Before & Afters

What! I'm updating this blog!? I know, it's hard to believe it myself, but I got a bee in my bonnet to start doing more updates on the house and I figured I should share with you lovely folks :)

My aunt Chris offered to get me a new front door as my housewarming gift, and now, over 2 years later, I've made good on her contribution :) It makes the HUGEST difference! Of course, with a new front door comes new locks (which I know Chris is excited about more than anything else, haha!) and for continuity's sake, I got new knobs for all the doors in the house!

New door from the exterior!

New door from the interior - such a big difference!

New knobs throughout (this is the bathroom door)

And speaking of the bathroom door - just adjacent to it is the spare bedroom door - which was a solid slab hollow core door, which did not match either the bathroom or "master" bedroom doors. Luckily, when my friends helped me knock down the wall between the kitchen and living room, we saved the door that used to be there. That door *did* match the other doors in the house, so I had the handyman install the saved kitchen door to the spare bedroom! Yay for matching doors!

Old vs. new - much better!

The spot where the kitchen door used to be had a hole in the hardwood flooring where the door frame used to come out of, so I also had that filled with wood and stained to try and match. Please ignore the missing base moulding....that's next on the list!

All patched up!

Another VERY exciting change for me was having the pony wall between the kitchen and living room capped off! You can kind of see in the top left photo the exposed 2x4 that has been there since we knocked down that part of the wall (I forgot to take a good before photo), but you can see the new decorative cap built up and then primed! I really love how it turned out!

Soooo polished looking!

Also, not pictured, but the handyman smoothed over the ceiling directly above the pony wall where we patched it up and put mud and tape on it...in which I did a very bad job and it was so sloppy looking haha. Now it's a smooth transition!

Okay, last but not least - the bars on the windows are GONE! They really made the house look ghetto haha. I think it makes the house seem more friendly and inviting!

No more jail bars!

I feel like I got quite a big chunk of stuff knocked off my to do list! And I really liked the company and in particular the handyman that did all this work. I'm definitely planning on hiring them again!

-Megan

Checking In

Well hello everyone! This has been a nice summer filled with nice weather and lots of house/dogsitting opportunities :) I'm currently house/dogsitting for my friends who are getting married in New York! Exciting! Unfortunately for you, that means I haven't had a thing to update on this here blog. Oh also and football season started, and you know what that means :P

Just wanted to check in and let you all know that I haven't abandoned you. Once the weather takes a turn, I'll have plenty of forced indoor time which will hopefully lead to more projects and more blog updates with substance! I hope I'll have something new for you soon...

-Megan

Dogsitting

Well hello there! I may sound like a broken record, but nothing has been done on the house since the vent fan install. As I said before, it cost more than I anticipated, which is a big factor, but I've also been housesitting/dogsitting this past week at a friends' place. Isn't she sooooo cuuuute?

Fluffy!

I'm really happy with the vent fan so far. After purchasing the one I wanted, I read reviews which weren't the best, but I decided to go with it anyways, and I'm glad I did! I can leave the door open when I shower and the smoke alarm won't go off! The mirror isn't foggy anymore, the walls aren't damp anymore, and I don't feel like I'm still in a sauna when I'm toweling off. I'm really happy I got it done when I did, because come wintertime, I won't have to leave the bathroom window open all damn day!

I have a fairly busy weekend coming up (woohoo, volleyball tournament!) but the next couple aren't booked up yet so hopefully I'll be able to force myself to do *something* on the house. I haven't even put up any pictures/art on the walls...I need to remedy that!

-Megan

It's Electric!

Yesterday I took a half day off work so I could get a vent fan installed in my bathroom! Woo! There was never any sort of venting in the bathroom, besides the small window, and it would get crazy steamy in there every time I'd shower. The very first time I showered in there, it was so bad that the smoke alarm in the adjacent hallway went off! Ever since, I've had to shower with the door closed, and leave it closed for a good 30 minutes after I got out to let the steam dissipate. Well no longer! I went with a combo light/vent fan and it looks really pretty (in my opinion) and matches the style and finish of the other fixtures I have in there.

