Coming Soon...

We have begun a new round of remodeling projects!  If you read The Life Not My Own, you know that I have internet at the house now.  So...hopefully I'll be updating you more regularly.  Stay-tuned!

Can You Say Curb Appeal?

So, up until recently, the outside of our house has been something of a mess.  It was a mess before we moved in, due to neglect and very dumb landscaping choices, but with all that we were doing inside we never got the chance to work on the outside.

Well, not anymore!  We got kind of sick of driving into our drive with our house and yard looking like a construction zone.  Plus, I was really wanting Andy to make me a raised garden bed.  Really, though, we just got motivated to make it look nice!

It actually started way back in January with some unusually warm weather, and a little inspiration.  If you haven’t noticed, our house has lots of rocks in and on it (hence, the blog name).  And you know what?  There are also lots and lots of rocks around our house…as in all over.  Thus is how it began…with rocks that we already had.

Our front porch is rather, well, boring.  It just had plain wooden posts and and unstained deck.  I was trying to find a good picture of it, but, alas, I it apparently was too plain and ugly for me to even want to take pictures!  This is what the house looked like the first time we looked at it:

 

And here are the posts I’m talking about:

In addition to this really ugly post which was, in fact, blocking the view of the front door.

Everything was just disjointed, and the seams were additions were made were just blatantly obvious.  So anyway, we also had some wood we’d bought an an auction last summer just lying around, so we decided to put it to good use.

First, Andy built frames around the top of the posts.

As you can see, he also added trim pieces, redid the wood between the posts, and added wiring so we could put lights on the posts.  Then he took the rocks we had lying around, plus a little mortar, to rock around the bottom.  Here’s the finished product:

It looks like it was made to be there, right?

Here it is, starting to come together, with Andy and his friend Leo working on the rock.

I’ll add here that another motivation was to get rid of the wasps nest that plagued as last summer, and seal it up so that they’d never come back.  Seriously, we were killing two birds with one stone!

Next, Andy had to remove this ugly beam, which was so low people were hitting their heads.

As you can guess, it was a relic of the original (or at least 2nd version of the ) house.  Midway through, Andy decided to put a new post in first.  Hence, the post in the picture.

Then he finished tearing out the beam (which, thankfully, wasn’t load bearing).  As you can tell, it was a pain.

Next, Andy cut out the ugly, iron post.  Ta-da!

And then pulled off the old wood, which was rotting slightly (not sure what that piece is called).

He also pulled off the plywood by the door, to make sure there weren’t any wasp’s nests or leaks in there.  Turns out someone had put in sheetrock too.  Oh, the things you find!

We also stained the wood a reddish color, which I love. 

Andy then framed the new post up (and around it).

I love how much more open everything is from the front door!

What was I doing during all of this?  Pulling the ivy off the front of the house.  I liked the look of it, but it was climbing through the rocks and mortar, and really doing a lot of damage.  So, bye-bye!

Next came the garden bed.  Andy built me a nice, raised garden bed.  I was so excited about it!

We were so thankful to finally be able to find some bulk top soil (after we looked forever-and-ever).  It turned out to be way more than enough!  It’s a start at least!

We had enough dirt to do the front beds as well!

We so happened to have these giant rocks lining our driveway, so Andy took the backhoe and used them to create a new garden bed around our rosebud tree.

Then we lined the bed with a weed barrier.

Next we filled it up with dirt.  The dogs thought it was their own personal pile to play in!

Already looking better!

Then we put some natural mulch over the top.

Andy did the same in front of the living room.

He also rocked in another step (as you can tell, the last post is still not done).

He also mortared along the path, between the rocks.

Finally, we re-seeded with grass seed along the path…

And then planted a few more plants.  Isn’t is starting to look great?

Really, this didn’t cost us that much to do, because a lot of the supplies (like the rocks), we already had on hand.  And it truly makes such a great difference in making our house feel like a home.  Remember that, no matter what your house looks like on the inside, it’s the curb appeal that really counts.  And you don’t have to do much!  Pull up weeds, reseed with grass, put in a few flower beds, or just keep everything mowed and trimmed.  All of this counts to show those who drive by you take pride in your home…and make it that much more appealing to guests.

*As a final note, we only added about an inch of topsoil and mulch around the rose bud tree.  If you fill in more than about 2 inches of dirt around any tree, you'll actually kill the tree!

Carpeting is Hard Work!

Once we’d finished all of the drywall, painting, and trim it was time to put the carpet down.  Eventually, we want to put carpet in our bedroom and the family room too, so we’ll probably end up replacing the carpet in the two smaller bedrooms anyway.  Still, we needed carpet for the time being…we just didn’t want to spend a bunch.  Our solution?  We drove to a carpet store and asked if they had any remnants.  This is a great way to get a good deal on carpet…especially if you only need a little!  We ended up choosing two different remnants, one for each room.

Andy rented a knee kicker and carpet stretcher from one of the local hardware supply stores, and we got cracking.  What we didn’t realize was how much hard work it was!

