The cute all apparently got sucked into Martha’s Vineyard, where there are more than 300 dainty rainbow-hued Victorian-style cottages with elaborate balconies, turrets, cornices, and gables with all manner of adorable details.

This is the Oak Bluffs neighborhood – formerly campgrounds for Methodist church group retreats, the houses themselves were built in the mid-1800s by members of the church community and to this day surround a open-sided wrought iron tabernacle that seats thousands.

Color abounds here, as do themed embellishments like balcony cut-outs shaped like everything from gingerbread men to grapes to Martha’s Vineyard itself. And the houses, of course, wear their colors and cut-outs with pride, sporting names like Sea Shrimp Cottage and Big Enuf.

The one downside to all the tooth-melting sweetness you’ll find in Martha’s Vineyard is that the gingerbread cottages are often (though not always) extremely close together. I’m talking about distances like six inches between exterior walls – you might as well be living in a townhouse.

Photos via: 1, 2, 3

How cute is this white crested treeswift birdhouse from Anthropologie? Furthermore, it’s weatherproof and it’s cast from the Balinese baskets that hold betel nuts, which are offered to visitors as a sign of hospitality. And even better, it’s on sale for only $19.95! Alas, with renovations finally underway, I cannot simply buy any birdhouse that strikes my fancy, but if you happen to be in the market for a birdhouse for a special little bird, why not snap this one up in my stead?

How easy is it to upgrade your front door? I’d say it’s pretty damn easy!

Switch out your old doorknob for something shiny and new
… or distinguished and old works, too (via)

(more…)

Worried about what the neighbors will think because you’ve been thinking about painting the trim around your front door a sedate purple? Don’t. Your neighbors should just be happy you’re not taking it all the way, like uber-crafter Violette Clark, whose “spirit and artistic drive are completely uncontrollable” and who paints “whatever object falls beneath her gaze.” All right, so my chosen quotes make her sound a bit… wacky? But she’s really awesome, especially if a marker for awesomeness is doing whatever you want to do when it comes to your house and car.

Doing what you want to do – neighbors be damned – might even lead you down the path to a new life, as it did for Violette.

[She] always loved color, but she began saturating her home with it following the break-up of her marriage 14 years ago.

“When I went off and bought my own cottage, it was as if someone had given me a crayon and said I could do anything I wanted,” she says. “It was liberating. You don’t have to consider everybody else you live with.”

Embracing what she calls her “inner eccentric friend” has opened many doors for Clark.

Like creation a successful program of classes and workshops… writing a book… and generally getting famous within her chosen sphere. Pretty awesome to think that all that started with her painting her cottage’s doors!

Living, as I do, in a town where enough of the houses have remained relatively unchanged (outside, at least) from their construction in the early 1800s and late 1700s, I see a lot of real wood shutters. Real wood shutters on hinges that actually work, I mean. Unfortunately, I also see a lot of houses sporting vinyl shutters nailed directly into siding (wood and otherwise)… this includes *shudder* my own little Cape. Please trust me when I say we’re going to take care of this, but we’re focusing on the inside of the house where we, ya know, actually live first before doing much to the exterior. And yet, knowing as I do that we’ll eventually rip off the faded vinyl siding to expose the original wood shingles underneath and replace the ugly faux shutters with cute real ones that actually work, I am still mortified when I look at my house and see something like this:

What I much rather see is something a bit more like this:

Real shutters rock for so many reasons, not the least of which being that you can move them to clean behind them so wasps don’t have a chance to set up shop. Real shutters can be used for privacy and shade, and they just look nicer, being to scale (unlike oddly small vinyl shutters that wouldn’t even cover the window if they worked) and having all manner of nice hardware.

So why am I not rushing out right now to order custom wood shutters along with the appropriate hardware? Because custom wood shutters can be rather expensive – whether you’re talking board & batten, louvers, or panels, you’re talking $100 per half a shutter (ouch). The good news is that The Beard and I are finally getting off our butts and starting to do renovations that go beyond painting – think hanging drywall and so on – so we’re feeling pretty good about our ability to make our own working wooden board & batten shutters once we start tackling the outside of the house.

Har haw, I know. Terrible pun, but I couldn’t help myself. Growing up close-ish to some of the less savory parts of New York City, I saw plenty of wrought iron window grates, but as a child of the “safe” suburbs, I thought them a terribly eyesore. It didn’t help that many of the wrought iron window grates I saw were warped or rusted or just plain uuuugly. When you’re a builder throwing up cookie-cutter apartment blocks and houses, I suppose it doesn’t make much sense to think of the aesthetic properties of wrought iron. Can people get in via the windows? No? We’re all good.