While the guys were working, I decided to mow my lawn since I've been too busy to for the past couple of weekends. Since I have an electric plug-in mower, and since there were no exterior plugs anywhere on the house, I've been running the extension cord from the living room out under the front door...it was kinda ghetto :P Annnywho, I decided to ask how hard it would be to install an exterior plug and they said not too hard at all! (Mind you, I didn't factor in the extra cost that this ended up being...ooof.) But, I'm pretty happy with all the work that was done, and it's one (two!) more things I can check off my to-do list!

The housing for the vent fan 

They had to install the vent fan housing slightly off-center and it bugs the crap out of me! However, they were restricted by the ceiling joists, so I'm just going to have to deal with it. That little hole you see to the right of the housing was an "accident"....grr! Not a big deal, I can just patch it up, but annoying nonetheless!

Ahhh pretty vent fan/light...and quiet too!

I tested out the fan this morning and it works great! It wasn't completely un-steamy when I got out of the shower, but I also didn't go too high on the CFM's for cost and noise reasons. I got an 80 CFM fan, which is double what I need for my 45 sq ft bathroom...I could have gone as high as 200+ but that would have been overkill!

The hole drilled for the external plug

All finished up with waterproof box and cover!

I'm excited to mow the lawn and trim the bushes via the new outlet plug! That makes me weird...doesn't it? I'll also be able to plug Christmas lights into this puppy when the time comes! Yeehaw! Unfortunately this stuff cost a bit more than I was expecting, so I'll have to put some other projects on hold for the time being. I really need to just paint the hallway and spare bedroom since I have all of the supplies already!

-Megan

Yardwork

It seems as though I've spent as much time on the yard in these past couple of months as I've spent on the entire house interior in the past year! One of the reasons I decided on a house over a condo was so I could have a yard - for growing vegetables, raising chickens (!!), maybe having a backyard bbq or two - but man, it is a TON of work to keep up with! I think it's especially hard for me, since I didn't grow up having any sort of yard to speak of...we had a slab of concrete in front of the apartment I grew up in, and dad was the gardener in the family. I remember having tomatoes, basil, and cactus fruit (yum!). There was also a time where we grew some HUGE sunflowers and eating the seeds was fun although not as tasty as the salty ones you buy at the store :P. Oh and we had grapes growing over an arbor, which was very cool in my opinion :)

But no lawn to speak of. And the few bushes that were street adjacent were taken care of by the landlord. Point is, I'm not used to any of this stuff, but it's something I've always (kind of) wanted. Enter my very own lawn...by estimations, I have 3000 sq feet of the stuff. Most of it is grass, but in the back yard there are a couple of small, funky looking trees, some bushes (some pretty, some not so much), and tons of invasive bamboo and blackberry bushes. I think I've got the front lawn mowing down...I go in a square spiral from the edges inward...not sure if it's the most efficient but it works for me! As I mentioned in this post, the back yard was left untouched for far too long, so long in fact that I had to hire someone to just get it down to manageable for me. I've since been keeping up with the mowing, but the ground is uneven in many places, and my mower inevitably ends up grinding down mounds of dirt, which go all up in my nostrils and I end up with black boogers (sorry, tmi!). I've also purchased a string trimmer for the places the mower can't get to, and it doubles as an edger (although I'm not too steady with it yet so I've made some janky looking edges, woops). And my newest yard related purchase is an electric hedge trimmer, which is actually really fun to use! I've pared down quite a few overgrown bushes with that puppy.

