Gettin' Fit and Trim

The first thing I noticed when I came to look at this house those years ago was its lack of curb appeal. It did not immediately grab me as an overly attractive or unattractive house from the exterior. Thankfully, the inside had amazing bones and I fell in love with making the inside feel like a home. Unfortunately, the outside was kind of forgotten this year between our high amounts of rain and incredibly hot days.

When we first moved in, I painted the front door to try to give the house a little character. It started out looking like this.

We added a little color with the new red/orange entrance.

Around the same time, we got rid of our old numbers and replaced them with more modern ones that I love.

This was followed by Mom and I attempting to fix some of the landscaping. Unfortunately, it's going to take much more work to get the greenery under control, but at least it became more tame.

It was about a year ago that I was at a friend's house in northern Kentucky who had just worked on the front of their house. Their trim color was a great brownish charcoal gray and I loved it. I asked them for the color name and ended up bringing home the bottom of their last gallon, which was just enough to paint the garage door, large window trim, and around the front door.

This is a color that I had seen on many homes online that had the same colors as our house. The Bedford stone made it a little difficult to color match things, so I had to go by lots of not-quite-the-same reference shots to see how it would look. Overall, they really shared the feel that I wanted to go for. A very modern, cozy vibe that was clean, but welcoming.

I hadn't touched the trim since that day. I put it off because I was afraid that exterior paint would be really expensive and that the color matching would be a pain.

Thankfully, I got a wild hair the other day, when the outside temperatures were very mild and the rain was supposed to hold off for a few days, to continue my exterior trim painting journey. I grabbed the old gallon that was empty and headed to Home Depot. I walked up to the color swatches and within three attempted samples, I had one that fit perfectly. $30 later, I had a paint & primer in one.

It's called Behr Intellectual and it's really dreamy.

 I started with areas that were nearest to that which I'd already painted. For example, the garage door had been painted, but not the surround for it, so I began by giving it some color.

I used a paintbrush for the cracks, crevasses, and gutter and a large roller for the soffit. The painting actually went pretty quickly for me working by myself, and a couple of hours later, I had a first coat on the front. I know that I need to go back and do a second coat to get a richer color and better coverage in some areas, but until it stops raining again, this first coat is going to have to do.

So here is the before.

And the after.

I love it! I think it gives a nice contrast against the stone and really gives the whole house some much needed character.

The darker color also helps our little windows stand out on the ever-forgotten right side of our house. They butt up against the roof and have almost no frame, so the previously tan trim just made them disappear.

Now it feels like we put eyeliner on and really made them stand out as features.

I really love how the yellows and oranges of Fall help bring out the dark, grounded trim color, too. Right now, with our tree bright yellow and leaves all around, the front yard is finally showing the curb appeal it's always needed.

Is it done? No, but this is a really dramatic step in the right direction. I would also love to fix some of our outdoor lighting so it's not so dark. Right now, our front door and garage only have a light that is built into the soffit for illumination.

Yes, I know that the bright yellow bush is dead.

I think that if we flanked them with some modern lanterns, it would really add some nice details to the front. It would also bring more light to our entry area.

Photoshop representation of what it might look like.

But for right now, I'm just happy every time I pull into the driveway and get to see (what feels like) a brand new house.

What do you think? Are you a fan of a bold, contrasty trim? Are you more comfortable with something that blends in or is traditional? Let me know in the comments!

One if by land, Nine if by Spray Paint

When we got married, we did a lot of the wedding DIY. One thing we were really lucky on were some lanterns that we picked up from Pier 1 for only $3 each. They were metal, green, and had panes of glass in them to hold our centerpieces for the tables at the reception. Notice it holding the white flower in the bottom center of the picture below.

During our Father/Daughter dance. Photo taken by Ronda Sturdivant.

Not only were they perfect for the day, but we kept them afterward and now they adorn our backyard during the sunny months. Unfortunately, when I pulled them out this year, I could see the evidence of summers past.

They were a little worse for wear. They weren't rusted, just really sun-worn and dirty. Since metal lanterns this size are really in style now, I didn't want to replace them. That would have cost a fortune. Instead, I decided to just revamp the ones I had and make them like new again.

I started by taking them apart. The top wire and lids come completely off, so I washed them with dish washing soap. I let them dry really well while I worked on the next step.

Some of the lanterns had candles still stuck in them, so before I could really proceed, they had to be dewaxed. Here is a perfect example.

After an hour in the freezer, the candle shattered enough to come right out in chunks. Thankfully they were not all this bad. I think I would have run out of freezer space...

I was then able to do a first cleaning. I ran each one underwater with soap, rinsed, then put them back on the counter for the second big phase: taking out the glass.

The glass pieces were held in with little metal tabs that just needed to be carefully bent back. I only had to undo the top ones, as I was able to pull the glass straight up and out of the lanterns. There were four pieces per lantern (to keep candles from blowing out in the wind), so this task took a while.

Once all the glass was removed, the lanterns were rewashed. They weren't perfectly clean, but they were clean enough that the dirt and grime were gone from the outside, allowing the paint to stick. They were then allowed to dry.

The glass was all cleaned as well, then very carefully laid out to dry.

Once everything was a-okay, I was ready to paint. I decided on a bright yellow because it would really stand out against our very green backyard. I ended up using two cans of the Rustoleum with primer to get a nice even coat.

I began with them upside-down. I then flipped them right side up and got the top edge. I did not do the insides because I felt that the pattern didn't make that necessary. When you do see both colors, they just look like lemon lime.

