) but he works for Halloween too. Although he’s definitely out-creeped by the black feather crow and our floppy little black feather wreath.

I know what you’re going to ask. How does Burger feel about Skeleburger. Does he love him? Does he loathe him? Well, Burger’s reaction can best be described as aloof and unimpressed.

Whenever he sees him he’s all, “Oh, it’s you. How boring.” He doesn’t just strut or sashay by. He makes a point of being straight up unimpressed. Sometimes he stops and yawns. This time he freaking stopped and stretched right in front of him. Like, “Look how long and flexible I am. You can’t even move. And why do you have ears if you’re a skeleton?!” It was a true demonstration of dog dominance.

So that’s what the porch is looking like these days. The spiderwebs might come back, and the mat might eventually fade, but I’m pretty sure the bushes are going to outlive us all.

Psst- Wanna see more outdoor updates & posts about naaaature? Here are a whole bunch from the archives. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch appeared first on Young House Love.

Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch published first on http://ift.tt/2qCHnUt

[truereviewpage]

Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch

Beach house stuff is flying along, and we owe you guys a giant post (in the meantime you can see some pics on Instagram and Facebook) but we have some breaking porch news, which is that it no longer looks neglected and abandoned. Plus I got a little “creative” with the bushes so they’ll never die on me again. I don’t have a great “before” photo because it wasn’t something I ever thought to capture for posterity, but think dirty old doormat, dead plants, discolored brick, and spiderwebs (but not of the Halloween-decoration variety).

One thing that tipped us off to the problem was taking our annual First Day of School photos out in front of the door. We were looking at this year’s photos next to the previous year’s photos to see how much the kids grew, but another thing that caught our attention was the tragic progression of our fading front door mat. It’s like that thing was just begging to be put out of its misery, but it happened so slowly we didn’t really notice until we were reminded how it used to look.

So I ordered another extra-wide mat (this is the one we got). If you have sidelights or a double door, I can’t tell you how strongly I recommend a wider doormat. They can be a pain to track down, and aren’t super cheap (ours is the 30 x 48″ one for $79) but we found that any normal sized ones looked kind of dinky and unbalanced on our porch.

But the real stars of this refresh are the two evergreen trees in the black planters. We’ve had THE WORST time keeping plants alive here – so dead plants have been flanking the front door for 90% of the last 4.5 years. Every year we would buy something, it would fry from the insane direct sunlight our porch gets, and then the sad remains of the dearly departed plant would sit in the planter for a few months until we’d lather, rinse, and repeat that process. I tried annuals like creeping jenny and petunias (burned and died). Evergreens like boxwoods and dwarf spruces (burned and died even faster).  I’ve tried setting an alarm on my phone to water things every day. I’ve tried the upside-down wine bottle trick to water things. It was like a curse that refused to be broken… until now.

These evergreens can’t ever die BECAUSE THEY’RE FAKE!! After years of trying to make something (anything!) live in these planters I feel LIBERATED! These faux 36″ evergreens came into my life at the perfect time. I was at my wits end. And even though I worried they’d look lame and plastic-y, I was willing to roll the dice and try them.

You have to fluff them up when they arrive (they look sort of flat right out of the box) but they’re SO CONVINCING! The color is right. The large size is awesome. The price is way less than I’ve paid for all the things that have died on me in the past. I’m basically in love with these bushes and if loving them is wrong I don’t want to be right.

And yes, I plopped the little black pot that each tree comes in right into the dirt of our larger black planters (these are similar black planters if you’re looking). The real dirt around them just ads to the realism ;)

The last of the three things that whipped our porch back into shape was more subtle (which is my way of saying it was just deferred maintenance on our part). Since we had our pressure washer out to clean the brick on the back of the house after ripping off the deck, John sprayed down the front porch while he was at it because he wants to spray everything with the pressure washer.  Again, I don’t have a great “before” of this, but you can see the grime on the brick steps in this photo I found below.

There’s also this picture I took to show off my new fake evergreens on InstaStories. Look how green and mildewy the white railing looks. Yeesh.

We haven’t pressure washed this area since before we moved in over 4 years ago, so it was well overdue. The before and afters were pretty similar to what you saw in this post, but it was actually the first time we ever pressure washed the stone aggregate walkway. It’s one of those things you don’t realize you need until you see the difference it makes (in the photo below John had just done the outline and the diagonal stripe to show the improvement). How crazy is that difference?!

So this is how the porch looks, thanks to our new NEVER GONNA DIE plants, our new not-faded extra wide doormat, and a little stone & brick facial (aka: power washing).

