Hello everyone!  I haven’t blogged in forever! The weather has been gorgeous and unseasonably warm, so we are spending as much time outside as possible.  This time of year my focus usually switches from the inside to the outside as far as projects go.

Every year we use a portion of our tax return to tackle a project around our house.  Last year’s project was our massive remodel (you can read about that here) and this year we took on a playhouse, sunken trampoline, sod removal/ landscaping and a shed.  Next year’s project?? Disneyland!!!!

This past June marks 2 years since we moved into our house.  When we first moved in I wasn’t actively blogging, so I don’t have a ton of “before” pictures of just the yard or the exterior of the house.  It’s been fun to go through the pictures and see how far it has come.  I warn you, there are going to be a ton of pictures in this post!  Later I’ll break down some of the projects that we did, but for now, just a ton of before and after pictures!

When we moved in, our yard was completely bare.  Except for one hideous, poorly placed juniper tree, the entire half-acre was grass.  Here are a few pics of the yard and the hideous tree (that we quickly removed).

 Here’s that hideous juniper being yanked out:

And here are a few of the backyard now:

The playhouse/swing set we actually tackled last summer.  It was a total family effort and I’ll blog about the details of that in the near future.

Here are a few of the front yard.  When we first moved in, the only thing in the front yard were some overgrown shrubs and a couple of small evergreens that badly needed to be reshaped.  We knew we wanted to put in a water feature, so I found a pond form on Craigslist and we put in a pond.

Last year it looked like this:

Now it looks like this:

I spiraled up the small evergreens on each side of the patio, and they turned out great!

I did some planting on the side yard last year, but of course it still looked pretty bare:

 This year it looks like this:

So that’s what we’ve been up to this spring.  I will do some posts on the individual projects in the near future.  The playhouse/swing set, the sunken trampoline, the sod removal/ back landscaping and the shed, are all things I will blog about individually.  Here’s a little peak at the process:

Now things just need to start growing and filling in! It has been a ton of work, but slowly we are making our yard the backyard getaway we’ve been dreaming of!

Thanks for coming by!

Hello everyone!  I hope you are enjoying some spring weather!  I am loving it.  I am finally able to get some spray painting done!

I want to share a super easy project I did the other day.  Years ago my husband and I lived in Hawaii, and after we moved back to the states I went through a “shell and ocean” theme that lasted about two years.  I had a million shells and they were all over my house.  I have since outgrown it, but I still really like the shells.

I gathered a few of my favorites from a box in the garage.  They were very pretty before, but I wanted an update.

I took them outside and arranged them in my make-shift spray paint area.  I used a Rustoleum spray paint in Silver Metallic.

My assistant, Dexter, made sure no one got in our way.

I was really amazed at how easy it was to paint them!  The paint went on really well and I only did one coat.  Here they are with their new modern update:

So what do you think?  I still have plenty of shells left that I didn’t paint, but I was glad to get some of them back out in my house again.  The silver gives them a new high-end look for just the cost of the spray paint.  The possibilities are endless!

Thanks for coming by!

Hello everybody!  I just want to share a quick post today about a few changes I made to my gallery wall.  In case you aren’t familiar with gallery walls, I define them as this:

A wall with photos, pictures, sayings, various wall hangings, etc, arranged in a pattern.

When I first started my wall I took some different photo frames I had gotten at various thrift stores, garage sales, etc and sprayed them white.  I added photos that I thought were of importance and arranged them in a pattern that appealed to me.

Here is my original wall:

 I got the “A” on clearance at Kohls, and just put an empty frame that I spray painted around it.  I added a little burlap and some fall leaves above one of the pictures.  It stayed that way for a while, until I found a couple more frames and decided it needed to be revamped.

Here it is now:

I painted the little sign myself.  I have seen that saying lately and I really liked it, so on one of my thrift store trips I found that little plaque for .75 and decided to paint this saying onto it.

I don’t have a vinyl cutter or anything fancy.  I pulled up an image of another sign on the computer, put a piece of paper right onto the screen, and traced it.  Then I filled it in with a little paint brush.  In the future I will probably use a paint pen.  I was pretty shaky with the paint brush.

Here are a few more pics:

I also recently painted my doors black.  You can read about that here.

Thanks for coming by!

Hello everyone!  I hope you are all enjoying this beautiful weather!  Summer seems to be coming much faster this year than last year, and I’ve been tackling all sorts of yard projects already.  I wanted to talk today about how we took our stairs from this:

To this:

It really was a joint effort between the hubs and I.  I originally had thought that we could remove the carpet and refinish the wood underneath.  Wrong.  The wood underneath was cheap pressboard and it definitely wouldn’t have worked.  After doing some research, we decided to replace the stair treads (the piece you step on) with a redwood oak plank.  Oak is known for being a hard wood that would hold up well to high traffic.  We also replaced the risers with pine.  Pine is super soft, but no one is stepping on that piece, so pine works fine.

I started by sanding each tread

I started with 100 grit sandpaper to get out the deeper scratches, then went over each tread again with 150 to really smooth them out.

Next I stained each one with a Minwax stain in Jacobean. It was really convenient that we were going to replace our carpet afterwards.  I just stained right inside the house.

Here are all of the treads laying out to dry

Once they dried I decided that they were too dark brown and I wanted a little red, so I applied a second coat of stain right on top of the first one in Minwax Red Oak.  I was thrilled with how they turned out.  The Red Oak stain really made them feel richer.  After they had dried for 24 hours I lined them all up and applied two coats of wipe- on polyurethane.

As they were drying I moved on to the risers.  I laid them all out and used a small foam roller to apply two coats of oil based paint.

Oil based paint can be tricky to work with.  You must let each coat dry for 24 hours before you can apply another coat.  It then takes at least 24 hours to completely cure. The reason I went with oil based was because it dries to a much more durable finish.  I knew there would be lots of shoes and things kicking those risers, so I needed them to be durable.

My hubs went to work removing each pressboard tread and replacing them with the newly stained treads.  It was really tough work.  He didn’t want to damage the molding around the stairs jerking each one out and the were not only nailed, but also glued.

At one point he smashed his thumb really hard and I think the neighbors probably heard the cuss storm following that one.

After putting in all of the treads we went to work on the risers.  I don’t have any pictures of this part, but basically we nailed the new risers right to the front of the old ones.

   When the risers were in we put the molding back up and I went to work filling in the gaps with caulk.  Caulk is like the best product ever invented.  You can make a job that has many imperfections look flawless with caulk.

I patched the nail holes with spackle then sanded lightly before touching it all up with paint for the last time.

And there you have it!  Beautiful solid wood stairs!

It was a ton of work, but well worth it!  In the future I may put a small carpet runner on them….or I may not.  I’m just glad that I have the option to do it either way.  It makes a huge impact when you walk in the door.

Have a great day, and thanks for coming by!