When they were completed, I laid out the lids and painted their undersides first. After they dried, I flipped them over and sprayed the tops. Each side took two coats for good coverage. The wires were painted by hanging them from a string so I could do all the sides at once. They only took one awkward coat.

When they were completed, I brought everything inside for reassembly. Here is the inside of one that I'm getting ready to put a glass pane in. You can see how the inside is still green.

 

It's amazing what a new coat of paint can do for something. If you know me, you know that I'll spray paint just about anything, but these guys are probably my newest triumph.

Not only are they clean, but they are bright and cheery spots in our backyard.

I'll update with a night picture once our weather is nice enough to actually get one. Till then, I hope your outdoor projects are allowing you to enjoy your yards, too!

Tide is High

You know what I'm getting at...

It's a nice tropical song to match the amazing weather we've been having here lately! Which is great, because work on Scott's Office is still going on. In fact, this week I felt like adding a little art to the space.

I had wanted to do a layered paper artwork for a while, but finally found some inspiration in a color scheme I found on Pinterest. I grabbed one piece of scrapbook paper in each of the colors I liked and grabbed a piece of foam board. in all (aside from the frame, this entire project costs less than $10 to do).

I ended up with 8 different pieces of paper/colors. I decided to make a wave pattern that would allow them to all overlap. I used my 2 inch hole punch flipped upside down to make the cuts.

Just line up the top of the paper about to the diameter mark and cut a hole. The pattern should start like this.

Continue this till you reach the other side. I did it on all of my pieces of paper, making sure to try to not line up each wave so that there was some random overlap. I didn't really care that mine weren't level across the paper, but you can always draw a level line and then line your hole punch up with that.

Once they were all cut, they looked like this. I lined them up so that they were stacked with each one being lower just to make sure that they looked correct.

Then I trimmed each piece of paper to make it shorter. You don't have to measure this part until you are cutting the wave that is in the front. I just kind of cut each piece of paper in half.

After lining them back up, I took some tape and taped them together to hold them in place. This can also be accomplished with glue, just don't use too much because you don't want the paper to pucker.

I made some lines to cut the whole thing down a little bit because I was trying to even out the sides. This was done by leveling the sides with the top-most wave and them drawing them parallel. Then I trimmed them with a straight edge and x-acto knife.

Once it had been trimmed, I made a 90 degree cut along the bottom to square it off a bit. Once again, I didn't measure  the height of the piece to each wave because I wanted this to look slightly hand made, but you can if that's the look you are going for. Once it was all trimmed, I flipped it back over.

I then centered it on the piece of foam board that I had already cut to fit into a frame I had laying around (Michael's has BOGO sales on their nicer poster frames all the time. The other frame I had gotten as part of the deal is holding an awesome Fifth Element poster from Etsy).

After popping it back in the frame, I hung it up in the office.

It's super simple and adds a nice happy touch of color to the room. The space is small, so this fits really well. Now if only the space was a little nicer looking. Notice the primed-but-not-painted corners of the wall.

At least we are still looking much better than we started! There aren't any good "before" pictures of it (and it's terrifyingness), but imagine a 8.5 ft by 9 ft room completely made out of wood, rim and all.

Don't even get us started on that ceiling! The ceiling might not be something we can work on at the moment, but the walls are.Yeah, don't worry, that's the next thing we're tackling as part of Scott's Office Week! Happy April everyone!

Finally Hung Out to Dry

One of the many ongoing projects around here has been the Little Laundry Room that Could.  When we moved in, it was not a very welcoming space for doing an unpleasant task.

I was able to paint the walls (which I talked about in it's first appearance on this blog), but there were still a couple of other little things that I felt it needed to be considered 'done'.

I started with a cute sign.

These are just some letters I picked up from Hobby Lobby on sale %50 off. A couple of layers of yellow spray paint and they were really popping. Scott hung them up on the wall and I was on to the next task.

Also while I was at Hobby Lobby, I picked up two sheets of yellow duck tape. I took my hole punch (that you might remember from the shell light) and cut out a bunch of circles.

They helped turn this

Into this

I also used a 3/4 yard of fabric I used my 40% off mobile coupon for and made some cute curtains. These were just hemmed and held up by some clips on the back. The fabric was $3 b/c of the coupon and I had the hooks from another project that I didn't use them for.

Some laundry themed art was added to some Goodwill frames that I made over the same way as these. They were then added to the other wall.

I even put a little bird collage that I had made in the old apartment and hung it on the little handle to get to the fuse box just for added color. It just comes right off for accessibility, though.

I bought some baskets from Michaels for 50% off and they now hold all of our non-reusable dinnerware for entertaining.

Last but not least, I grabbed a giant canvas and made a PLAY DIRTY sign (har har! Get it? CAUSE IT'S A LAUNDRY ROOM!), and suspended it from the ceiling. I did this because something sitting on the ground would be both in the way and a fire hazard. This way, it only blocked the ugliness from the view that people would be looking from most (the kitchen). This is before.

And here is the after

We made sure to leave plenty of room between it and the water heater.

And that's it! The only other two things that we might touch on in here are:

-Replacing the door on the right (that goes to the backyard) with one that has a window for added light and openness. We've been mostly looking at the Restore to see if we get lucky, but nothing so far.

-Putting in some sort of new flooring. This probably won't happen for a long while, though, so covering the checkered patters with rugs works. It also keeps us off of the really cold floor that the room has, at least during the winter.



I'm so happy that it's done! I really don't mind people seeing my laundry room now, which is a big step up from when we moved in. What do you think, is redoing a laundry room worth the time and effort? Let me know in the comments!