Little Living Tree

We've been hustling to finish painting the dining room just in time for the holidays; speaking of holidays, this Norfolk Island Pine is our tree this year.  We usually don't have a tree at all (you know, trying to "save" the environment and all) but since we're hosting Christmas at our place this year, we felt like we had to do some decorating.

The small potted pine was under $20 at Lowes, and since it's alive, we know it will last even beyond the holiday.

Outside, we wrapped white lights around the front porch rails.  I love how they light up the boxes under the roof and kind of want to keep them up year round.  Just like the rest of the house, we have years to grow into our full-on holiday decorating potential.

Turkish Triptych

Remember this big blank wall behind "Maya's" new couch?

Well, we finally ordered a piece of art to display on it, and we love the way it came out.

It's a scene of the city of Istanbul that Tommie took during our honeymoon to Turkey in 2011.  

We were toying with the idea of getting panoramic prints for few of Tommie's photographs, but prices for large images can get expensive…add to that any frames and we were quickly looking at over a couple hundred dollars for just one piece of art.  

We have ordered several of Tommie's photos on 16x20 canvas before and have been really pleased with the quality, so when we noticed that Canvas On Demand was having a 70% off sale for a three-panel "PhotoSplit" (triptych), we jumped on it.  It cost $75 for what was normally $350.  One of the benefits of canvas is that no frames are required, saving additional costs.  

It took us a long time to decide which image to use.  Finally, we decided on the sepia mosque scene because we figured the coloring and the image itself would look great above the couch.  Even though it is one image broken up into three sections, serendipitously, each panel has two marionettes in it and could almost exist on its own.  (Each panel is 15x30 inches with a two-inch gap in between.)  

Our advice for choosing an image to use for a triptych is to go for a scene that was captured fairly close up and includes a large impact subject.  Each panel should look good on its own as well as together, and don't choose something that will be ruined by the breaks.  The hardest part is, of course, hanging them so they line up perfectly.  Let's just say there was a lot of math involved (not on my part or else they'd be way off.)

Thanksgiving Lamb

We celebrated our first holiday meal in our house--Thanksgiving with Tommie's parents (and cat).

We collaborated on cooking non-traditional lamb (who says we all have to pick on turkeys?) with traditional Thanksgiving sides like stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, and homemade pumpkin pie.

Even though our dining room is a work-in-progress, our Craigslisted table and chairs serve us well for the holidays.  Next up; Christmas with my side of the family.

Perches on the Front Porch

It's great having a covered front porch, especially in a quiet neighborhood.  

By the end of November, porch-sitting season is just about over, but since we just got the house painted, we wanted to spruce up our outdoor seating.  

Our house came with a nice wooden porch swing, and I got a sweet $20 rocker from Craigslist.  

The rocker got a fresh coat of white paint and compliments the new white trim.

Since the painter's ended up power washing all the cobwebs off our porch swing, we broke out some of the leftover gray shutter paint (Sherwin William's Gray's Harbor Superpaint in satin) so that it better matches the house and seals up any splinters in the wood.

  (Porch swing and house before and after.)

Come spring, our little perch on the porch will be completely refreshed and ready to enjoy.

Guest Room Finishing Touches

With Tommie's parents headed our way for Thanksgiving, it was time to put some finishing touches on the guest room and bath. (The color looks different in pictures--it's light lavender with a yellow accent wall.)

Some recent updates to the guest room include a yellow, gray, and tan chevron curtain bought for $15 at Target.  We also put a desk in the corner so people can set up a laptop if they need to do work.

I thought this floating shelf would be a cute way to display some reading material for guests, like local magazines.  (We're getting another small floating shelf to put above it to better fill the wall.)

The guest bath also has a couple new features like a chrome hotel-style curved shower rod (I don't know why, but I love how spacious these things make the shower!).

There is also a updated large silver mirror I bought for $20 on Craigslist, and a nice new chrome towel rack with shelves.

Our guests may have one of the best spots in the house so far!