The easy part, however, was putting down the padding and tack strips.  Unfortunately, I failed to get pictures.  Lame, I know!

Then you have to cut and lay the carpet.  This lovely little knee kicker thing helps you get it down right.

Only problem is you actually have to kick it with your knee.  Yes, Andy most definitely had sore knees later!

Then you use this crazy stretcher to stretch the carpet and get everything flat.

Overall, we learned that laying carpet is really hard work…but it’s worth the effort.

 

Doesn’t new carpet just make everything look so much better?

Never Paint a Ceiling Blue

Once we had all the walls in the new, bigger bedroom framed, it was much easier to picture how it would turn out.  Instead of an icky, gross bedroom we just might have a nice, cozy one!

As soon as we had all the walls framed, the exterior walls insulated, and all of the electrical boxes placed and wired, we began working on putting up new drywall. 

At the corner by the CH&A unit, we used a lip seam, making a nice, rounded corner.  It gave the room a nice, modern look to it!

Andy also finished covering up the old “peak-through” to the living room. 

It was a little difficult to get the new drywall and sheetrock to match the old, but Andy used our drywall sprayer over all of the sheetrock.  By covering even the old drywall, we were able to blend it much better.

I spent hours and hours painting this room and the ceiling over and over.  The ceiling is fairly low, and it took at least three or four coats to cover up the old blue paint.  People, for the sake of any people who will own your house after you…do not paint your ceiling blue.  It’s absolutely ridiculous to cover up!  (Sorry, no pics…this was a project all on my lonesome.)
In early November, my sister Victoria came to visit and she helped us paint the room.  We choose to leave most of the walls plain antique white, and paint two of the walls a bright green for an accent.

The room is south facing, so the green color is very cheery and colorful.  By the way, these pictures don’t really do the color justice.  Stay tuned for some later pictures of how great it looks!

We also replaced the old closet door with a new paneled one (one of several we bought at an auction last summer).

We also painted the door to the small closet containing the CH&A unit and electrical box white as well.  We plan to build shelves around it to make it a bit less awkward.

We then added new white trim.  I also salvaged and refinished some of the old trim and we used it too.  (More abut that later.


Everything was really starting to come together!

Next up, “Carpeting is Hard Work”.

Would You Like One Bedroom or Two?

Pretty much as soon as we had finished our overwhelming-project-of-a-kitchen, we started work on a new project.  If you remember from the pictures, the back of the house held two teeny, tiny bedrooms.  And I mean tiny.  To make matters worse, one of them had a sliding glass door onto the back porch, making it a terrible place for a bedroom.  And the other one?  I have no idea what happened to the carpet in there, but I really don’t want to know.

Here’s the first room:

And here’s the other:

These rooms were literally 9’x9’, if that, and very awkwardly arranged.  You really couldn’t fit a queen size bed in either.  So, we decided to fix that.  Instead of a four bedroom house with two tiny box bedrooms, we decided to make it a three bedroom house with good sized rooms and an extra office. 
We started by taking out the sliding glass door.  All thanks go to Andy for doing that…

We actually found that there were three layers of siding on the house.  So, before the house was white, it was plain stained wood:

We then framed in a new door.

We borrowed the door of this little outbuilding we have:

Here’s Andy fitting the door in place:

Once that was done, we pulled up the existing flooring in room.  Our plan was to move the wall over a few feet, making this room the office.

What was I doing during all of this, you ask?  Painting, of course.  That room that the old owners so graciously painted dark blue (including the ceiling) wasn’t exactly working for us.  So, I set to the tedious task removing all the molding and then primering the walls and ceiling white.  Oh, and ripping up that nasty carpet.  Yes, gloves were used.  

 

Meanwhile, Andy worked on framing the new wall in the other room.

Next order of business?  Ripping out the old wall.  Yes, Andy had a lot of fun with that. 

Once he’d knocked out all the drywall, he started taking apart the framing.  If you plan on doing this at home, make sure you know what you’re doing.  This wasn’t a supporting wall, so it was fine to take out.

Andy used ply wood on the outside of the house where we had extended the wall.

Next came the more challenging part.  Our house had a lot of wasted space and weird architectural features.  We planned to fix that.  If you remember correctly, these two bedrooms came off of this very long hallway:

The bedroom at the end on the right (the one with the blue ceiling) was the one we were expanding.  So we decided to make the hallway shorter and the room larger by putting the door in the hallway instead.  We would gain a little niche when you first walked in.
So, once we had moved the wall, we started to take out the “useless” wall.

  

Before Andy took out the framing, though, he had to determine if this wall was load-bearing.  Meaning, we could have a big problem on our hands if we tore it out.  To do so, he had to crawl into the weird attic.  Poor guy!

Thankfully, it wasn’t, so we tore it out  There was a little extra wall where the central heating and air vent was, so we took that out too:

Andy then framed in the new doorway.

So here’s all the extra space we gained.  On the floor you can see where the old walls were.

Do you think it was worth it?  What would you have done?


Next up, “Never Paint a Ceiling Blue”.