Happy Halloween!

Bats on the front door!! Eeeep!

Happy Halloween!

Green Door with Blue Pots

After painting the door we felt that we needed something to accessorize and prettify our front entry so we began the great pot search. We searched Good Will, Restore, Home Depot, Lowes, Marshalls, Tuesday Mornings, Target, World Market, Hobby Lobby, Michaels and Wal-mart and came up empty handed. We found tons of options but never what we were specifically looking for which was tall, modern looking pots that also had to be skinny. I never thought we were going to find them. We found options, even something that could have worked at Michaels (these below) but they were way over priced at $40 each.

Then came another option when I finally ventured to Ross, the final store I had not checked before starting my rounds at garage sales. These lovely pots were just ok, I was not ok with the paint color but that was not an issue because that could be changed easily with spray paint. The main issue with these were their height, maybe coming up half way to my knee maybe. I definitely wasn't sold on them just yet but at $11 a piece the price was right. 

As I was giving up hope I came to one last section of house aisle to stroll through, sure enough there were more pots. Immediately I was drawn to these tall (at mid thigh) metal "pots".

At $13 a piece they were exactly what I had hoped to find. I got Geoff and made sure he liked them first then bought the only two that they had. I have to say I absolutely hated the color of the pots, they look like bad candy corns.  

They did absolutely nothing for the front door in terms of color. They looked dingy and I was not at all impressed. I decided that it was an easy fix. Spray paint is my new best friend. Originally I had wanted to paint the front door blue and since it is now green I decided that blue pots would be perfect. Multiple people told me not to touch the pots and that they looked great with the door, but I wasn't sold at all. I appreciate everyone's opinions but it just did not work for me so I painted them blue.

Rustoleom Metallic blue to be precise. I think it came out lovely. 

Here is a side by side comparison of the pots. To me it just makes sense to have the pots all one color I think that having the gradation on the pots originally was what was really bothering me.  Having a solid color really makes the difference. 

Next up flowers? or tall grass?

Finally 100%

I can finally say I have completed my gate project! Woot! After a few days of rainy weather I finally got around to painting the hinge of the gate. 

It looks so much better! I can truly say that we have the best looking gate in the neighbourhood. Now we just have to get the rest of the yard to match our pretty gate! 

Rolling Hills

After finally tackling the Ivy and the front gate next in line was the front door. The front door looks horrible due to the previous owners deciding to white wash it and not executing it very well. It was definitely time to fix this issue. Be gone ugly door!  

I went to Home Depot and Lowes and grabbed paint samples. I specifically was thinking that a dark blue shade would be nice so I was grabbing lots of blue/teal color samples. As I was leaving the paint section of Home Depot one specific color jumped out at me and I couldn't resist grabbing the paint sample. It was called Rolling Hills and is the only green sample that I grabbed.

I talked to Geoff and a few other people about which color they liked and what they thought. But I kept gravitating back to the green. I finally quit messing around and went back to Home Depot to buy a small sample can of the green. I decided to just go with it and paint as much of the door to get a good idea of  how it would look. Both Geoff and I loved how it popped and decided it was just right.

So I went back to Home Depot and bought a quart of exterior paint in Rolling Hills.

I finished it that same day it looks mighty fine! I love how the color just pops! 

Here it is with the door knob and some accessories. Love the door, still working on the accessories.

We love how the door looks and are very very happy with our decision to go with the green. Now we need to paint the trim around the door, I feel like its the same color as the house and its not meant to be. It looks kind of dirty to me so we are thinking of painting it white. Also not too sure about the color of the pots, however, for only $13 each they were perfect for what we envisioned for the space. So there will definitely be tweaking here and there.

Time for that Facelift

The front gate has looked pathetic since the day we moved in. Having a hazardous metal screen, a dull chalk like worn paint job and lots of surface rust, this gate has for sure seen better days.

After last weekend when we removed the overgrown ivy we decided it was time to address the issues with this gate. First things first, removing that barely hanging on metal screen so people wouldn't get scratched anymore.

Much better!

I unhinged the gate and placed it on the concrete walkway by the front door. Once I had the gate on the ground I was able to start removing the rust. I started with a steel brush to knock off all the large flakes of paint and rust. I then used 150 grit sandpaper the rest of the way to get the gate to the bare metal in all the areas where there had been rust and the paint had come off. I was exhausted after all of that sanding who knew it would take two and a half hours to get all the rust removed.

After my extensive sanding job I wiped the gate down with a wet rag to get of all the rust dust. I then carried it into the back yard and laid it on a large piece of cardboard in preparation for spray paint.

I chose to use a metallic spray paint in the color of oil rubbed bronze. I had seen a few of the blogs I follow use this paint and it always looked fantastic. Using the methods that these blogs had described I applied three thin and even coats of spray paint. I am so glad that I had read these blogs beforehand. This gate turned out fantastic.