The Brave, the Bold, and the "Blue"tiful

I dreaded making a decision about what colors to paint our house.  We're first-time homebuyers and I definitely don't feel like a decision of this magnitude is within our scope yet.  But, as I mentioned in the previous post, our house couldn't go another season without being sealed up with a fresh coat of paint, so we were forced to dive into exterior decisions head first.

When the blue we chose (Georgian Blue, Superpaint by Sherwin Williams in satin finish) started to go up on the house, it was like Dorothy entering the technicolor Land of Oz…and it was more scary than exciting. 

A small portion of the side and back was painted on day one and left over the rainy weekend so we had some time to acclimate to the new color creeping up the side of our house.  As the paint dried, the color took better to the siding and became less bright.  Still, I bugged out my eyes every time I came up the driveway.  That is one blue house!  (It looks even brighter on the computer!)

But as the color went up on the rest of the house and the trim was transformed from beige cream to a crisp white, it all started to come to life in a good way.  Many of our neighbors stopped to give the painters (Clint Crabtree) compliments on the progress and the color change.  The painters did a fantastic job.

When the color was up on the whole house I didn't have a heart attack, in fact, I swooned a little over the white trim against the rich blue.  Two coats of new paint even makes it look like we had new siding installed and covered up all the faded and weathered spots.  Even standing on the front porch feels like we're in a brand new house (just don't come inside).  In short, the house is bold and "blue"tiful.

(Before)

(After)

(Before)

(After)

Other exterior improvements we hope to make over the next year include a new door (maybe painted?);  new windows and screens upstairs; new porch lights (maybe even getting a couple pot lights installed in the porch ceiling);  painting the porch swing; updating to modern style house numbers and door bells; hanging plants and a couple new plants (maybe hydrangeas) this spring. 

(Before)

(After)

Our new white vinyl windows also look a million times better with matching white trim.

(Before)

(After)

Did we pick the perfect color for our house?  I don't think so, but truthfully, there is no "perfect" color when you're going through a booklet of color swatches that's five-inches thick.  In the end, we chose a color that brings out the unique design elements of our exterior and makes the house look 20 years younger…and it needed that.  Balancing the blue with classic white trim and gray shutters (in Gray's Harbor by Sherwin Williams) helps ground it.  Like any big change, it will take some time to get used to, but it's already growing on us.

From Bland to Bold Exterior Paint

Painting the exterior of a house is a big decision, y'all!

Unfortunately, the siding of our house is Masonite (basically, compressed particle board) so if we don't keep up with painting it every seven or so years, the nail heads pucker in and cause water damage and rot.  It's a super cheap material, which is why builders used it in the 80's and 90's.  Nowadays, it is replaced with Hardiplank or cement siding.  We will have to replace siding as it fails but we can't afford to do it all at once, so for now a fresh paint job will have to do the trick (it was overdue when we bought it).

Nothing is necessarily wrong with our current color scheme (putty color with light blue shutters and cream trim) except that our new windows (white vinyl) don't match the dated cream trim.  Also, the muted color of the house just kind of blends into the scenery with all our trees.  We're still young(ish) so if we're going to brighten it up, now is the time.

We considered just about every color of the rainbow since we've seen houses that we like in basically every shade.  Red looks great on cottages, and yellow on Victorians, grays and tans are nice on traditional homes, but our house is a weird hybrid with gables, a bay window, and chippendale railings.

We decided that blue would be a good choice since it goes well with the brick, gray roof, and eventually white trim.  I don't quite feel like I've lived in the place long enough for me to want to change it, but since we're paying to have it painted, we wanted to do something different.  I could have used more time to make a decision but unfortunately the house couldn't wait any longer, so neither could our decision.

The blues in the photo above don't look all that different, but they are.  We went with the more true blue (Georgian Blue by Sherwin Williams) which is the last color on the right.  It will be in satin finish which is slightly more durable than flat and the trim will be updated to a crisp pure white.  It's going up on the house as I write and it's going to be drastic.

Big change is scary for an indecisive Libra, but I do think when it's all finished the house will look a lot newer and will actually look bigger.  The white trim will be beautiful and go much better with the blue, so I can't wait for that.  Stayed tuned for some crazy before and after pics probably sometime next week.  In the meantime, I'll try not to get scared by all these bold changes.  Farwell old house.

