Back Stairs, Grunge to Gorge

Being that we're a raised ranch, which means we park in the garage at ground level out front, but our living space is upstairs.  That being said, we have a back set of narrow stairs that lead from the garage up into the kitchen.  The stairs we think were an after thought, because they're extremely small and narrow and quite frankly they hog space in the little kitchen- but that's another story.

After trucking up and down these white stairs that looked like they hadn't bee cleaned or cared for in a very long time- I decided to attack them, viciously.  My weapon of choice? The god forsaken paintbrush. (smile)

I decided to do a multi-tone on the stairs and paint the walls a light grey to warm the whole hall up and give life to a once drab space we were in multiple times a day.


                                                                BEFORE:

                                                                 





                                                                   AFTER:

                                               



                                               SIDE BY SIDE COMPARISONS

Now for some artwork and quirkiness... will add some finishing touches and update soon.

Checking Out the Attic

One of the most bazaar things we discovered when we purchased this home, was the attic access, or lack there of.  We searched high and low in every nook, cranny and closet and much to our surprise there just wan't any access to the attic space- at all!    This means that most likely, since the time this house was built no one ever checked in on the attic space to make sure things looked kosher.  This was a really scary thought.

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, (I believe it was the post about painting the exterior of the home) we were having a major yellow jacket issue near the roof line and there were several large gaping holes with these bees going in and out of the cedar shakes.  My husband grabbed the gauntlet and in he dove.  An hour later, we had a small access panel in the ceiling of one of our bedroom closets and he crawled around up there and discovered all kinds of things- like a HUGE bee colony that was living in our house. Unwanted.

He treated the area, and the outside was addressed so we no longer have these nasty flying stingers occupying our space.  AND we now have access for any future needs.  This actually lit a fire under Tim to start another one of our (MANY) projects- updating the closets.  We had normal drywall on the bedroom ceilings, and it went into the closet space as well, BUT they installed drop ceilings in the closets with a small lighting fixture cut into them that hardly gave off any light- and cut our closet space by about 10" .. which is a LOT when you're talking about an old closet that's not very big to begin with.  You can see where the drywall was painted and where it stopped.  All that unpainted drywall space was hidden beneath a dropped ceiling of panels.

Good bye drop ceilings, hello attic access and beautiful bright recessed lighting! My closet is up next!  Then it's paint, new closet organizers and some metal tracked wood barn doors- WHICH I CANNOT WAIT FOR!

Updates to follow as they happen..


                                                                  BEFORE:

DURING:

AFTER:

Just needs finishing touches!

Drilling A New Well (part 1)

You know that feeling when you hop in the shower on a cold night after working outside all day? It's amazing, right?  All hot and steamy, as you let the hot beads of moisture penetrate through your skin... ok, get your head out of the gutter, that's not where I'm going with this.   I'm talking about the thing we use every day and take for granted- hot water. Or how bout water period?!

Now picture that same scenario, but you're in the shower all hot and steamy and lathered up with soap and something major happens. The water starts to trickle... and trickle.. and eventually trickles no more.  

That's what just happened to Tim...  And it wasn't a pretty sight around here, let me tell ya.  He was freaking out, yelling and questioning everyone "who used all the hot water, better yet who just used all the water?  Who did laundry, took showers and ran the dishwasher?"..   sadly it wasn't like that.  Yes, we used the water in the house like we did every day, but for some reason this time- we ran dry. yes DRY people.  We ran our well DRY. You can imagine the feeling of disaster when you think you have no water left in your well.  

Well, it took several hours, but our well eventually filled and we were able to get water out of the faucets again, but we realized that something needed to be done- quickly.  We had some contractors out who used to service this house prior to our ownership and much to our surprise, we learned that the well had actually run dry previously.  Of course this was never mentioned to us before, so we were upset and that's just a whole other can of worms that I'm not even about to get into in this post.  Let's just say it was best to just move forward with correcting the matter at hand.   After several contractors out to the house, we decided to get a new well drilled for better water flow and accessability.  The well we have now is only drilled a little over 100 feet deep. This is not the best set up for a family of 5.  We had our buddy Tom Smith out with his excavating equipment to dig our hill out for the drill to access freely.  Say hi to Tom:

Now we're all ready for Mills to come drill our new well!

To be continued...

One of the Prettiest Times of the Year, Fall

I was looking around and couldn't happen to notice all the different colors around us, from the leaves changing on all the different types of tress, to the changes in flowers.   I wanted to share how pretty it really is up here in these woods.  This was taken while I was enjoying a cup of coffee this morning sitting on the swing under the old pine tree and having a "me moment" (which doesn't happen too often).  It's slightly difficult to see in this photo, but we have a red maple that's to the far right of this photo that is absolutely gorgeous this time of year.  It's crimson fire among the golden rays of the oak trees behind it.

Ahhhhh... nothing like a hot cup of coffee on a brisk fall morning.  Love our house.
Happy Saturday Morning, Y'all!

Butthole Brown to Glam Grey!

So one of the (many) things we knew had to be done when we moved into this place was painting the exterior. W have wood siding that's painted  To maintain, the siding should be repainted every so many years to hold the life and look of the paint.  The paint was peeling and flaking in a lot of areas when we purchased the home so a summer paint job was in the books!

