The 'Laundry Basket of Home Improvement Updates' Post

It's not that I've been holding back on my blog readers, exactly, but there's a point at which you're so busy you can't put down the paint brush/nailer/shovel to write about what you're doing. I suppose "too much to write about" is a good problem to have, but it does tend to pile up like baskets of clean laundry. Sooner or later you feel guilty that you haven't gotten around to folding it and putting it away. So this post is a folding and putting away of home improvement news, a big update with lots of things to offer, including sunflowers at the beginning and at the end. Ready?

There have been a lot of exterior home improvements checked off the list in the last few months and even more going back almost a year. I mean A LOT. As in punch-drunk with exhaustion and still juggling paint brushes, power tools, sunscreen, and wasp spray a lot.

Well, at least I am. The exhausted part, anyway. Boyfriend Tom is one of those cheerfully energetic people who can work their way through a long DIY to-do list with amazing speed. That's mostly awesome. But on the days where I think I might need a nap, or a beer, or some time for my anxiety-predisposed brain to hyper-analyze the situation, he keeps the table-saw running, and pretty soon I've got another paint project to follow up with.

Except for one thing: the roof. That we hired done. It was well overdue; it was past 20 years old and while I had not had any problems with it yet, I didn't want to wait until I did. Here's a before, from June of last year:

Not only was it looking pretty tired and worn out, it was a pale gray that didn't really "go" with the warm red/browns of the brick foundation and chimney So we picked out shingles that we hoped would pull the entire exterior together. Here's tear-off day. The house is old enough the roof was decked with boards rather than sheeting. Still sound, after all these years!

Here is the finished roof: 

Not shown is a new gutter and downspout system which went in a few days later, routed in a different direction to address some damp basement issues we'd been having. While it has been too dry of a summer to really say for certain that it solved the problem completely, our foundation stayed dry through the last two flash-flood level rains that we have had, which makes us hopeful.

It is embarrassing to admit how long exterior painting has gone on around here. Seasons. Years, even. Too long. That's totally on me, but I'm going to plead single parenthood. But guess what? It's done! (hugs herself, giggles maniacally)

Here's a "getting close" photo of the south (driveway) side of the house.

We had to borrow a longer ladder to get to the peaky-peak of the gable.

And here's the back of the house, a screen-porch, kitchen, attic bedroom shot:

But we are not done with exterior home improvement yet. Wait, there's more!

Tom, with help from me, and various of our boys at various times, built a fence across our back property line.

We "stole" the design from a fence in a neighborhood where we like to walk. Here's some during shots. We also had the yard all torn up, since we were not only digging post holes, but planning a garden bed.

Here it is finished. We plan to let it weather. I like the silvery gray of weathered wood with garden greenery and flowers. 

Here is what my backyard neighbor sees. I think she was as tired of the peeling pink paint as I was, and now we have our backside (ahem) all spanking new. 

But wait, there's more!

A vegetable bed!

This was my son Grant's gift of labor to me while he lived at home between college and the start of his new job. It was an enormous undertaking, and Tom is still hauling dirt for it, since it has settled some since we first filled it.

Here's what it looked like yesterday evening.

The bed was done in the last weeks of May. We got a late start on the actual gardening part, but we put in tomatoes, peppers,  and summer squash, and we've had a decent amount of produce considering the season was shortened on the front end. The tomatoes caught up pretty admirably.

And here's the fence row again, now in late August:

I got a packet of sunflower seeds that said it was mixed varieties 4-6 ft in height, to fill in some space quickly in a flower bed that was just getting started with new perennials.  Um, yeah. Right now we seem to be in the 5-8 ft. range with these babies, and no end in sight. There's a rose bush hidden in there somewhere, believe it or not. The rose will survive the shade in the short term and I don't plan to plant any annuals that are quite so large next year. But they're impressive, aren't they?

While Tom has taken the lead on the outside projects shared here, I've been working on the inside of the house this summer. I'll share some of those with readers soon. It's been a busy year!

Doorstep Gets a Front Door Facelift

Readers may remember that some summers ago my Dad swooped in like a hero and helped me get the front of the house painted. 