I also have some percolating plans to update the portico a bit more, with chunkier trim around the triangle and squared off columns, kind of like this porch, designed by Lasley Brahaney that I found here (but I’d love to keep our Chippendale railings – so not this exactly).

In the meantime I’ll take the fact that it no longer looks like it’s hosting a spider meet & greet for the surrounding five counties. Although we did dress it up for Halloween (because fake spooky things beat ten thousand actual spiders).

Clearly a lot of this stuff is just seasonal, but if the kids have any say, the chihuahua skeleton (which we’ve affectionately named Skeleburger) will be there year-round. We also added a few pumpkins that we picked out with the kids and a few quirky “animal friends” (I can’t find an identical owl to link to, but this one would be awesome for Halloween too).

We’ve had this ceramic white rabbit a while (he’s out year round just to send the “ceramic animals are always welcome here” message to the neighbors) but he works for Halloween too. Although he’s definitely out-creeped by the black feather crow and our floppy little black feather wreath.

I know what you’re going to ask. How does Burger feel about Skeleburger. Does he love him? Does he loathe him? Well, Burger’s reaction can best be described as aloof and unimpressed.

Whenever he sees him he’s all, “Oh, it’s you. How boring.” He doesn’t just strut or sashay by. He makes a point of being straight up unimpressed. Sometimes he stops and yawns. This time he freaking stopped and stretched right in front of him. Like, “Look how long and flexible I am. You can’t even move. And why do you have ears if you’re a skeleton?!” It was a true demonstration of dog dominance.

So that’s what the porch is looking like these days. The spiderwebs might come back, and the mat might eventually fade, but I’m pretty sure the bushes are going to outlive us all.

Psst- Wanna see more outdoor updates & posts about naaaature? Here are a whole bunch from the archives. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch appeared first on Young House Love.

Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch published first on http://ift.tt/2qCHnUt

[statusreview]

Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch

Beach house stuff is flying along, and we owe you guys a giant post (in the meantime you can see some pics on Instagram and Facebook) but we have some breaking porch news, which is that it no longer looks neglected and abandoned. Plus I got a little “creative” with the bushes so they’ll never die on me again. I don’t have a great “before” photo because it wasn’t something I ever thought to capture for posterity, but think dirty old doormat, dead plants, discolored brick, and spiderwebs (but not of the Halloween-decoration variety).

One thing that tipped us off to the problem was taking our annual First Day of School photos out in front of the door. We were looking at this year’s photos next to the previous year’s photos to see how much the kids grew, but another thing that caught our attention was the tragic progression of our fading front door mat. It’s like that thing was just begging to be put out of its misery, but it happened so slowly we didn’t really notice until we were reminded how it used to look.

So I ordered another extra-wide mat (this is the one we got). If you have sidelights or a double door, I can’t tell you how strongly I recommend a wider doormat. They can be a pain to track down, and aren’t super cheap (ours is the 30 x 48″ one for $79) but we found that any normal sized ones looked kind of dinky and unbalanced on our porch.

But the real stars of this refresh are the two evergreen trees in the black planters. We’ve had THE WORST time keeping plants alive here – so dead plants have been flanking the front door for 90% of the last 4.5 years. Every year we would buy something, it would fry from the insane direct sunlight our porch gets, and then the sad remains of the dearly departed plant would sit in the planter for a few months until we’d lather, rinse, and repeat that process. I tried annuals like creeping jenny and petunias (burned and died). Evergreens like boxwoods and dwarf spruces (burned and died even faster).  I’ve tried setting an alarm on my phone to water things every day. I’ve tried the upside-down wine bottle trick to water things. It was like a curse that refused to be broken… until now.

These evergreens can’t ever die BECAUSE THEY’RE FAKE!! After years of trying to make something (anything!) live in these planters I feel LIBERATED! These faux 36″ evergreens came into my life at the perfect time. I was at my wits end. And even though I worried they’d look lame and plastic-y, I was willing to roll the dice and try them.

You have to fluff them up when they arrive (they look sort of flat right out of the box) but they’re SO CONVINCING! The color is right. The large size is awesome. The price is way less than I’ve paid for all the things that have died on me in the past. I’m basically in love with these bushes and if loving them is wrong I don’t want to be right.

And yes, I plopped the little black pot that each tree comes in right into the dirt of our larger black planters (these are similar black planters if you’re looking). The real dirt around them just ads to the realism ;)

The last of the three things that whipped our porch back into shape was more subtle (which is my way of saying it was just deferred maintenance on our part). Since we had our pressure washer out to clean the brick on the back of the house after ripping off the deck, John sprayed down the front porch while he was at it because he wants to spray everything with the pressure washer.  Again, I don’t have a great “before” of this, but you can see the grime on the brick steps in this photo I found below.

