Outside

Our house is a bit lacking in curb appeal. 

It doesn't have that planter next to the door anymore, so it's even more lacking in curb appeal.  I would like to add some big window boxes and maybe decorative shutters at some point, but the big question is what to do with the space to the left of the steps.  Some of our neighbors have planter beds and some of them have benches.  I proposed the idea of a bike rack sometime early on, since sometimes I lock my bike to the front steps if I'm just running in to grab something.  A bike rack out front would also give our friends a place to lock up when they come visit, but it's somewhat lacking in....taste?
These would be the two styles we might go with:

(source)

(source)

These are obviously not the fanciest things we could have outside our house.  I'm not even sure if we could get a permit, if we need one, to install our own residential bike rack.  The alternative is a nice bench that we can lock our bikes too, but those are more challenging to mount into the ground and can be a bigger target for vandals.

(available here)

This woodwind bench is my current favorite, because bikes could be locked to either end easily, but it's pretty expensive and does look a little too modern to go with our 100 year old house.

(source)

 

  We could also get a bike rack shaped like something, but those are pricy and I probably want this one, which is 100% awesome and about $6800 more than I had planned for this project.