The Deck Saga

Since we've been here, we've had trouble figuring out what to do with the deck on the back of our house. The deck has held the original building permit on our house open for the last 7 years because it has never been completed. After getting a few professional opinions, we decided our best option was to start over. So, I reluctantly kissed all of my bathroom remodeling money good-bye and Matt started to tear down the deck. He spent several days taking all of the Trex off so we could reuse it, but it only took about 45 minutes to tear down the framing. Our posts are still standing because we plan to reuse them and finish the brick.

One of the main reasons we decided to start over is that we were afraid we had water issues because the deck was never properly flashed. This was definitely confirmed by the state of the sheeting under the ledger boards on our bays. The ledger just fell off because the sheeting was so rotted. Hopefully the rot doesn't go beyond the sheeting.


The good news is that in a few weeks we should have a useable deck. One that our kids can actually go out on. One that has stairs from the yard so we can use our kitchen doors to go outside! One that will, hopefully, be so spectacular I'll forget all about missed opportunities to remodel bathrooms.

Tabula Rasa

Here's the exterior photo of our house from the real estate listing.



And here's the exterior now.



We've gotten a lot of compliments on how nice our house looks and all we've done is rip things out. This neighborhood is easy to please. I guess the take-home lesson is: nice plants + wrong location = ugly.

In other yard news, I bought a crazy hippy lawn mower (the Fiskars Momentum) and we love it!

I used to like painting. . .

I've been painting. Surprise!

I finished painting the trim in the hall and entry. I had to make a lot of repairs before I could start painting. The trim was really battered and the bottoms of the door jambs looked like this



Now they look like this



I filled the gaps with grout and then caulked. Certainly not great, but at least the kids can't put things in the holes anymore.


I painted the linen closet



And Winnie's closet



I just need to finish painting the doors to offically be done with the paint in Winnie's room. I'm painting the hallway side of all my doors gray--a darker shade of the color on the walls.



I painted one door and then decided that it wasn't quite dark enough so I had the paint retinted today. I might get the doors done this weekend, but since the weather is supposed to be so nice, we're going to work in the yard. Maybe the kids will get to jump on our trampoline.



See it there sticking up above the dirt? Matt started to dig the hole out and this is what we found



Hardened 80 lb bags or mortar. They totally fill the hole and start about 6 inches down. That will be hours of trampoline fun.

The House, Lately

Hall before



Hall in progress



Entry before



Entry in progress



Family Room before (sorry about the small picture--it's from the listing and I forgot to take any others before I started painting)



Family Room in progress



I should be farther along in my painting, but I keep getting distracted and doing things like this



and like this



and like this



P.S. If the bag happens to be your birthday present, pretend you didn't see it here first. :)

Us Lately

The pink room has grown on me

We've been working on the "cutification" of Winnie's room.







We now have a room that feels mostly done--as long as you don't look at the closet wall. I still need to paint the closet and the doors are still off awaiting paint.

Winnie's Room. Before & After (sort-of)

It took a month, but I have finally painted a room in our new house. I started with Winnie's room because it was small, the walls were in the best shape, and I didn't like how the dark color made the room feel like a cave. I wanted a light, bright room and Winnie just wanted pink. Here are the before shots of the dark plum colored walls.

I don't think the pictures really reflect how dark this room felt, or how banged up the walls were. And they certainly don't reflect how the pink on the closet doors clashed with the purple on the walls.

Here's one wall patched and ready for paint. Keep in mind that I started with this room because the walls were in the best shape, so it would require the least work to paint.

One coat of primer and two coats of paint on the walls. Three coats of paint on the ceiling. Two coats of paint on the trim. The trim and ceilings in our house are beige instead of white. I think painting Winnie's ceiling a brighter white made the biggest impact in brightening up her room. Here's the contrast in the ceiling before and after.

And finally a pink princess room. At first I wasn't crazy about the color, but Winnie loved it so much I decided to leave it alone and now it's grown on me. I think once I get a few things on the walls to break up all that pink it will look better. You'll notice I still haven't painted her closet and bedroom doors - they need to be sanded down so you can't see the ridge where the panels were painted. I also want to try spraying the doors instead of painting them with a brush.

I have some white curtains to hang, a white mirror to go over the dresser, a wall lamp to go over the bed and some art to hang before we're finished with Winnie's room, but for now it's nice to have one room that feels fresh and clean.