It was only later when I lived in Costa Rica, where people coming in through your windows to steal whatever isn’t nailed down isn’t what I’d call an impossibility, that I saw wrought iron window grates that had *gasp* style! Granted, they were new, but that doesn’t mean they necessarily had to be pretty or fanciful or just gracefully curvaceous. I wish now that I’d taken some pictures of all the amazing wrought iron window grate patterns I saw, but to make up for that I found some awesome examples of wrought iron grating from around the Internuts. Enjoy!

(via Lady the Tramp)

(via Haddoncraft Forge)

(via Cor-Ten Art)

(via Palazzo Pizzo)

Nice, no? And perhaps even pleasantly inspirational to those contemplating buying cheap-o real estate in areas that one wouldn’t necessarily describe as savory.

A block of apartments in Chartres, France — a lovely, lovely place — might have looked like any other, were it not for four months of what must have been strenuous painting.

Aren’t they fun? Various areas are done in differing styles so you get a little taste of everything. I sadly don’t know anything about these apartments other than their locale, but more pics can’t be seen here.

With The Beard gone this past week, I finally experienced the horrors of having a walk that desperately needed shoveling and a baby that refused to sleep. Karma must have been on my side, however, because when I finally gave up and decided to leave the baby in her crib (much to everyone’s dismay) a pair of burly teenagers came to the door offering up shovel services in return for a check made out to CASH. Oh, how grateful I was!

To honor all those chilly teens who walk the streets with shovels looking for a little spending money, here are two lovely photos of snow swept houses taken by my friend Qousqous. Perhaps if we all think of how picturesque our homes look when blanketed with snow, the chore of shoveling won’t seem so terrible?

Cute, no? The snow effect works particularly well on cottages and old fashioned rectangular houses with lots of pretty trim around the windows, but no matter what sort of house you have snow can make it look a little cleaner and a little more photogenic… at least until the white stuff gets all slushy and gross.

I did have one question for all my readers who live in snowy climes: Are teenagers with shovels a relatively rare occurrence these days? The pair that saved my tush the other day are the first I’ve seen since moving to the great white north. Mostly we just see construction workers with nothing better to do than roll around with snowblowers overcharging for a driveway blowout.

Houses that are nothing but windows? Yes, please! I have a real thing for houses that are more window than wall, even if they can be hell to heat if not done right and privacy is at a premium aaand birds get bonked heads thinking they can fly right in. Glass houses tend to be super mod, but they don’t have to be. My grandparents, for example, live in a glass house that was crafted from a barn dating back to the 1700s. It’s a cool mix of modern and traditional styles, and wonderfully light and airy within.

This glass house from Arquitectura X was created to mimic the feel of unlimited space. The living areas open out visually onto wherever the house sits, making the house itself feel expansive.

A glass house found in Freetown Christiania, Copenhagen exemplifies modern “architecture without architects.” It appears to be literally all window. (Photo by seier+seier)

It’s more common to see glass houses around the ocean, especially in warm locales, where you get beautiful views year round. The downside is cleaning the salt spray off of all those windows, though presumably if you have a glass house like this one, you can afford to pay a window washer.

Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut was Johnson’s own residence. As glass houses go, this one is superlative.

The beauty of glass houses, of course, is that they let the outside in without actually letting the outside in. In tropical climes or mountainous areas or in the woods, having a glass house is one of the best ways to appreciate nature’s splendor. (Photo by Ah Hman)

A house nearby to my own up until recently had the most atrociously painted electric purple door. I’ve nothing against electric purple doors, mind you. Rather, I am anti-DIY when DIY is done badly. If you’re going to attempt to fix or refresh your home, why not do it right the first time? And really now, painting a front door is not all that difficult, and it can add a lot of personality to an exterior for very little money.

So how does one paint a front door? First things first! Take off the door — as tempting as it is to glop on paint without taking off the door, you’ll end up with shite results. Corral any pets as necessary. Once the door is off, and keep in mind that it may be heavy so be careful, you’ll need to remove all the hardware, e.g. the hinges, the doorknob, a door knocker, or peepholes. Oh, and any screws that were holding those things on will need to come off, too.

Next step, prime! And when I say prime, I mean the whole thing, including the inside edges and surfaces that will be under hardware. Once that’s done and dry, check for things like cracks. If you see any, fill ‘em up with caulk and then prime over the caulk once it’s dry. Unfortunately, painting doesn’t come next — sanding does. But as much as sanding can suck, sanding with a fine grit sandpaper will make the finished door look polished and professional.

Finally, it is time to paint. Um, once you’ve rubbed off all the dust from all that sanding. I recommend using a roller on the flat bits of the door. Part of the reason that the electric purple door looked so awful was that there were brush strokes over brush strokes, and the door’s original color was showing underneath. Not very polished looking at all. As you paint, try not to let the paint pool or drip because, yes, it will dry that way. Finally, apply as many coats as you need (when the previous coat is dry) to get good coverage and a uniform hue.

Now that’s not so hard, right? As for the electric purple door, the owners of said door eventually did take it down and paint it correctly, and now it looks absolutely stunning.

(Image via)