outside painting

I am so excited to share this post today!

(It is a long one, so hang on.)

After repairing the front porch rotting wood and gutter situation, we were so ready to get our game on with finalllllllly painting the outside of our house.

Yay!

So, here is a before. 

Really, when I look back at these photos, I cannot believe how unloved this place used to look. We have spent the last four years in our small house loving the inside, taking on all kinds of projects and getting it to where we want it. We have sort of putzed around with the outside and got a few things done that really needed to happen (like losing the shed, and sprucing up the back yard), but this next project was a game changer.

Here is where we left off after fixing the front. So awkward with the white and the brown and the beige. All kinds of "what in the world is happening here?"

And the back before:

Ugh. Just not a fan of all this brown.

Especially here:

Oh my goodness. This photo was taken before it got to even be much of a spring, and nobody's yard is looking like much. But this is just too much. This has to go.

This space has so much potential to be amazing, but it just sits there being un-amazing. We have big plans for getting more use out of this space, too.

But, first, paint!

Per usual, we started this project one evening with the intention of "just seeing how it looks". But once we got going, we were in LOVE! Even more than we thought we would be.

We thought we would start on the back garage wall since we knew it would be such a dramatic difference. Let me tell you, even just doing this one little corner, we were hooked.

Isn't it lovely?

We were so surprised at how great the white covered the brown. We thought for sure we would have to take a second pass at it, but not so. Perfect coverage on round one.

Using this sprayer was super easy. The sprayer is the red motor with the handle on the top of the paint bucket. The tube from the sprayer just pops into the paint. The super long spraying  hose makes it easy to go a long way without having to move everything over every time you make a little progress. And you don't "carry" any paint, so it's light weight and easy.

It was actually fun - The transformation was amazing!

Just about finished with this section, but it went so fast, we just kept on going. 

Seriously, the setup took longer than the actual painting. We blocked the roof line with boards to keep the shingles from getting sprayed. The few spots we missed, Hero touched up with dark brown paint - Piece of cake.

Let's talk about over-spray for a minute. Man, that paint can sure get away from you in a hurry. Before you even realize what has happened, you have paint somewhere you didn't intend. 

Like this window:

Oops. (We actually got a fine mist on almost every window, which I scraped off with a razor blade when we finished the whole project. But still easier to clean off than to cover every window.)

We were so excited to keep going we did the whole back of the house. 

Just look at the difference!

Time to clean up. Cleaning the sprayer was actually pretty darn easy - We had everything put away in about 30 minutes.

Except for one tiny piece that fell out of the handle that we absolutely could not find to save our lives.

Until several weeks later after we had already bought a new handle. Dang. 

We turned the corner of the house and moved right along. There were a few little spraying mishaps (Hero was sporting a leopard type pattern for a while), but mostly we moved along at a great pace.

Except we underestimated the amount of paint we would need. But what is any kind of house project without running to Lowe's a few times?

Doesn't the porch look dreamy?

You can see what a difference this is making on the freshness of the house. It's pretty obvious where we left off.

Backing up a bit - What a difference! It looks like a different house. LOVE.

(You can sort of see the front of Hero's shirt - It was covered.)

Painting the garage doors finally. I have been wanting this done since the day we moved in.

Night and Day. 

Annnnd, turning the final corner. This is the last wall.

Hero got caught climbing up onto the shed roof by our neighbor looking out the window. She was giving him some friendly grief :)

I finished the rest of this wall and covered the final bits of brown. 

I think we spent about 8 hours total spraying the house. Not bad!

As Hero went around touching up the over-spray, I took the after photos.

Wow. That's all I can say is wow.

This house was built in 1958. The original color of the trim and everything we painted was white. Bringing it all back to the original made this home so much more charming, probably just like in the 50's. 

Those garage doors look amazing, right?

Okay, they look just a tiny bit uninspiring.

We have a plan for them. I'll share that next.

Here is one more set of before and afters.

Back:

Front:

We've got some cleaning up to do, a few little odds and ends to wrap up and another project or two and we will call this exterior makeover done.

What do you think?

oh boy

Well, hi!

Here is what I can say -

The holidays were super busy.

Seminary is kicking my butt.

We haven't really done much around the small house.

Most of the above are excuses. 

But we really have not done much around the small house.

I really have no good reason to ditch the blog for almost three months though. 

You know how when you put something off for a while and then it gets to be an awkward situation? Sorry for the awkwardness.

Can we put that behind us?

We have done one or two little things for the small house, and I will get those posted at some point. But today I have a feature!

I am really excited to share this house that Hero and I have been working on pretty much every weekend since Christmas.

Our good friends Stephanie and Larry moved from Michigan about 10 years ago and were not able to sell their home here due to the really icky housing market at the time. They have been renting it through a manager and have not been back until recently as they are ready to sell it in this much better market. The last of the renters have moved out and they are ready to roll. But they were having some twitchy feelings about how things were going and found out the person they were trusting was kind of taking advantage of them. When the showed up a few months ago to check on things, they were far from happy.

The kitchen had it's own special issues - Lighting, cabinets, counters, peeling floor. 