The only trouble I'm running into is that I basically fill up my compost/yard wast bin super quick, so I can really only do so much each week. I know there are those big paper bags you can buy for extra yard waste, but you have to pay the disposal company extra per each bag they pick up too. Well anyways, I know that I'm going to need help removing the bamboo and blackberry bushes...those suckers are apparently impossible to get rid of. I've actually contacted a couple of brush clearing companies to get quotes on how much it will cost to just level the back yard. And I mean get rid of everything...all I want is dirt back there so I can start with a clean slate. Of course though once that happens, the next thing I'll need to do is put in a fence. It's almost completely obscured now, but I know there's a chain link fence on 2 sides of the yard (the other side is just a hedge), which I definitely want to replace with wood for privacy. But how many thousands of dollars will that all cost?? Oof. Definitely a project for another time. So for now, I'll continue to mow and trim and compost one week at a time!

My pretty yard tools

Wooo tomato plant! You can see some green ones in there if you search carefully!

I trimmed down the bushes at the front of the house - you can
sort of see how overgrown these were in  the picture below

See? Off to the left? So bushy!

I have also been enjoying cooking more and more on my sexy range. Below is a one-pot creamy sausage pasta that I've made at least a hundred times lately :P

Nom nom!

Well, busy weekend ahead (Wendy and Adam *finally* getting hitched!), but hopefully I'll have the gumption to do more interior work in the coming weeks. I NEED to paint! Somebody kick my butt into gear so I don't put it off any longer!

-Megan

House-aversary!

Well, well, it's been exactly a year since I closed on the house! It really doesn't seem like it's been a full year, but the calendar doesn't lie. There have been many many times when I feel like not a lot has been done, because there is still so much more to do, but then I'll sometimes peruse back into this blog's archives and realize how much has changed!

My top 5 projects from the past year:

1. The Kitchen
When I finally had a fully functioning kitchen, I felt like I had really accomplished a huge project. I was without a range and sink for a full 4 months, so I basically "cooked" with a microwave and used disposable dishes/cutlery whenever possible. I also ate out a ton, which wasn't too good for the wallet or the waistband! I'm still really enjoying the choices I made in regards to materials and specific appliances. I know that there is a bunch still left to do in the kitchen, but I'm most likely going to tackle other areas first. I still need to install a shelf on the sink side, install baseboard trim all around the room, replace the light above the sink, replace the window blinds, replace the windows themselves, and somehow close off the area next to the pantry which now (temporarily?) houses the cat litter box. Whew, that's a LOT! Maybe I'll have half that accomplished by next year...?

2. The Bathroom
I think living without a toilet for a full week (you don't wanna know how I did it...) really makes me appreciate how far my bathroom has come this past year! The paint color is probably the most noticeable change (from pee yellow - ceilings included! - to a calming grey), but having an unsoiled toilet, a sink that's not only pretty but actually attached to the wall (!!), and the removal of the black moldy caulk, really complete the image :) Again, still a LOT to do until I feel like the bathroom will be complete...replacing the plastic tub surround with tile, fixing the window frame, and installing a fan are the big ones. But I'd also like to replace the shower fixtures, the medicine cabinet, and the light above it, and replace that one strip of base trim that I royally screwed up with nails!

3. The Garage
Clearing the creepy "bonus room" out of the garage was a huge deal, and one I'm glad I got out of the way early on. I was willing to let this go for a while because I felt a lot of other projects were more pressing, but my friend Todd offered to knock down the room for me one day, and I'm so happy I took him up on that! Then, when I rented the drop box and a bunch of other friends came over to help clear out all the crap, I had a clean slate to work with. Admittedly, it looks like a typical garage full of "stuff" right now, but without that space (and the cool storage units from my grandma) the house would still be full of boxes, and I would still be doing laundry with barely any room to move. I have a ton of stuff in there that's slated for a yard sale, or donation, or recycling, so when I have time I'll sort that all out and the garage will be nice and roomy again!