Excitedly, I decided I could tackle this job on my own- being an expert novice painter and all...   I like to think I'm a pro, but a pro I am not.  Tim says he sucks at painting- truthfully I think he just says that and plays dumb so he isn't stuck doing the tedious work with the pale and brush.  He's either really selfish or one smart cookie. I think he's a little of both, but shhhh dont tell. ;)

Our house is literally butthole brown, if there is even such a thing.  Picture this- take coffee, add cream, a little mustard, ketchup, wasabi, more cream, hell throw in a half gallon of ben & jerry's chunky monkey and blend well...   or you can just bend over bare assed and look in the mirror- either way, the color you find is literally the color of our house. Shit brown.  It's dull, lifeless and screaming for a makeover!

Without much thought, grey became the new color of choice. Glam Grey as I call it because it gives our house that special pop of wow now that it's painted with a fresh updated color choice.  I had considered long and hard about changing our trim color from white to a beige, but that would involve me climbing onto the roof and up a ladder- which I do not do with my deathly fear of heights.. so white it remains (at least for now).

Check our some of our before, during and after shots of the exterior. The exterior isn't fully complete just yet, we're getting new garage doors, adding to the exterior trim and will be adding window shutters. But at least the hard part is over with.   This project took me a good 2 months to complete, few hours here and there at a slow pace when I wasn't working (or grocery shopping, or cleaning, or doing laundry, or running errands, you get my point.  I am woman, hear me roar!).

BEFORE: *this was the look of the house before we bought it.  This is the truest contest of what it looked like before.

 And here's the wooden walkway before it got a facelift. More shit brown.

DURING:

Ok, so I know I said that I was tacklilng this job by myself... and I did, for the most part. But as I also mentioned before- me and heights clash like a good bottle of champagne and a cheap hooker. I am jus too scared to be up high on a ladder or even hanging over the deck railing looking down- I start to see double and get all weak in the knees.  So I had to rally up the troops (and by troops I mean my kids and brother again) and put them to work.  Thankfully Kayla was in a good mood this day (she's 16- need I say more?)   Notice the shit brown flooring?!  And notice how it's peeling and cracking?  Exactly why it needed to be overhauled!!

So here's my big baby brother, Jon up on the extension ladder taking care of the high spots for me.  Funny story, I have to share.  So if you look above Jon's head you'll see the cedar shakes.  At the bottom of those shakes there's a few large holes. Coming in and out of those holes are yellow jackets.  This photo was taken right when Jon discovered there were bees buzzing around his head. Jon, for those of you who don't know is a big baby when it comes to things like bee stings.   When he realized the bees were nesting above where he was working he was like F this, I'm out.  Literally as soon as he said that a bee started buzzing around his face, he got nervous, lost balance and dropped the bucket of paint below him.  I REALLY wish I had this all on camera because it was so funny when it happened.  He swatted at the bee and of course we all know what happens when you piss a bee off!  BZZZZZ ... STING!   And when one thinks they're being threatened, they all start attacking!  Long story short, Jon took a few for the team this day, getting stung on the arms, neck and shoulders.  He lived. 

Not too often you'll find me in the photos means I"m the man behind the lens most of the time, but this was me- literally shaking in the knees because I felt like I was up too high.  You can clearly see my brother is standing next to me and I was only up about 5 feet.   hahahaha

Part of painting the extior involved painting the cute little wooden walk to our front door.  If you forget, that used to be shit brown also.  Actually it was dark shit brown.  The same color as a lot of the trim.  I ended up mixing up my own floor color with a little siding and white and came up with this gorgeous light grey that really brightened the whole thing up!

So here it is, the finished product!   Take a look and comment below.

Screened Porch Overhaul

So one of the things I remember when I was a kid growing up on Providence Road in Delaware County was our screened in front porch.  It was small, but we loved to be out there playing, especially when it was raining outside.

 You don't find screened porches on the front of a house too often these days, but they're a great addition to any home regardless of the placement.   Sitting in a screened porch having dinner with the family and not worrying about bugs crawling in and out of your food is a miraculous thing.  And there's nothing like enjoying a fresh cup of Joe with you loved one on a Sunday morning with your feet propped up talking about life.. in a screened porch!

One of the things I fell in love with here at Indian Springs Farm was the side porch off the kitchen overlooking both the rear yard as well as the pool area.  Like all things in this home, it was also a work in progress as it had no covered roof to protect from the rain or snow, it had busted screening in various spots, rotten wood that needed to be treated and one big ole ugly wooden support beam running straight through the center of the room.  This made for the most awkward placement of furniture.  Lucky for us, my hubby is an iron worker and he is well skilled in the removal of such beams and re-configuring layouts to be more appealing.

We also took out some unappealing shrubbery and overgrown holly bushes outside that blocked a lot of natural light into the porch- and created ouchy situations if you were walking around barefoot out back.

Here's some before, during and after shots of the complete porch remodel including pictures of Tim taking the support beam out and installing the metal roofing!  This was primarily my project, and I couldn't be more happy with how it turned out!  Kudos to me :)

BEFORE:

This was the ceiling, I hand brushed two coats of paint on each and every board.  Yet another tedious painting job.. 

It really turned out great though!

Here's Tim working on taking this center wood beam out and replacing it with a different support system. 

Here's the metal roofing going up!  Lookin good Tim!!

It was a big decision on picking the color for the floors... we went back and forth on going grey, white, or black. I even considered indoor/outdoor carpeting but decided to go bold and chose a bright and cheery aqua color!  Take a look and comment below on how you like it.

The finished product!

Here's that holly tree I was telling you about that blocked a lot of the natural light into our porch.  With this gone, we have sun shining til after 6pm!