Exterior Work on the home ... still

We've only lived in this house for 8-1/2 years. Why should we think we'd be done renovating it? Our goal was to be done when the kids were born, but really it meant it just got pushed even longer.

As a matter of fact, we did a lot of work on this house so far this year (to make up for the lack of work the last 2 years). We:

• bought & installed a new hot water heater & air conditioner (bot very high efficiency). Now the "guts" of the house have been all updated
• grassed up part of our front landscape (see it on my garden blog)
• planted the entire backyard per our garden plan (also on the garden blog)
• built a new fence along the side of our house and attached it to the house with a new garden gate.

Our latest endeavor was getting a new front door! At the beginning of the year, I posted a few door options we liked. We ended up getting the last option - a Simpson wood door with 1/4 glass and 2 panels stained in dark walnut.

Here's how it looks from the inside:

Before

After

Outside, in addition to the door we had a new front stoop laid. The prior stoop was the original concrete that had brick pavers glued to it. The problem with the stoop was that the paver walkway was too low thus creating a 10" rise onto the stoop, in addition to pavers becoming loose and it being so small that you could fall off the stoop when you opened the door (oh and chipmunks living underneath). So we scrapped the pavers and made the stoop just concrete and larger - 4x8. (We'll tackle the walkway in 2014).

Here's a before & after photo of the stoop:

Old door, old stoop, old house numbers

New door, new numbers, OLD stoop

New everything! Door, numbers, and stoop

Perch

After finally completing and passing the first three swim levels SKI -- shrimp, kipper, & Inia-- Wesley has advanced to the next swimming level, Perch!

We've had a choppy go at swim class where he took lessons from 6 - 11 months and from 18 - 22 months. We started them up again at 26 months in September, taking lessons with daddy every Saturday morning, and haven't stopped.

Maybe if we didn't have so many breaks he would have been ready for Perch sooner? (I feel like a stage mom when I say this, but its hard being in classes with 10 month olds). So in January Matt talked to the teacher about what we needed to do to get him to the next level and she made sure to work with him on the right skills.

 Here I am holding on to his noodle -- after 4 classes, I don't need to do this anymore, I can just wade next to him!

 So now he's taking Perch with dear old (tiger) mom. At our first class -- whoa! this is not SKI -- there's some actual swimming going on and Wesley didn't know what hit him. He has to use the blue floaters around his belly to practice front & back strokes. He went ballistic! (This is the kid who won't even let the hairdresser put the smock on him. "No," he raises his hand to her.) It takes a few laps around the pool for him to warm up. And he's also supposed to go under water on command ... Right.

We have a lot to work on.

The good thing is that a lot of the kids have taken this class a few times so Wesley will get better as he repeats the class. As soon as he turns 3, he's eligible for the next level but ... Steady there mama -- we'll get there in good time!

Colors!

I have discovered this Benjamin Moore color capture app. Take a picture and it will tell you the paint colors to find.

This is my area rug in the living room and all the color combos the app pulled! My heart loves the pomegranate!

Chair reupholster

I have more than my share of projects for 2013.

My February project was reupholstering the family room chair. Not that I would be the one doing the work -- this chair was not a job for an amateur -- and I consider finding fabric and calling someone "a project."

This was our cool yellow leather chair that our cat peed on around Halloween (the same morning that I corralled the kids in the car for music class only to find that our car battery was dead. I believe I broke down crying at some point.)

Anyway, I could have junked the chair but it was the perfect size and shape and very well-made. I couldn't have found a solid replacement without spending a lot more than a reupholster job. I special ordered this fabric which is indoor- outdoor that I hope holds up with kids playing around. And I went a bold fabric considering that you couldn't go any bolder than the yellow leather it once was.

Before & after pictures:

New front door

We're in the market for a new front door.  Our current front door is a metal one with fake raised panels on the exterior and a gorgeous (read: not gorgeous) faux wood paint job on the inside. I guess I could have painted over the faux paint project from the previous owners say ... at some point in the last 7 years I've lived in this house... but I never did. Now it's time for a new door.