4. The Floors
The very first project I did when I got the keys to the house was ripping up the carpet and refinishing the hardwood floors underneath. I did the refinishing myself, which accounts for the not-so-professional look to it, but whatever, I saved a good $1,500 by doing it that way! I've always been a fan of hardwood, and it immediately made the house look less "cheap". I also replaced the bathroom floor (oy, that was a nightmare) with vinyl tile...which I'll definitely want to redo one day. It didn't turn out quite that great, but again, super cheap! Like, $20 cheap. Woohoo! The vinyl tile I installed in the kitchen was another story...these tiles were more expensive, but sturdier, groutable (which I think was key to making it look like a nice floor), and because the tiles were rectangular instead of square, I think it gave it a more high end look. Still cheap though (compared to stone, wood, ceramic tile, etc)!

5. Paint
You all have heard me talk about it a bunch already, but every single interior surface of the house was covered in a grimy yellowish-white color when I first got the keys. Well, since then, I've primed pretty much everything, and have now painted most of the walls! It looks SO SO much better! It definitely changes the entire feel of the house and makes it feel much more welcoming. I don't know if I've chosen all of the right colors, but the cool thing is that painting is one of the cheapest (and kinda easiest) things you can do to change a room. I still need to paint the hallway and the spare bedroom (for which I have both cans of paint...just gotta get to it!), and I do need to someday paint all of the door and base trims around the entire house.

Now that I've compiled all of the big stuff in a list...wow! I guess I have done a lot over the past year! And by "I", I mean "my friends and I" because seriously, how in the hell could I have done all of this on my own?? I would probably still be sitting in a room with yellowed walls and dingy carpet if I hadn't had the help, encouragement, and support (physical and mental...and monetary!) from my friends and family. There are still times when I think I'm crazy for taking this on, but over the past year I've also had a lot of moments where I feel like I made a great investment and I get excited about the future.

And speaking of the future...here are the projects I hope to accomplish in the coming year (or two...)!
- Backyard - this one's a doozy
- Exterior paint - also of doozy caliber
- Roof - I think you know what I am going to say here

Some pictures for fun!

The house last year

This morning! Please ignore the Christmas light clips still
on the gutters...the lawn looks a lot better though!

Remember that little front yard project from back in March?

Blooms!! Lots of weeds also...but look at the pretty flowers!

Until next time!

-Megan

I'm Alive!

Wow you guys...it's been over a month since I've updated this bad boy! I blame it on vacation, settling into the new job, and well, general laziness :P I have done a thing or two to the place though, check it out!

• Backsplash
  As promised, I'm finally going to reveal my super secret backsplash! It's an unconventional material for a backsplash. Can you guess what it is?

Much better than before!

Colorized!

Color up close

• Towel Bar
  I finally put up another towel bar in the bathroom...this one's for hand towels (oooh fancy!)

Oy what a mess!

Finito!

• Paint
  I painted the living room! I squeezed 2 coats out of one gallon of paint (it's a fairly big room!). It looks a lot like the bathroom color in these pictures...but it's actually more of a brown grey. I'm happy with it! I chose from the same color family as the kitchen, so they bounce off each other well.

Before...

After!

Other corner of the room

• Backyard
  I was a bad homeowner and hadn't touched the backyard since....last summer :-/ Needless to say, it was very literally a jungle out there. I honestly don't know how I would have been able to tackle it myself (didn't have all the right tools for one thing), and after talking with one of my new coworkers, I decided to hire her (very reasonable!) gardener for a one time clear-out. It was SO SO worth it!

I mean, literally, the grass was 4 feet tall...

Now the grass looks like crap, but at least I can walk around out there!

I really enjoyed my vacation to see my dad and family on the east coast, as well as spending the weekend in Chicago on the way back visiting my friend Chris. My new job is going really well so far! All of the people are cool, and most importantly, it's NOT my old job :P

I have a busy month coming up - Wendy's bachelorette party, the Tough Mudder, Sarah's birthday, beer fest volunteering...and mid-July Wendy & Adam are gettin' hitched! I don't know how much time I'll have to devote to the house but you all will be the first to know about any more updates! :)

-Megan