After a few hours of drying in the back yard it was dry enough for me to move it into place. I was really excited to see my final product, especially after all of that sanding. I really wanted it in place over night while the paint was still curing. I still have one last thing to do before this gate project can be complete. I need to paint the hinge piece that is attached to the wall. I know this should have been the first thing I did but I couldn't find my tape. Hopefully I find it soon and can get this project 100%.

It's a Jungle Out There: Part 2

Today we tackled the jungle head on.

At 11:30 we started our jungle take down plan. An hour later we received our first reinforcement, Geoff's dad.

We had large sections down very quickly. We were literally knee deep in ivy for a while.

After Geoff and his dad ran to the dump for the first time the next set of reinforcements showed up. We really kicked things into high gear at this point. Lots of ivy is now gone from the fence. A total of 3 trips to the dump to rid ourselves of this disaster area.

We even had a little friend show up. We are pretty convinced that he was pissed at us for removing the ivy. There had been so many bugs in that jungle, we are pretty sure we destroyed his main source of food. Sorry little dude.

We finally got down to the roots and boy were there a lot. There were a total of seven separate ivy roots. 

Travis, Amanda and my mom took out three together. 

We ended the day around 4 in the afternoon. Not bad for how much we got done. We still have four ivy roots to dig up but we decided we can get those slowly over the next couple of days. Everyone was pretty tired by the end of the day. 

We still have a little bit of work to do on those stubborn ivy roots as well as all our other little projects like the new fence section and the gate face lift but boy doesn't that look so much better.

It's a Jungle Out There

We always enter our house through the garage, we never walk to the front door. In fact the front door is rarely used because technically you have to walk to the side of the house to get to the front door. You have to somehow open our gate without getting scratched, and then slide by the overgrown jungle that is the ivy. It's rather unwelcoming. The gate is also rusting and very ugly due to the fact that the paint is now dull and looks like chalk. Not only does the front entrance once you pass the gate feel unwelcoming but it's also confusing. You can see right into our back yard. People actually think that our entrance gate is actually the gate to our back yard and not to our front door. We need to remedy this somehow.

For the last 2 years Geoff and I have been debating whether we should remove the ivy from the fence or to just keep it there. Geoff wants to keep it and I of course want it gone. A couple of weeks ago we noticed that our neighbor was trimming his side of the ivy. Obviously he wants it gone. It hangs over into his yard a lot. We also noticed around this time that large portions of the ivy had started to die. There were big holes now forming in the ivy and we could now see our wood fence.

After seeing the lovely holes, Geoff finally gave in and we decided that it was time to remove all the ivy. With our plans starting to roll I decided that it's probably a good time to finally address all the issues of the front courtyard area. There are a lot of little things that need to be addressed. First, the gate is in dire need of a little face lift so I plan to remove the gate from its hinges and give it a good cleaning. With the help of a wire brush  I can make sure all of the surface rust is removed.  After the wire brush has had it's turn with the gate I will spray paint the now white and rusted gate turning it into an oil rubbed bronze beauty.  I am hoping that this gate will look pretty awesome after it's little makeover so we can keep it around for a few more years. Depending on how much help we get with the ivy the gate project will probably be finished before we even get close to removing all of our jungle.

After the ivy is gone we can focus our attention on repairing the wood fence. We already know that once the ivy is removed the wood fence is either going to topple over or have broken slats. We will need to fix which ever issue occurs since our neighbor has a dog and I am sure he doesn't want us looking into is yard or house. After all those steps have happened we can finally put up a  new section of wood fence that will block access to our back yard. It will be lovely knowing it will be harder to enter our backyard.

Another entryway issue that is long over due is the front door. Still having its original finger painted white wash paint job that came with the house. Its finally time to paint that door, now we just have to decide on a color.

We are hoping to get all of the ivy removed over the long Labor day weekend. Wish us luck that we don't take down the fence along with it.

Houston, we have tile

We finally made a decision on tile! We spent a couple of days looking around at the local Home Depot and Lowes. We found a tile at Home Depot but we were not 100% on that tile and wanted to make sure we were making the right decision. We shopped around a bit more and made a few trips to the local companies around town. A place called Floor Scapes that we found an amazing tile that looked like linen. Loved the way it looked so I asked how much it was. Well at the time they had just gotten that specific tile in so they were going to have to call me back with a price which ended up being $9 a square foot.... Seriously. That price wasn't even with install can you believe that? The guy on the phone was like... "Ya it's $9 I'm seriously shocked myself. I even asked why it was so high and the vendor told me it was because it's made in Italy"..I don't care if it came from Italy, $9 a square foot is ridiculous. It would cost us  $400 just for the tile. Okay, I don't like it that much. After being disappointed at all the tile places we finally knew what we really wanted. The original tile that we had seen at Home Depot. It was an 18 x 18 inch travertine stone tile for $1.99 a square foot. We were so happy to find this, so we bought the amount we needed a brought it home. It's very pretty!