And the entire house was painted with some kind of paint color that it's only redeeming quality was that it was probably free. What the heck is this color?

The manager did have new carpet installed, which is good.

Upstairs bathroom - A little dated and the wallpaper must go.

See what I mean about every single thing being painted this color? 

Walls, a few ceilings even!, doors, trim, closets, hand rails.

I'm all about keeping things simple. Using one color throughout the house can be a great way to keep things flowing and soothing.

But not this color. Really.

So.

Our friends asked us to take over - manage the house, do any of the work we wanted to take on, work with a new realtor that they hired and to be the eyes and ears for them.

Hero and I just cannot turn down a good renovation project.

This home is in great condition structurally - No plumbing, electrical, heating, roof issues to speak of. This place just needs some loving.

And we are all over that.

Here is what we have planned:

Tear out the old kitchen.

Install a new kitchen, including cabinets, counter, sink, faucet, lighting and appliances.

Paint every wall, ceiling, closet, trim, door, hand rail.

Replace both bathroom vanities and sinks.

Strip wallpaper in the bathroom.

Have the kitchen floor installed.

A few other odds and ends.

This place is going to be terrific - Watch for updates on this home!

new bathroom walls

I am super excited to share this part of the project, because this is where we start moving past destruction and hauling and messy, and move into installing and adjusting and finished!

But first let me show off the floor a little bit better. I knew I had taken a crappy photo of the floor, but there is really just no good way to show off this floor pattern. 

But here is another attempt:

It's pretty simple (what we wanted) with just a little bit of sparkle (which we didn't know we wanted but now kind of like). I know - You cannot see the super fine glitter. Trust me - It's there. Just enough to be a little sassy.

Because we were planking the walls and planning to space the boards with a tiny gap, we first painted the drywall (original!) white, just in case there was some show-through. Plus, it felt good to get everything on the same page (meaning white).

Here is what we covered up with the planks:

Giant opening from original medicine cabinet.

Old not centered light fixture hole above the mirror.

A really icky finish on the walls - not sure what happened with them over the years, but the paint we painted just a few years ago was already flaking off. 

So to add some charm and solve so many issues, we are planking!

We used the same type of boards that we used for our kitchen floor. We love the farmhouse-y look and totally wanted to plank a wall somewhere in our house. This is just the spot!

(We also planked the two half walls that formerly hosted blue tile.)

Hero got his level out and we had lots of fun getting these boards up. We used dimes to put between the planks as spacers (nickles were too chubby) and we developed quite an efficient system. 

I just love working with that guy.

And he lets me use the air-nailer gun. 

At every stage as we install something, I think to myself - "This is my favorite thing!". Seriously, this bathroom has so many great elements now!

Oh - So in love.

Next post = Bathroom reveal.

day 2 - part 2

Hi!

Have I mentioned how much we are loving the new look that our bathroom is sporting?

So. Much.

The floors and walls were next to go in. 

And let me just say, Hero and I are not the type of people that have every detail figured out completely ahead of time. In fact we are pretty much the poster children for the "fly by the seat of your pants" movement. We have a general idea, but we really don't have a clue until we actually get in there and see what is what. As we've gotten older and (wiser?) we have gotten a tiny bit better at planning. But lots of our conversation during projects are something like this: 

"Okay, what next?" 

"I don't know. What do you think?"

"How about _____?"

"Sure!"

Sometimes this is called adventurous. Sometimes it is called irresponsible. 

We like to be more positive. We are definitely adventurers.

This bathroom project is no different. After the tub and shower were up and running before 1pm, we had lots of daylight hours to get going on the rest of the bathroom.

But of course, bathrooms need floors and walls before you can install toilets and sinks.

Here is where we left off on the floor:

What we needed next was a template to cut out the vinyl flooring we picked out.

Wait - I forgot to tell you - We had to buy a new floor.

Remember the vinyl flooring we have had leftover forever from the big house (and made our budget lower)? It would have been perfect - Except all those years rolled up had left it with major dents that were unsmoothable.

(Secretly I am not too sad because while it was fine, I was not in love with it.)

So I ran out to Lowe's and found nothing.

Then I went to a fancy flooring shop and told my salesperson the size I needed and that I had to walk out of the store with something right now. He took me to the warehouse to the remnant section (lucky we have a small  bathroom!) and I found a really great piece for just $50. 

Yes please!

So, back to the template. Here is where Liam helped the most. He gave us some old math homework pages to tape together to make the exact cut-out for the floor.

His comment:

"Finally, a real life use for math."

After this fun art project we taped it to the vinyl piece and cut it out.

Just as it is hard to cut holes in a brand new tub, it's hard to cut a brand new piece of vinyl floor.

But we did it. Obviously.

Because we are working with such a little space and we would have a toilet and a vanity to hold it down, we only used adhesive around the edges. 

And in case you are wondering, this is what I wore out of the house to the fancy flooring store :)

Hero modeling the new floor.

This floor is a little challenging to see (especially this photo - I will try to get something better). It is a speckle-y gray, white, gray-green color kind of thing with very fine glitter. 

Hmm. That does not sound very attractive. Trust me, it's good.