At that time, one of the things that went undone was the front door. I'd intended to follow up almost immediately painting it, but between the fact the weather never seemed right any weekend I wanted to work on it, and well, just life in general, it remained the weird brownish-mauve color, with peeling layers down to white. It was not a pretty thing. 

Later on, once upon a Thanksgiving, I painted the inside of the door, pictured here, and fell in love with the color. That's Valspar Cinnamon Cake: 

It's a warm, spicy, pumpkin-y color. This year, finally, as Tom has helped get the rest of the exterior house painting done, I tackled the front door on nice weather weekends in little half-hour increments. 

Charming. Also, pay no attention to the ripped linoleum floor. Usually that's covered up by an area rug, and is a home-improvement tragedy for another blog post.

The risk for irritation painting doors while they are still hung is high. Especially a door that's heavily used. And of course my children, who leave doors hanging open as a matter of maddening habit, are now slamming it shut religiously, simply because you've got wet/tacky paint on it. Of course.

Here it is, almost finished with the prime coat. I scraped the big chunks, leveled with wood filler, caulked gaps, and sanded before priming. I'm pretty sure this is the original door, and while I like it, it's been used pretty hard and is about at the end of its life, including the hardware. The budget being what it is, though, we decided we'd throw a fresh coat of paint on it to see if we couldn't get another year or two out of it before taking the plunge on a replacement door and screen door.

Here's the finished product. I spray-painted the door-knocker black to coordinate with the light fixture, mailbox, and address plaque.

I love, love, LOVE how this color coordinates with the sage-y, olive-y green of the siding paint. I still need to paint the threshold trim the dark green color that you see on the awning trim, but the improvement has been so vast I'm kicking myself for not having done this sooner. It's made all the difference in the world.

Coffee and Cream Dining Room

I'd like to introduce you to the new and improved dining room, in coffee and cream.

We'd started this quite a long time ago, and worked at it in and around the rest of our schedule for months. You know how it goes.

We started like this in the New Year:

Then there was a ton of texturing, priming, and then some more priming:

Just to get from here: 

To here: 

The brown paint is Sherwin Williams Duration in Tiki Hut. It's a very true cocoa-like brown, without any reddish or grayish hues. It's paired with a color from Valspar called Cream Delight, but also done in the Sherwin Williams Duration label. 

Don't judge my floor housekeeping, but instead check the awesome trim, now completely done. The new boyfriend, Tom, is amazing at this: 

As usual every time I pick a bold color, I freaked completely out when the paint started going on the walls. 

(You can also see a bottle of beer and a bottle of wine in the background of this photo, which is how I coped.) 

The color went on quite a bit lighter than the paint swatch, looked like wet instant chocolate pudding (gross) and then took a couple of days (DAYS, I tell you) to cure into its final color. 

I like how the flat brown of the paint plays up the golden and reddish grains of the wood floor and furniture. I'm not a big fan of that buffet anymore (my tastes have changed dramatically), but at least it has a better looking place to reside. 

I did worry that this color would be too dark at night and during the summery months. But instead it feels cozy at night, and feels cool and calm in warmer seasons. Right now it looks a little stark because the walls are still bare and there are no window treatments, but that is the next step. 

In the meantime, I'm really digging the combination of of the greens of this vase and the brown walls. The wild ferns that won't stop growing near the air conditioner unit outside and the leaves of ditch daylilies that grow along the fencerow in the backyard look a lot classier this way. 

Right now we've moved on to one giant and unpleasant home improvement project, and a bunch of smaller and more gratifying ones. What are you doing around your place this summer? 

Getting to a Fresh Start in the Dining Room

A lot has been written about the demise of the traditional dining room, and how the space in new construction should be allotted to something else entirely. I know plenty of people who've turned their existing dining rooms into something else-- the family reading room, the home office, the craft room, the school work headquarters. I've even seen a house where the homeowners decided the dining room was way too tiny to be useable as one, and turned it into the dream walk-in pantry they always wanted.

