Year 1, A Look Back - House Exterior

The past couple of weeks I've been writing about all the house renovation projects we have completed in 2010 as a way to look back and see how much we have progressed. It seems we are always looking ahead at what still needs to be done so it's great to take a few moments and remember just how much we have truly accomplished in such a short time. In November we celebrated one year of owning our first home! There have been many, many weekends of hard work. I believe though that where we have spent at least 75% of our time so far has been painting and repairing the exterior of the house.

We purchased our house through a short sale. If you don't know what a short sale is it's anything but a SHORT sale. 9 months it took, of waiting, placing offers on other houses but always loosing out to someone with a bigger offer, more waiting until finally the word came that the short sale had gone through! Well 9 months of nobody living in the house had taken it's toll on the landscaping. When we moved in most of the landscaping was dead. What was left was planted in bad locations and with no thought or design at all. In order to paint the house and eventually create a more cohesive and drought tolerant landscape we have pretty much ripped everything out. In the after photos you are going to see a pretty sad landscape but that will hopefully be changing soon! 2011 is going to be filled with many many weekends of landscaping projects, this is when we will really see the house come together, I can't wait!

So now for the before photos:

 So this is what the house looked like when it was put on the market. The landscape was living because there were renters living there taking care of it. The house was white with a light blue trim that was cracking and falling off of all the windows.

This is what the landscaping looked like when we moved in after 9 months of nobody living in the house and watering the landscaping.

All the windows were in really bad condition. There were layers and layers of cracked and peeling paint. Also, somebody had used caulk or something to fill holes in the windows and it had seeped through the paint leaving dark blue spots.

We had to strip ALL the windows and get them down to bare wood. This took several months and was not a fun job at all! We also repaired several of the broken sash cords which is the rope that makes these old windows go up and down.

All the hard work really paid off though! We went with a sage green color for the house exterior, a burgundy and cream for the trim.

The stairs use to be painted blue as well as the railings. The room to the right of the stairs is the kitchen. The hope is that we will eventually move this room out a little to make our tiny kitchen larger. Then we will add a large wood porch to the front. So for now I just painted over the blue stairs but this will hopefully just be a temporary fix.

 

Painting the exterior of your house is hard, hard work. If you have the money to pay a professional I highly recommend it! Also, don't skimp on the paint. Pay the extra money for good quality paint. You don't want to be out there doing it all over again in a few years. It's VERY time consuming and not cheap.

2010 COMPLETED EXTERIOR PROJECTS:

-Removed overgrown and dead plants.

- Stripped and painted all windows

- Repaired glazing on windows (the stuff that holds the glass in the window frame).

- Painted entire house exterior

- Stripped blue sidewalk going to front door

- Painted front porch and stairs (was blue)

- Painted blue railing black

- Repaired door bell

2011 PROJECTS:

- Landscaping, lots of it.

- New wood porch on front of house (probably won't happen in 2011 but it's a possibility) 

- Get rid of ugly security gate on the front door and replace with a nice period style front door.

- New backdoor light fixture

- Widen driveway with bricks (in the works now, photos will be coming in a few weeks!)

Year 1, A Look Back - Living Room

To celebrate a new year and just a little over one year of home ownership, I'm writing a series of blogs that look back on all the progress we have made on the house in the past year room by room. I'm also posting projects we are hoping to accomplish in 2011. In this next blog I'm going to focus on the living room.

First, a few before photos.




Now the after photos!




I still need to refinish and reupholster this wood lounge chair.





We still need blinds for all the windows, I'm really not too fond of this fabric pinned up look! I think we are going to get either simple white roman or roller shades that fit inside the window so we don't hide the beautiful molding my dad installed.

2010 Completed Projects:
- Refinished hardwood floors
- All new paint
- New molding around the windows, doors and baseboards

A before and after shot of the door molding. I love how it turned out! Now one of these days we hope to get a nicer door but that will have to wait for now.

A before and after shot of the molding around the windows.

It's amazing what some nice baseboard molding can do, really.



Living Room Projects for 2011:
- Window shades
– Refinish and reupholster wood lounge chair
- The rest are decorating projects like a tall plant for one of the corners and probably a lamp in the other. The room isn't quite right yet but I think these little things will complete the room.

Year 1, A Look Back - Dining Room

We have had our little house for just a little over a year now. It's crazy how fast a year has passed! So many weekends spent fixing up the little 1940 bungalow. Since we seem to focus on our ever growing to-do list I thought it would be good to stop and reflect back on everything we have accomplished in such a short time so we can pat ourselves on the back and see how much all our hard work has paid off. The next several posts are going to be about everything we have accomplished in 2010 but I'm also going to list our project goals for 2011. This first post is going to be about our dining room since it is the most completed room in the house I thought I would start there.

This is a photo of the dining room when we moved in. When we first looked at this house our biggest concerns were the tiny kitchen and this tiny dining room. Although we looked at many houses that had no dining room at all so I was excited just to have one! My fiance didn't think we would ever be able to fit a full sized table in this room but I was convinced we could. This photo below shows the small table the people who were living here before us had.




This is our dining room after. As you can see we fit a table that seats 6 plus we have an extension piece to the table so we can fit even more if needed! What we accomplished in 2010:
1) Refinished hardwood floors
2) All new paint
3) Refinished windows
4) New molding around windows, door and baseboard
5) New dining room table and chairs, a great find on Craigslist!
6) New mid-century modern light fixture (won on ebay!)




All new molding around the bay windows gives the house more character and brings more attention to the windows.

New baseboards really finished this room off nicely.

New molding around doors includes a pediment and plinth blocks.


And of course I can't forget all the finishing details!

I found this metal trough at a local modern home store and planted colorful succulents in it. I think it makes a great centerpiece on our table!

New light fixture and woolly wall planter. I love how the hanging plants are like a piece of art and they add a punch of color to the room not to mention plants are great air purifiers.

Our collection of vintage camera's and a mid-century pot given to us by our very good friends help fill this little nook.

Dining room projects for 2011:
1) Window shades

Dining Room Before & After

Dining Room before the start of renovations.

This photo was taken before any renovations had been done.

This photo was taken after a new paint job and the floors had been refinished.

The final result!

The mid-century modern table and chairs was a excellent find on Craigslist. The hanging lamp I won on Ebay.

I've been really interested in living vertical walls for sometime now so when I came across the Wally pocket from http://www.woollypocket.com/ I decided these pockets would be perfect for creating a living wall in our dining room. I love the end result! It's so beautiful and out of reach from our cats who love to munch on plants. I can't wait until the plants grows in more! It's living art!

All that is really left is to install the baseboards.