Not pretty

Our house used to have what were unarguably a front aspect and a back aspect. Front door straight on to the drive from the hallway; back door into a rear boot-room, leading on to the garden, from there you had to walk all the way around the house and through a garden gate to get out. We knocked down the boot room and replaced it with a much bigger room that is now kitchen/day room/dining room where we spend most of our time when indoors. We also removed the garden wall and installed a green drive, so that we can park a car beside the house.

It did not really occur to us that a side effect of this was that we were completely re-orienting the house. The external door in the new room is now the one we use almost exclusively to come and go; the 'front' door is for strangers and deliveries. Our former daytime outlook, across the drive to our neighbours' garden, is replaced by views of our own garden, and beyond in completely opposite directions. It's odd that such an apparently modest change was so transformative

It's definitely a big net gain - all the better for being hardly anticipated - but it does mean that things that we located at the 'back' turn out to be things we encounter as we go to and from what has become the main entrance. 'Things' like the wood-store, the 1,000L green plastic oil tank, the four plastic waste and recycling bins in their array of coded colours, and this attractive green metal box that houses the oil-fired boiler

The wall behind it is deeper cream because I sprayed it with a hose - several times - and applied a coat of limewash. You can see it has been ravaged by several winters and needs a bit more tender care than the other walls. When the lime dries, that flaking and mottling will be obscured, but I will be adding several additional coats before the autumn storms and winter frosts. Warm, grey days with rain in the wind, like this afternoon, are perfect for the job - ensuring the lime cures and dries slowly, and bonds well with the surface below. With luck it will be an eye-catching distraction!