05/28/12

Coming home from vacation

We went on a little jog down to Orlando this weekend for my nephew’s 1st birthday! We had a wonderful trip. My brother and sister-in-law just moved into their new (old) house and I look forward to seeing what they do with it! Perhaps it will inspire me to work at decor in our house.

Coming home we were greeted with a slew of issues, which is frustrating.

Shortly before we left, we noticed our bathtub is leaking. We didn’t have time to deal with it before, so we need to figure out the problem and best solution now. The downside of having only one bath/shower! Fortunately our local Y (where we are members) has showers available.

Speaking of plumbing, we also came back to a dripping kitchen sink faucet. It wasn’t dripping before we left, and it isn’t bad, but it’s still something that needs to be dealt with.

We came home to find our mailbox on its side – apparently someone decided to take it out with their car, and drive off. Sigh. So today I went and bought a new mailbox, and now that Paul is home from work for the evening we’ll figure out how easy it will be to put up. (I’m 7 months pregnant and he has an injured hand – we’ll see!)

The last annoyance is our stairwell light is burned out. I know, very minor, but involve dragging a chair upstairs and taking down the light fixture. I’m mostly exhausted all the time which makes these types of projects difficult.

I’ll post pictures of our new mailbox once it’s up and my camera is back from the repair place.

05/23/12

front yard daydreams

I spend a lot of time daydreaming what I’d like to do with certain problem areas around our house. It tides me over while we’re in a position that we can’t really do anything, heh.

One problem area: We live on a corner lot. Apparently, people seem to think that means that we are totally fine with them cutting off the corner and walking right through our yard. This drives me nuts. I feel like it’s rude and it makes me uncomfortable that they walk so close to our house. (How easy would it be to grab something off the carport?) Also, I worry a little that by letting someone on our property and not doing anything to stop it might invite a potential lawsuit later if they should injure themselves somehow and sue me. Yay, America and our court system. I’m sure that isn’t a very common scenario, but I’ve also been around enough people who have found themselves at the wrong end of a lawsuit to know that fighting something like that is tedious and expensive.

And just to illustrate, I added a blue line to approximate where people are generally cutting across:

Doesn’t it look nice and inviting to cut across?

And by the way, 99% of the people cutting across the property are adults. I actually have only once seen kids cut across. So they are very definitely people who should know better!

I have been brainstorming about putting up a fence to take care of this problem. A fence would also give me some peace of mind about making it more difficult for toddlers to run into the street. I have gone back and forth, and have decided that a fence along the shorter side would be cheaper and still look nice. Here is what I’m talking about:

Here are my thoughts about what we should do…

First off, I’d like to remove the two random bushes. I don’t know if they can be moved to elsewhere in our yard, or if we should rehome them. I’ll have to look up what kind of bushes they are. :-) On the left side of the picture, you’ll see some gorgeous azalea bushes. I think they’re beautiful, but they are not in a good spot in our yard. It’s very difficult (read: impossible) to see if anyone is coming when you are backing out of our driveway. Also, if a car parks behind them, I can’t see the car at all from the house or the driveway – which makes me nervous and a safety hazard in my opinion. So transplanting the azaleas is something that needs to happen regardless.

Once the bushes are gone, I’d like to put a fence along the road and up our property a bit to made a corner. (I need to research setback laws for our county.) I am leaning towards a white ranch fence, or perhaps a split-rail. Something like these:

(Images from here and here)

From the very brief pricing I have done, they would be about the same price for the 100ft. length (no gates) we’re talking about. I also have visions of a pretty flowering climbing vine along the fence, or just flowers, to make it appealing to the eye. Of course, I know nothing about plants so I’ll have to talk to someone about that. :-)

So what do you think? Do you prefer ranch rail or split rail? (Picket fence would also work, but it seems a lot more expensive.) What flowering vine would look nice?

05/1/12

And suddenly our priority list changes…

A week or two ago, we had our first house-related emergency. Well, we’ve had the HVAC unit die twice, but both were fairly inexpensive fixes. This time, however, was not so cheap.

I believe I’ve mentioned before that our house has the original galvanized pipes. Galvanized pipes were common when this house was built in the 60s, but they are not the pipes of choice nowadays due to the fact that they break down. We knew fairly early on that we’d need to replumb the whole house someday. It was on our list, but not one of the priorities.

Shortly after a big rainstorm, I noticed there was a puddle in front of our house that hadn’t been there before. Since it had recently rained, I didn’t think much of it. Several days – perhaps even a week went by – before I realized that the puddle never went away. One Sunday, Paul crawled down to the crawlspace to take a look, and noticed it was particularly damp at the edge by the area of the puddle. My uncle (a handyman) came by and he and Paul dug around the area to find this:

Yep, we were pretty sure our pipes were leaking! Specifically, the main water supply line that brings the water in from the street. We contacted a plumber who came out the next day and confirmed our diagnosis. He gave us a quote for a new pipe, and instructed us to contact Georgia 811 to mark the utilities before he dug.