Choices, choices, choices...

On the Simpson door website, you can "test drive" front door by uploading a picture of your house and then dropping and dragging a door. Pretty cool! Turns out that a door I normally would have loved looked pretty stupid on a 70's split level.

So I narrowed the choice down to --- well, too many. I can't decided first off if a full window, 3/4 window, or 1/4 window would look best. Then you have to decide on the panels - raised? flat? Yeesh. Like I said, too many choices.

Here they are.

Full glass

1/4 glass, flat panels

1/2 glass 1 raised panel

1/4 glass 1 raised panel

3/4 glass

1/4 glass 2 raised panels

Photo gallery project: finished, well almost

My photo gallery is just about finished! I am so happy with the way it turned out. All I need now is to find a small frame for a piece of art, an F to hang, and fill in some of these with family photos.

Nursery/Office (3rd bedroom) Before & After

This room has taken many life forms over the last 7 years ... mainly as an office, a catch-all room, and occasionally a spare bedroom.  Now we can safely call it the nursery with the office in the closet. It's amazing what new paint and hardwood floors can accomplish!

Before

After

Staircase photo gallery project

In a previous post, I wrote about how I wanted to create a photo gallery going up our stairs and found some inspirational photos to help gather ideas.

In my efforts to make this become reality, I have picked out about 10 black frames. Then I traced them on to newspaper and started taping them to the wall to get a sense of what this gallery would (and could) look like.

I clearly have some issues such as: the wall plates and doorbell, and the -- to put it frank -- odd orientation of the wall going up. We don't have a chair rail and I can't imagine putting frames all the way down to the staircase (especially its little kids in the house); so I have to stop the photos randomly halfway down the wall.

So these photos represent where I am now. it is apparent that I could use at least 2 more very large frames to anchor -- they all seemed large until I see them on the wall. The first long newspaper represents a mirror, the rest are photos and art. I would also like to add a wooden F to the mix as well one other piece of non framed art.

Painted brick

Last Fall we had our house painted and we wanted to paint the brick but something was holding us back -- like fear. So we lived with it for a while before deciding that we had to paint it and we are so happy we did. We love the single color look of the house. Now the question is - do we stick with the color of the front door?

Staircase photo gallery project

I always have a project or two brewing around here. Never mind that having two munchkins pretty much hinders any chance of getting my projects done in a timely manner (or ever) ... I can still hope and dream big.

Right now I want to create a photo gallery up our staircase. A lot of open wall space is annoying to me and we have some great photos and art that need displaying.

I found some great inspiration online -- but it's obvious that these took a lot of time, effort, and an eye for detail (all of which I don't possess).

Sources: designsponge.com, decorpad.com, & wildinkpress.com/blog

Office in a closet - our version

Last summer, we decided that our second baby should take the small bedroom, therefore pushing our office to ... the closet? I found some great photos of office in closets that showed me this was doable solution for a small house, like ours.

Of course, we had intended to get this done a long time ago but life gets in the way and on a recent day off -- that's what I call Mondays when my mom has Wesley and I can run ALL my errands -- I went to the Container Store and had an office in a closet designed using their Elfa system. I wanted something that could transition to a kids closet in about 3 years, so I didn't buy anything "extra."

This system of wire shelving and solid pieces cost around $250. Elfa can be pricey, but we liked it's versatility and the fact that we can add drawers and extras to this when we are ready to convert to a real clothes closet. Sitting here right now typing, all I can say is ... I love it!

House Numbers

I'm thinking about the exterior of the house, now that the painting in almost done and the windows are in. My mind is on a few little details like ... House Numbers

Right now we have the cutest little set of numbers made from ceramic tiles we bought when we were on vacation in Ixtapa, Mexico. My dad set them in a wooden frame which I rub with linseed oil 2x a year. I can keep them, but they are pretty small and don't really match now with the house. (I was thinking of hanging them in our kitchen.) 