There’s also this picture I took to show off my new fake evergreens on InstaStories. Look how green and mildewy the white railing looks. Yeesh.

We haven’t pressure washed this area since before we moved in over 4 years ago, so it was well overdue. The before and afters were pretty similar to what you saw in this post, but it was actually the first time we ever pressure washed the stone aggregate walkway. It’s one of those things you don’t realize you need until you see the difference it makes (in the photo below John had just done the outline and the diagonal stripe to show the improvement). How crazy is that difference?!

So this is how the porch looks, thanks to our new NEVER GONNA DIE plants, our new not-faded extra wide doormat, and a little stone & brick facial (aka: power washing).

I also have some percolating plans to update the portico a bit more, with chunkier trim around the triangle and squared off columns, kind of like this porch, designed by Lasley Brahaney that I found here (but I’d love to keep our Chippendale railings – so not this exactly).

In the meantime I’ll take the fact that it no longer looks like it’s hosting a spider meet & greet for the surrounding five counties. Although we did dress it up for Halloween (because fake spooky things beat ten thousand actual spiders).

Clearly a lot of this stuff is just seasonal, but if the kids have any say, the chihuahua skeleton (which we’ve affectionately named Skeleburger) will be there year-round. We also added a few pumpkins that we picked out with the kids and a few quirky “animal friends” (I can’t find an identical owl to link to, but this one would be awesome for Halloween too).

We’ve had this ceramic white rabbit a while (he’s out year round just to send the “ceramic animals are always welcome here” message to the neighbors) but he works for Halloween too. Although he’s definitely out-creeped by the black feather crow and our floppy little black feather wreath.

I know what you’re going to ask. How does Burger feel about Skeleburger. Does he love him? Does he loathe him? Well, Burger’s reaction can best be described as aloof and unimpressed.

Whenever he sees him he’s all, “Oh, it’s you. How boring.” He doesn’t just strut or sashay by. He makes a point of being straight up unimpressed. Sometimes he stops and yawns. This time he freaking stopped and stretched right in front of him. Like, “Look how long and flexible I am. You can’t even move. And why do you have ears if you’re a skeleton?!” It was a true demonstration of dog dominance.

So that’s what the porch is looking like these days. The spiderwebs might come back, and the mat might eventually fade, but I’m pretty sure the bushes are going to outlive us all.

Psst- Wanna see more outdoor updates & posts about naaaature? Here are a whole bunch from the archives. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch appeared first on Young House Love.

Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch published first on http://ift.tt/2r6hzQy

[statusreview]

Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch

Beach house stuff is flying along, and we owe you guys a giant post (in the meantime you can see some pics on Instagram and Facebook) but we have some breaking porch news, which is that it no longer looks neglected and abandoned. Plus I got a little “creative” with the bushes so they’ll never die on me again. I don’t have a great “before” photo because it wasn’t something I ever thought to capture for posterity, but think dirty old doormat, dead plants, discolored brick, and spiderwebs (but not of the Halloween-decoration variety).

One thing that tipped us off to the problem was taking our annual First Day of School photos out in front of the door. We were looking at this year’s photos next to the previous year’s photos to see how much the kids grew, but another thing that caught our attention was the tragic progression of our fading front door mat. It’s like that thing was just begging to be put out of its misery, but it happened so slowly we didn’t really notice until we were reminded how it used to look.

So I ordered another extra-wide mat (this is the one we got). If you have sidelights or a double door, I can’t tell you how strongly I recommend a wider doormat. They can be a pain to track down, and aren’t super cheap (ours is the 30 x 48″ one for $79) but we found that any normal sized ones looked kind of dinky and unbalanced on our porch.

But the real stars of this refresh are the two evergreen trees in the black planters. We’ve had THE WORST time keeping plants alive here – so dead plants have been flanking the front door for 90% of the last 4.5 years. Every year we would buy something, it would fry from the insane direct sunlight our porch gets, and then the sad remains of the dearly departed plant would sit in the planter for a few months until we’d lather, rinse, and repeat that process. I tried annuals like creeping jenny and petunias (burned and died). Evergreens like boxwoods and dwarf spruces (burned and died even faster).  I’ve tried setting an alarm on my phone to water things every day. I’ve tried the upside-down wine bottle trick to water things. It was like a curse that refused to be broken… until now.