That's all cool. I've seen some awesome alternative-to-dining-room spaces. But I've come to the conclusion I'm an old-fashioned girl. I want my dining room. As a dining room. That's even with a reasonably roomy eat-in kitchen.

Part of it is the size of our family. There's five here when Grant, my oldest attending college locally, is home for dinner, which is often. He almost always brings his girlfriend. That's six. Add extended family--my mother, my dad, my sister and her family, my boyfriend's four college-student-aged kids, cousins and friends-- extra dining space is not only needed, it's regularly needed.

That said, I still think dining rooms, even if they are meant to be used as dining rooms, need to be able accommodate the daily life of families. Social studies projects. Sewing machines. Tomato plants on the window sill. I'm not really about rigid definitions of space in a home, even if I want a room that functions primarily as a dining room.

From the front door, my 1939 colonial-style house flows from living room to dining room to kitchen at the rear of the house, so the dining room is a pass-through room. High profile. And it's got the goods to be a handsome space. These corner cupboards are the reason I bought the house.

I was less thrilled with the fleshy-pink beiges, 80s vinyl wallpaper, cracked ceiling and walls, and sloppy paint job of previous owners.

Since I moved into the house, I've suffered a lot of conflict over this room. It was only cosmetically ugly, rather than needing serious attention--plumbing, remodeling, electrical. So it wasn't a top priority in that sense. But I'd walk through it every day, and it depressed/irritated/shamed me that it was such an eyesore right where we lived, every day.

This year there's been some progress. What follows is a series of bad cell phone photos, but it gives you an idea where we've been in the last six or seven weeks.

The wallpaper was stripped down to the plaster.

The cracks were repaired and the room re-textured and primed:

The pediment trim at the top of the corner built-ins were taken off to make wall repair/painting easier to do. They'll come back when it's done.

We also removed a deep cornice wall that hung across the top of the dining room alcove to hide a downlight fixture. I didn't take a before photo and wish I had. But I don't think a photo would have captured how removing that made the room seem bigger and the ceiling higher and airier.

To the right is wiring for the doorbell, a vintage one I'm hoping to get operating again.

I'll be coming back to this in the coming weeks with some further progress. Paint will change the look of this dramatically, and I'm excited to have a room that lives up to its potential.

Closing a (New) Door on 2015

It's January 2016, but I have to go back to November 2015. Mid-November, actually, on an unseasonably warm weekend. 

Regular readers may remember that I spent a large part of our really $%^#-ing rainy summer of 2015 scraping, repairing, and painting the north side of my garage: 

This may have been the last time you saw it: 

There was still a purple door. A purple door that wasn't actually a proper exterior door, but an interior hollow-core closet door. A purple interior closet door that was rotting off its hinges and had a broken doorknob and had to be nailed shut to keep it shut. 

While my Dad and I had planned to get to it multiple times over the year, other things always got ahead of it, and we ran out of time. 

But in November we had a weirdly warm and gorgeous Saturday, I had some good help, and this happened: 

It's nothing fancy. Just a basic builder's grade steel exterior door. But with a window, because I wanted the option of a little more daylight in the garage. 

Honestly, I thought the gaping hole in the garage looked better than that purple door. 

While we were at it, we put the same kind of light fixture on the garage that had been installed on the front of the house a couple summers ago. I like consistency in that sort of thing. 

Here's an overexposed cell phone shot of that ugly purple door being carried out of my existence. And a clue. A clue to my help for this project, and uh, something new going on in my life. Or a someone new. A dude. Can you tell how bad I am at this? Anyway, more later, when I figure out how to write about something personal on a blog in a way that doesn't make me want to break out in hives. 

Finally, just before Christmas we got the door fitted with new trim, as the old was dry-rotted beyond saving. We primed it, but it still needs paint and a bit of caulk here and there. I took the photos mid-snowstorm!

And here's a corner view: 

Now a before: 

And after again: 

And as hardy as Midwesterners tend to be about their winters, that was the last of the outdoor carpentry until spring. We've been on a different, indoor project in the new year. That is, when I'm not fighting my urge to hibernate--pajamas, books, coffee, movies, naps. Balance in life is important, right?