My first good look....oh my!

The renters are completely out and I was pleasantly surprised to find that they left the house reasonably clean.  In other words, not OCD clean, but I'm happy to report it was in much better shape than I thought I would find it in.  Having all of their mess out of the house and removing all the dark heavy window treatments made a tremendous difference.  "Let there be light" never seemed more appropriate and I was thrilled to see the natural light in all the rooms.

Camera in hand, I thought .....hmmmmm.....no better time than now to take a few before shots.

Exterior of MUD (My Ugly Duckling) below:

A shot of the front door....aka the dirtiest door in the entire city, maybe state.....maybe in the whole world!

A shot from one corner of the very large lot.  It's a mess, but has promise.  Beautiful old trees, that are just begging to be cleaned and trimmed , and hedges and a modge-podge of very odd shrubs that all need to go to shrub heaven. Thank goodness my mother, our matriarch gardener, visits every winter and brings all of her vision with her.