We decided it was a better idea to hire out the tile job instead of trying to tackle it as first timers. These babies are heavy at 54 lbs a box of 4 tiles! It was time to get a pro to do the job right and boy are we glad  we did. There was no way Geoff and I could have done a good job with how heavy and big those tiles were. I was afraid that we would be spending all that money just to be pissed we did a poor job of laying the tile.  He came to the house on Thursday and quickly got things moving.

He started off by first laying out the tile and pre-cutting each tile to fit perfectly.

Then he started laying the thin set down laying the tiles as he went starting in the back and working toward the door.

He was done in 2 hours.

The next day he returned to finish up with the grout. It's so pretty!

It's Demo Time!

We wanted to be smart about how we did the demolition in the bathroom. It's just so small in there with the storage pantry, vanity and toilet. I started with the easy stuff first. Removal of all the accessories (toilet paper holder, pictures, outlet plates, Etc.) as well as removed the door for easier access to the room. Geoff did his job next he started with removing the mirror and then on to the fun part of actually swinging a hammer. He removed all the shelves in the storage pantry. Like his helmet but no safety glasses or gloves?

We did all that initial "prep" work Wednesday night.  Thursday morning we woke up and started the best part of the whole demo, removing the actual walls. Yay! Geoff finally got some gloves.

Talk about committing ourselves to a project....

Here I am calling my father saying... "I think we need a saw of some kind".. so over came reinforcements with actual tools. My father did the tricky parts of routing around the water supply so we could finally remove the vanity.

As well as sawing off the last stud left from the storage pantry.

After we removed the vanity Geoff and a friend Bob began what we thought would be the most difficult part of the whole demo, cracking up the tile. To all of our surprise it came up very easy. In no time we had all the tile cracked up and removed. Except under the toilet. Geoff wanted the bathroom to be slightly functional for a little while longer. We still had not decided on tile yet so who knew at that point how long the project was really going to take.

We finally made a tile decision which means we could remove the toilet now. We placed it nicely in the bathtub for safe keeping until we could have the tile laid and the walls painted the new fresh color i.e. not dark green.

One last shot of the old storage pantry or at least where it used to be. We will have more pictures up when we start putting the room back together. Hopefully soon.

Just a little preview..

We have been working really hard on the demolition of our guest bathroom. Here is a little preview of what we have been up to.

I will have another post up soon of everything we have done. Until then enjoy our little preview picture.

Change of plans... as usual...

Not only have we changed the plan of the guest bedroom lay out we have also changed our plan on what projects were a priority. A funny thing about planning projects is that things change and not being in the house while doing planning for said house normally doesn't turn out to well. Like planning to add another window in the guest room only to find out when we got home that the pool equipment is in the exact spot we wanted the window. Lame right? Maybe one day we will add it by having a professional tackle that "little" job.

Our priority list changed when we discovered the window and pool equipment issue. Which led us to this lovely room.

 

Don't let this picture deceive you it needs some work. The issue with the guest bathroom is not that it looks bad, but that it feels crowded even though its a fairly large second bathroom. The main issue that we have with this room is that big built in storage cabinet, you almost walk right into it when you walk into the room. Next the light switch is on the other side of the built in so when you walk into the room in the dark you pretty much have to slide your hand along the built in and then around the corner to turn the light on. Its kind of annoying. 

 

Having the built in is nice for the storage aspect but honestly it is not necessary for this bathroom. Along with the built in the next things that have to go are the tile counter top and the outdated light fixture.  We decided it was just the right time to tackle these issues and it also helped that Home Depot was having a big sale on bathroom vanities 50% off to be exact. How could we pass that deal up.

The plan is to remove the built in storage pantry, vanity, light, mirror and tile floor. We went to Home Depot to find us a nice vanity and did indeed find us a beauty. Exactly what we have been looking for. Dark colored wood, counter top all one piece with an integrated sink and it looks like a piece of furniture bottom shelf included. Its pretty exciting. 

We also picked up a pretty sweet faucet when we picked up the vanity. That light fixture we have had for probably over a year now. It's just been sitting in the guest bathroom waiting for the right moment for it to be installed.

We have already kind of made a decision on new tile but it is not a 100% decision. See the picture with the vanity above, well we like the look of that tile. Which has a travertine look to it, now we just have to find it. We for sure want to do a bigger tile than the 6x6 tiles that we currently have in there, so we might just go with a 12 x 12 inch tile or even a 16 x 16 inch tile. We really love the look of more tile and less grout. We will keep you posted on that decision when we finally make it.  As for now that is the plan.