This is our house now. The cream brick will get painted brown like the rest of the house, and I haven't decided if I want the numbers on the brick or over the door. (This picture also reminds me to prune back those 2 Viburnum - ah the garden To Do list begins.)

My idea now is to move to large modern looking numbers (Is 4" too small?).  Here are some numbers I found that I like.

From chiasso:
$14 each - 4.5"H  x 1.5"L x .25"thick -- zinc

From modernhousenumbers:
$21 each - 4"H x 3/8"thick ($25 - 6"H) -- aluminum

from Designwithinreach:

$40 each - H 4" W 2.75–4" D .75"-- aluminum

 

from moderndwellnumbers
 $22 - 4"H x 3/8" thick ($26 - 6"H) -- aluminum

New windows

So one of the major home improvements we made at the end of the year were new windows. For the most part they look the same - although we opted for grills for the bedrooms. Our biggest changes were in the kitchen and dining room.

In the dining room, the previous owners took out window and put in patio doors. So we did what any new owner would do and reversed it back -- but we opted for large windows to look out over the deck.

In the kitchen addition, the old owners put in a window, and we decided that french patio doors would be better (in other words, come in from the backyard through the kitchen instead of dining room).

And finally, in our bedroom we had enough room to replace the slider window with double hung windows. We really like the look better.

Bring on the accent!

The accent color to the house, that is. 

 

Speaking of our golden accent color, the huge sugar maple behind us is finally in peak color and dropping all it's leaves into our tiny backyard. (It is very similar in color.)

Is this my house?

Painting the house has begun!

I've been so nervous about this color that when it actually started to go up, I drove past the house about 10 times looking at it to make sure I liked it. I'm sure the neighbors think I'm wacko.

As of today, they painted the garage door, garage front, 2nd story front, and most of the west side. And I have to say ... I love it. Brown/Cream, what's not to love. When the accent color starts going up, that'll be a few more drive pasts (I love the gold but it makes me nervous, as usual).

Exterior Remodeling

We have one more inside project to do on our house and then we can move on to the exterior.

Our last project is our Master Bedroom -- new hardwood floors & trim, and we're breaking the wall between our 2 - 4' closets and making one very large closet. That will get started on Monday and I am very excited to get this all finished at last. This means Matt, Wesley, and I will be shacking up in the spare bedroom for a while. It'll feel like we're on vacation (at a really cheap motel).

Our exterior projects have gone through many evolutions -- from getting new siding to not getting new siding, from replacing windows to not replacing windows, to getting a new garage door to ... you get the picture. We've discussed, bantered, argued, crunched numbers, chatted up people, got opinions... I'm now mentally exhausted and we haven't even started.

House colors:

Linen White: Trim/ garage door

Whitall Brown: House

Princeton Gold: Front door, side door (any other accent)

  So in the end, we are going to:

1. Paint the aluminum: We couldn't afford the siding we really wanted (fiber cement or cedar) and we did not want vinyl. So after some research, painting the aluminum will give our house a more economical face-lift. We're also going to paint our brick front.

2. Replace the windows: I didn't want to replace windows since ROI is so low on them. But our gliders all have added on storm windows which make them stick out from our house and now the trim around is rotting. We could just re-clad them from the outside, but they are 35+ years old. We said the money we're saving on siding can go into the windows. Right now we're looking at Marvin Ultimate/Integrity mix or Anderson 400s vinyl/ /aluminum clad. The prices we're getting are astronomical so we haven't sealed any deals yet.

3. Re-finish the garage door: Another place to save money. Our door is actually good quality, so we're going to have it scraped/sanded and re-painted.

4. Other: New window trims, tear down the back porch (to be built another time), new front door, power wash soffits...

In the end it might look something like this. (They don't have 70' split-level as a housing choice)

This is with Whitall brown

This is with Clinton Brown (a darker variation) - better?

We just decided to get this project finished this year before we add on to our family, and after 6 years here we think it's time.