These evergreens can’t ever die BECAUSE THEY’RE FAKE!! After years of trying to make something (anything!) live in these planters I feel LIBERATED! These faux 36″ evergreens came into my life at the perfect time. I was at my wits end. And even though I worried they’d look lame and plastic-y, I was willing to roll the dice and try them.

You have to fluff them up when they arrive (they look sort of flat right out of the box) but they’re SO CONVINCING! The color is right. The large size is awesome. The price is way less than I’ve paid for all the things that have died on me in the past. I’m basically in love with these bushes and if loving them is wrong I don’t want to be right.

And yes, I plopped the little black pot that each tree comes in right into the dirt of our larger black planters (these are similar black planters if you’re looking). The real dirt around them just ads to the realism ;)

The last of the three things that whipped our porch back into shape was more subtle (which is my way of saying it was just deferred maintenance on our part). Since we had our pressure washer out to clean the brick on the back of the house after ripping off the deck, John sprayed down the front porch while he was at it because he wants to spray everything with the pressure washer.  Again, I don’t have a great “before” of this, but you can see the grime on the brick steps in this photo I found below.

There’s also this picture I took to show off my new fake evergreens on InstaStories. Look how green and mildewy the white railing looks. Yeesh.

We haven’t pressure washed this area since before we moved in over 4 years ago, so it was well overdue. The before and afters were pretty similar to what you saw in this post, but it was actually the first time we ever pressure washed the stone aggregate walkway. It’s one of those things you don’t realize you need until you see the difference it makes (in the photo below John had just done the outline and the diagonal stripe to show the improvement). How crazy is that difference?!

So this is how the porch looks, thanks to our new NEVER GONNA DIE plants, our new not-faded extra wide doormat, and a little stone & brick facial (aka: power washing).

I also have some percolating plans to update the portico a bit more, with chunkier trim around the triangle and squared off columns, kind of like this porch, designed by Lasley Brahaney that I found here (but I’d love to keep our Chippendale railings – so not this exactly).

In the meantime I’ll take the fact that it no longer looks like it’s hosting a spider meet & greet for the surrounding five counties. Although we did dress it up for Halloween (because fake spooky things beat ten thousand actual spiders).

Clearly a lot of this stuff is just seasonal, but if the kids have any say, the chihuahua skeleton (which we’ve affectionately named Skeleburger) will be there year-round. We also added a few pumpkins that we picked out with the kids and a few quirky “animal friends” (I can’t find an identical owl to link to, but this one would be awesome for Halloween too).

We’ve had this ceramic white rabbit a while (he’s out year round just to send the “ceramic animals are always welcome here” message to the neighbors) but he works for Halloween too. Although he’s definitely out-creeped by the black feather crow and our floppy little black feather wreath.

I know what you’re going to ask. How does Burger feel about Skeleburger. Does he love him? Does he loathe him? Well, Burger’s reaction can best be described as aloof and unimpressed.

Whenever he sees him he’s all, “Oh, it’s you. How boring.” He doesn’t just strut or sashay by. He makes a point of being straight up unimpressed. Sometimes he stops and yawns. This time he freaking stopped and stretched right in front of him. Like, “Look how long and flexible I am. You can’t even move. And why do you have ears if you’re a skeleton?!” It was a true demonstration of dog dominance.

So that’s what the porch is looking like these days. The spiderwebs might come back, and the mat might eventually fade, but I’m pretty sure the bushes are going to outlive us all.

Psst- Wanna see more outdoor updates & posts about naaaature? Here are a whole bunch from the archives. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch appeared first on Young House Love.

Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch published first on http://ift.tt/2r6hzQy

[truereviewpage]

Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch

Beach house stuff is flying along, and we owe you guys a giant post (in the meantime you can see some pics on Instagram and Facebook) but we have some breaking porch news, which is that it no longer looks neglected and abandoned. Plus I got a little “creative” with the bushes so they’ll never die on me again. I don’t have a great “before” photo because it wasn’t something I ever thought to capture for posterity, but think dirty old doormat, dead plants, discolored brick, and spiderwebs (but not of the Halloween-decoration variety).

One thing that tipped us off to the problem was taking our annual First Day of School photos out in front of the door. We were looking at this year’s photos next to the previous year’s photos to see how much the kids grew, but another thing that caught our attention was the tragic progression of our fading front door mat. It’s like that thing was just begging to be put out of its misery, but it happened so slowly we didn’t really notice until we were reminded how it used to look.