It was all fairly painless, though we turned off the water for several days. We turned it back on in the evenings, but it was an interesting lesson in appreciating water! I never realized before how dirty Savannah got until I couldn’t wipe her mouth/face/hands/etc.

So we have a new water supply line, and we have moved “replumbing the house” to the top of our list. Since the leak in this pipe was due to their age, it’s only a matter of time before another pipe goes. I am simultaneously sad and happy. Sad that we have this expense and a somewhat timecrunch, but happy because it’s something on our list already and will improve our quality of life.

Our pipes are already deteriorating and we decided a long time ago not to drink the water. Here’s a sample of the water from our kitchen faucet after being gone for the weekend:

Yeah, now you can see why we opt for bottled water!

Once we replace the pipes, this problem should be fixed. I am so looking forward to being able to get a glass of water from the sink, or refill Savannah’s water bottle, or use tap water for cooking. I can only imagine how much cleaner our laundry will be!

03/24/12

Why yes, we do have a master bedroom!

You’ve probably noticed a shortage in pictures talking about our master bedroom. The truth is it’s the bedroom that is cleaned the least often and I’ve just not wanted to display that for the whole internet to see. :-) In fact, today when I finally tackled our room, I discovered screws and tools on the dresser from when we put together the furniture after moving in 2.5 years ago. Yeah….

So here is the only “before” picture I took:

As you see, the bedroom was paneling painted white with red trim around the windows and doorway. There was also the lovely borderprint that matched the stuff in the living and dining room. The room was carpeted, and the inside of the closets were painted yellow.

Here’s an after shot, taken today (though 90% of the work we did was done in the first month of owning the house):

Some of the things we did:
- Removed the borderprint.
- Painted the paneling a very light blueish color. It really doesn’t show up in pictures, but I love it in real life.
- Painted all the trim around windows & doors white, to match the rest of the house.
- Pulled up carpet to reveal gorgeous hardwood floors underneath. They’re in great shape because they’ve been covered by carpet for so long. We did get them refinished when we refinished all the floors before we moved in, but these didn’t need much to make them beautiful.
- Painted the inside of the closets white (as we did in all the other bedrooms). It makes SUCH a difference in my opinion.
- Installed a light switch because there wasn’t one.

From the same angle as the “before” picture.

Let’s face it, we never leave our closet doors closed. :-)

Looking in the other direction…

Closet doors on the left, door to the hallway in the middle, and door to the bathroom on the right. We don’t use the door to the bathroom and keep it locked all the time.

Now that I’ve gotten all these pictures taken… I’m actually going to be selling our furniture pretty soon. It doesn’t fit well in our room, and we had to completely take the headboard & footboard off because it made the bed too long for the space. Here’s a picture of the headboard and footboard from a previous apartment – it matches the dresser and nightstand, which we bought all together. I’m still trying to figure out a good solution to our needs. The room is a bit difficult to arrange furniture because of the doors and HVAC vent on the floor. Also, while I LOVE the medium wood color of the current furniture, I’d like something that contrasts the floor a bit more. I haven’t decided anything yet… but these things are all what’s on my mind.

We also cut our grass in our backyard for the first time, and I’ll post pictures of that later! (It looks like an actual yard now!)

02/13/12

Finally! pictures of our backyard

Paul found the charger to the camera battery, and I was finally able to take pictures today!

We got the seed laid around the end of October. In retrospect, that wasn’t the best idea, because then all the leaves fell and we were unsure of how to rake them up without disturbing the new seeds. We were worried if we *didn’t* rake them, then it would hurt the ability of the seeds to grow. I did rake parts of the yard, and I have noticed now that the parts of the yard I didn’t rake look more sparse. If I remember correctly, with this type of grass we will need to reseed every spring – I need to investigate that more thoroughly though.

You can see the areas where they graded the dirt.

Then they seeded, and put straw down!

Then came the task of watering. We watered the entire yard for 30 minutes a day every day for one week, then every other day for 2 or 3 weeks. Because we only had one spigot and one sprinkler, we had to do it in 4 segments to cover the whole yard. It took about 2 hours each time! I was glad when we were finished with that obligation.

I took the following pictures today, about 3.5 months later.

Savannah LOVES running around in the backyard. Some of the grass is really long, and some is still short and looks like “baby” grass.

We planted grass behind the shed too, which helped clean up the area a bit. We slowly had to clean up that area the past 2.5 years – there was a LOT of junk and trash back there. You can still see a big pile of cinder blocks (from the old retaining wall) – we tried to stack them as neatly as possible, saving them for future use if we need them.