Blank Slate Backyard

We have a good-sized, mostly flat backyard, but with renters living in this property for the past several years, it's been neglected.  There's a gully in the back filled with leaves and rotting trees, shrubs and vines gone-wild, and the only thriving grass--monkey grass--took over a primo spot in the center of the yard.

Monkey grass is used as a hardy ground cover in the south, but it spreads like wildfire, breeds mosquitoes, and I don't want to worry about Copperhead snakes hiding in it.  So, when we moved in, I created a listing on Craigslist for free monkey grass if people wanted to dig and haul it away themselves.  It's a great way to recycle unwanted plants and it saves us the back-breaking manual labor of digging it up ourselves.

I thought we'd have enough for a few people, but I ended up having about 15 different people come by and leave with car/truck loads full of monkey grass.  It was never ending!  There are still some root systems that will continue to produce the pesky grass in our yard but hopefully clearing out the bulk of it will make it more manageable.

From past experience, it seems to take about a year to get a yard cleared out and uncover the blank slate we have to work with.

 (Monkey grass and "Jabba the Hutt" bush on the back fence gone. More open space for Maya to run!)

For some reason, we have the most trees on our lot out of any of the homes around us (front and back).  We plan to hire someone to chop down a few of the tall dead ones, but in the meantime, we're clearing out shrubs, vines, branches, and smaller trees with nothing but a pair of branch cutters and a hand saw.

Apparently Tommie is all about multitasking--here he is up in a tree, saw in one hand, cell phone in the other discussing grants with his boss.  Don't try this at home, kids.

As for taming the weeds, ivy, and vines, I didn't want to use any harsh chemicals with our dog (or with us, for that matter) so I found a recipe online for a natural plant killer (white vinegar, salt, and a little dish soap).  I found that if I sprayed it on a warm sunny day, the leaves soaked up the vinegar and withered away.  It's not fool-proof but it does make the plants retreat, and therefore, easier to clear out.

(Above are the weeds and vines before, then browning below about a week after spraying salt and vinegar on them.)

(A few weeks later, we cleared out the withering vines, so the fence is clean and invasive plants aren't spilling over into our yard.)

We learned that it's important to keep the vines at bay or else they overtake the trees.  Some of the pricker bushes invading our yard from neighbors' had to have reached 50 feet up some of our trees--it was like Jack and the Beanstalk.  Below is Tommie fighting against the vortex.

Long-term, I envision a beautiful, multi-section yard/garden with a grassy area for Maya, a play area for the swing set we inherited, a game strip for Tommie's corn hole, a garden for me, a patio with a fire pit, and a screened-in porch.  For now, we're just clearing out, trying to get a blank slate to work with.

Two Showers are Better than One

We finally have two functioning showers.

Actually, we started with two functioning showers but I messed that up by assuming I could quickly and easily replace a rusty shower arm in our master bath.  I watched a couple YouTube videos and set to work--only the old shower arm would not come off.  I tried WD-40; I had Tommie try; a handyman tried it and finally came to the conclusion that it was rusted in place.  He would have to cut out and repair a chunk of the wall to replace the entire unit.  He also found out it was leaking behind the wall--so in a way, it was a good thing I set out on this impossible task.

With the wall patched (now smoothed and new shower arm in place), I could install our new filtrated shower head.  There are so many options when it comes to shower heads I really didn't know where to start.  I recently read an article about health issues caused by breathing in too much chlorine and other toxins from our water which prompted me to look up filtrated shower heads.  I found this highly-rated one by Culligan on Amazon for only $25.  Seemed worth a shot for that price.  (Filters should be replaced every six months and they run about $11).

I also needed to replace the shower knob which was growing all kinds of black mold inside it (so gross!).  I hate these plastic pieces of crap, but until we do a big overhaul of the bathroom, it's best/cheapest to just replace the knob for $10.

(Nasty old knob.)

 (Easy new knob replacement costs about $10 at Lowes. Make sure the diamond or other shape matches up with your existing one.)

Feels good to get this project crossed off the list.  The next step in this room is paint (we're thinking mint and gray like this.)