So I ordered another extra-wide mat (this is the one we got). If you have sidelights or a double door, I can’t tell you how strongly I recommend a wider doormat. They can be a pain to track down, and aren’t super cheap (ours is the 30 x 48″ one for $79) but we found that any normal sized ones looked kind of dinky and unbalanced on our porch.

But the real stars of this refresh are the two evergreen trees in the black planters. We’ve had THE WORST time keeping plants alive here – so dead plants have been flanking the front door for 90% of the last 4.5 years. Every year we would buy something, it would fry from the insane direct sunlight our porch gets, and then the sad remains of the dearly departed plant would sit in the planter for a few months until we’d lather, rinse, and repeat that process. I tried annuals like creeping jenny and petunias (burned and died). Evergreens like boxwoods and dwarf spruces (burned and died even faster).  I’ve tried setting an alarm on my phone to water things every day. I’ve tried the upside-down wine bottle trick to water things. It was like a curse that refused to be broken… until now.

These evergreens can’t ever die BECAUSE THEY’RE FAKE!! After years of trying to make something (anything!) live in these planters I feel LIBERATED! These faux 36″ evergreens came into my life at the perfect time. I was at my wits end. And even though I worried they’d look lame and plastic-y, I was willing to roll the dice and try them.

You have to fluff them up when they arrive (they look sort of flat right out of the box) but they’re SO CONVINCING! The color is right. The large size is awesome. The price is way less than I’ve paid for all the things that have died on me in the past. I’m basically in love with these bushes and if loving them is wrong I don’t want to be right.

And yes, I plopped the little black pot that each tree comes in right into the dirt of our larger black planters (these are similar black planters if you’re looking). The real dirt around them just ads to the realism ;)

The last of the three things that whipped our porch back into shape was more subtle (which is my way of saying it was just deferred maintenance on our part). Since we had our pressure washer out to clean the brick on the back of the house after ripping off the deck, John sprayed down the front porch while he was at it because he wants to spray everything with the pressure washer.  Again, I don’t have a great “before” of this, but you can see the grime on the brick steps in this photo I found below.

There’s also this picture I took to show off my new fake evergreens on InstaStories. Look how green and mildewy the white railing looks. Yeesh.

We haven’t pressure washed this area since before we moved in over 4 years ago, so it was well overdue. The before and afters were pretty similar to what you saw in this post, but it was actually the first time we ever pressure washed the stone aggregate walkway. It’s one of those things you don’t realize you need until you see the difference it makes (in the photo below John had just done the outline and the diagonal stripe to show the improvement). How crazy is that difference?!

So this is how the porch looks, thanks to our new NEVER GONNA DIE plants, our new not-faded extra wide doormat, and a little stone & brick facial (aka: power washing).

I also have some percolating plans to update the portico a bit more, with chunkier trim around the triangle and squared off columns, kind of like this porch, designed by Lasley Brahaney that I found here (but I’d love to keep our Chippendale railings – so not this exactly).

In the meantime I’ll take the fact that it no longer looks like it’s hosting a spider meet & greet for the surrounding five counties. Although we did dress it up for Halloween (because fake spooky things beat ten thousand actual spiders).

Clearly a lot of this stuff is just seasonal, but if the kids have any say, the chihuahua skeleton (which we’ve affectionately named Skeleburger) will be there year-round. We also added a few pumpkins that we picked out with the kids and a few quirky “animal friends” (I can’t find an identical owl to link to, but this one would be awesome for Halloween too).

We’ve had this ceramic white rabbit a while (he’s out year round just to send the “ceramic animals are always welcome here” message to the neighbors) but he works for Halloween too. Although he’s definitely out-creeped by the black feather crow and our floppy little black feather wreath.

I know what you’re going to ask. How does Burger feel about Skeleburger. Does he love him? Does he loathe him? Well, Burger’s reaction can best be described as aloof and unimpressed.

Whenever he sees him he’s all, “Oh, it’s you. How boring.” He doesn’t just strut or sashay by. He makes a point of being straight up unimpressed. Sometimes he stops and yawns. This time he freaking stopped and stretched right in front of him. Like, “Look how long and flexible I am. You can’t even move. And why do you have ears if you’re a skeleton?!” It was a true demonstration of dog dominance.

So that’s what the porch is looking like these days. The spiderwebs might come back, and the mat might eventually fade, but I’m pretty sure the bushes are going to outlive us all.

Psst- Wanna see more outdoor updates & posts about naaaature? Here are a whole bunch from the archives. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch appeared first on Young House Love.

Three Fixes That Solved Our Shameful Front Porch published first on http://ift.tt/2qCHnUt