I think we’ll mow it within the next month, getting it all the same length. Then we’ll be able to see the holes and if we need to reseed any particular area. I’ll have to do some research on the maintenance of this grass.

It’s really BRIGHT. It’s funny to look at it from the road because the grass in our side yard is faded and yellowish, and this grass is such a brilliant and vivid green color. Hopefully in the summer the colors will even up. :-) I really enjoy being able to let Savannah play back there. I look forward to mowing it and evening it all up. I can’t wait to take official “after” pictures. :-)

09/29/11

A full weekend of painting!

As I mentioned, my parents were visiting last weekend. We spent three days working painting the shed and the back of our house where the add-on sunroom was. It looks so much better! I’ll share the before and after pictures first since I know that’s what you’re really interested in. :-)

First off, the back of our house:

This was what we discovered when we took off the sun porch. Apparently the house used to be yellow. I already touched up the paint around the front door, so this was just a continuation of that. It was a three step process – first, pressure washing the siding. Then we had to sand down all the remnant material from the add-on. My dad guessed it was very old Liquid Nails, or something similar. We used an electric sander to get it all as smooth as possible. Here is the after:

Another angle, before:

And after:

As you can see, the weeds have grown back from the work we had done in June! It looks great right now because my dad and Paul spent a lot of time weed whacking the backyard.

And now for the shed. I’ve been wanting to paint it because the bright yellow is so in-your-face. It also makes the shed look huge and overtaking the yard. Before:

And after:

We rented a pressure washer and Paul took care of the siding and the shed a few days before we wanted to paint.

Fortunately, Sherwin-Williams was having a great 40% off sale this weekend, so I took advantage. We started with a white primer, which was the only negative of the whole process. I didn’t notice until I got home that it was oil based, and in retrospect I wish I had immediately returned to the store and asked for an exchange. We ended up having to run out to Home Depot twice to get paint thinner to clean the brushes and the paint sprayer.

(Sorry the picture isn’t great – at certain times of the day there’s nothing I can do about the direction of the sun!)

This was my first time using the paint sprayer. It made the job go a whole lot faster, though my arm was sooo sore from holding the heavy, vibrating machine. And yes, I did get a paint suit – I didn’t have any painting clothes that fit me, and I didn’t want to sacrifice another outfit. I loved my suit even if everyone teased me about it looking funny. It kept my arms and legs free of paint!

I did as much as I could without getting on the ladder, and then my dad did the rest. I dislike ladders so I was glad he was willing to do that for me.

Looking at it, I honestly think it needs another layer of green, so perhaps I’ll get to that someday. I also have a light to put up next to the sliding glass door as soon as I get the chance. :-) But overall, I think the shed and back of our house look great!

09/24/11

Big project this weekend!

We haven’t done much with our house this summer, aside from a few decorative things that I keep meaning to take a picture of so I can post about it. Mostly, our house is just incredibly messy and I keep saying that I need to just go through and do a major decluttering.

My parents are here this weekend and they love doing house projects. I appreciate the motivation, so I came up with a big project: painting the back of our house and our shed.

We are painting them the same color, the green that is the same as the rest of the house. I hope this will make the shed not feel so big and in-the-way! Today we rented a pressure washer and cleaned the shed and the siding, which has made quite a difference. I think I might keep an eye out for pressure washers on Craigslist because I could see it being quite a useful tool!

Tomorrow we are going to attempt to get as much of the junk off the siding as possible around our sliding glass door. As you can see from the picture above, there is a lot of stuff leftover from when the porch was put on the house. We guessed the porch was put on at LEAST 20 years ago (based on what the neighbors have told us), and more likely it was more like 30 years ago. They used something similar to Liquid Nails it appears, and even pressure washing didn’t make it budge. We talked to the guys at Home Depot and they recommended an old fashioned scraper and sand paper, at least to get it off enough to make the paint stick to it. That will be the project tomorrow, and Monday will be painting day. As you can see, it’s quite a big painting job so we’re going to rent a professional paint sprayer to make our day easier. I plan to paint the entire shed green, and the trim (the parts around the door that are currently brown) will be painted white to match the house.

I am excited! We need to call the landscaper and schedule their return to grade our yard and plant grass back there. That’s next on the agenda and will have to be done by November 15th I believe (before it gets too cold), but I need to look at our finances first and make sure that we’re still okay to move forward with this project.

Oh, in addition to pressure washing today, we also spent a lot of time in the yard. Paul weed-whacked, my dad raked, and I mowed. Our yard looks great! We still need to bag the leaves and pine straw, but already it is looking so much better. I would like to see the area under the magnolia tree cleaned up a bit, but other than that I’m really pleased with how it all is turning out.

Pictures to come!

06/4/11

before & after: the backyard (phase one)

I know y’all have been waiting anxiously for pictures! This is phase one of the backyard. Phase two will be grading the entire thing and putting down seed, to happen this fall sometime. I also want to paint that shed green to match the house, as well as touching up the paint on the back of the house where that room was. Maybe we’ll do that this summer so we’ll be done with everything by the time we lay seed. :-)

Here is a backyard picture when we moved in:

We took the porch down last summer.

Another angle; I took this picture yesterday. You probably can’t tell, but we also removed part of the chainlink fence.

Our backyard looks kinda trashy, doesn’t it? We didn’t really do any mowing or cleaning, in anticipation of the landscapers working on it.

And…. after!

What a change! Here is a picture of the spot where the water always collected, and the previous owners tried to fix it by putting pieces of cement there.

Now we have a catch basin to take the water in a pipe underground and deposited in the dry creekbed at the back of our property. They also removed the fence posts for us.

I took this picture as they were working, and here you can see the ditches, waiting for pipes. We had underground pipes attached to our two downspouts and to the catch basin, taking water away from our house and hopefully preventing further foundation damage.

A closer picture of the retaining wall. They did a nice job, didn’t they?

Our foundation still needs help – that is the bigger project we’re saving up for – but at least this downspout won’t cause any other damage.

Another nice thing is that the random pieces of cement, cinder block, and bricks have been cleared away (and deposited behind our shed), so that really makes the yard look nicer! Also a lot of the weeds were cleared away as they were digging the ditches, which helps too. :-) Here is another set of before/after pictures – taken in the morning and then late afternoon of the same day:

Can’t wait to see it all with grass! And I’ll have to work on painting that back side, and then we’ll have a lovely little backyard to spend time in. Does anyone know if you have to watch daytime max temperatures for outdoor painting like you do minimum temps?

05/15/11

Making it look like someone actually lives here

Our backyard is trashy. Most of the time I don’t notice it, but every once in a while I’ll look at it and realize how bad it actually looks! It’s especially bad right now as our lawn mower is still broken (argh) so we haven’t mowed the weeds at all.

Our next door neighbors moved out and the house is up for sale. As a refresher, our backyard is kinda at a weird angle and our house overlooks their backyard. You can see a layout here. We have a chain-link fence that (mostly) follows our property line, and they have a cinder block wall just a few feet away from our fence. The land between is technically on their property, and was completely overgrown. When the landscapers came to look at our backyard, they said that all that underbrush was contributing to our mosquito problem.

When we found out that the house next door was empty, we realized that here was our chance to clean up the space that was technically on their land. Paul has been working hard this weekend to clean it up!

Can you believe Paul cleared out this much already? It’s worth it, though! It’s really looking good!

Also, if you notice in the first picture, there is black piping that runs from the neighbor’s gutters, goes underground, and comes out here. The water has been diverting straight into our backyard. Yay. Once Paul cleared out the underbrush, he was able to straighten the pipe out and send the water to the creek in the back. He didn’t get the entire area cleaned up, but he got a significant portion – enough to hopefully make a difference in the mosquitoes. If nothing else, it looks better!

Here is what the area looks like now.

As you see, the fence posts are still up but the chain link is down. We’re hoping that the landscapers will be able to remove the fenceposts. If I remember correctly, that was something that they built into the original estimate (all the landscapers are running together – can’t remember which ones said they would do that).

It’s starting to look better, but the difference will be amazing come June. In the meantime, we still need to remove all the non-organic trash (except for the concrete and cinder blocks – the landscapers will remove those). More long range plans include painting the siding, fixing the gutters, and overall just making the backyard a more pleasant place to hang out instead of an abandoned house. :-)

03/18/11

it’s a gorgeous day for painting!

The weather has been perfect for us to complete the painting projects I have in mind. It’s warm, but not hot, and most of all the pollen hasn’t gotten bad yet. Here in Atlanta, we have the joy of having our entire city turn yellow from pollen every spring. :-) That will probably hit in a week or two, so for outside painting projects this is the perfect time.

I started early and pretty much painted all day. My in-laws are visiting and both helped paint and watch Savannah so I could paint, which I really appreciated.

I tackled the shutters first, then while my father-in-law got the upstairs shutters I painted the railing on the stoop. I painted around the front door yesterday, and today I decided to paint the rest of the wall because while the color is really, really close, it’s not an exact match and the slight different was bothering me. :-) I also started on the front stoop, but had to stop because I ran out of paint. I hope to run up to Lowe’s for more later this evening, and finish the stoop tomorrow. I also need to take the blue painter’s tape off from around the shutters, and then I’ll get a picture of them. I will say, it looks awesome! I am really, really happy with how everything has turned out! Can’t wait to share “after” pictures!

From Hovel to Home

Our journey fixing up our 50 year old house

Category Archives: fixer-upper