House Facelift

The exterior of our home is probably the biggest eyesore. I've mentioned before that we are the saddest yard. We're slowly getting better. The projects in this post happened throughout the course of 3 months, a little at a time. Here's our house on move in day:

You'll notice that the shutters are 3 different colors (two on the left, upper and lower, and one on the right). This is due to fading over the last 20 years. We contemplated replacing them and they really aren't that expensive. We figured we'd might as well just paint them and see how it turns out.

Tim painted the 6 shutters on the lower level. The verdict: it looks awesome! This was a very inexpensive fix. He decided not to take them off of the house because that was going to be a huge pain. Instead, he shoved cardboard behind the shutters and spray painted the shutters while still attached. You can see the consistent look of the lower sets. He later climbed on the ladder to reach the top shutters. I think he ended up using around 5 cans of spray paint. Just be sure to buy exterior rated!

Tim and my mom also tackled the front storm door.

Sullivan's favorite spot- lying in the sun by the door.

We knew that we needed a full glass front door. No screen doors around here. The dogs LOVE to look out the window and watch the neighborhood. They get a little rowdy and put their paws on the glass when guests are approaching, so we didn't want them to bust out a screen door.

Unfortunately, glass front doors are very expensive, running close to $400. Fortunately, we scored one for $150! Pease is a warehouse in Hamilton, Ohio. They purchase materials from auctions and sell it in a big warehouse for cheap. Think of it like shopping at a thrift store, you never know what you're going to find! Every time we went to Pease, I searched the screen doors for a full, glass front door that was brown. We found a burgundy door once that was very tempting, but ultimately decided that wasn't the best color for our house/brick. 

Pease typically sells their doors for $100, but this nicer one was $150. I was still okay with that price! AND it came with brushed nickel hardware, which meant I wasn't going to have to purchase hardware either. PERFECT. It was like the stars aligned. Thankfully, our good friend Brian was willing to come pick up the door in his truck with no notice. What a good man. My dad, Andersen employee, said it was a custom ordered Andersen door. Someone obviously returned it and it ended up at auction.

Proud of their handiwork!

 My mom and Tim installed this new door in one afternoon, while work continued on our upstairs bathroom (I promise, those posts are coming soon!). I love that it's just a simple full glass panel door. It's gorgeous. The color is perfect and I was thrilled the hardware matched the brushed nickel look we're installing everywhere in the house.

Did you see that ugly light fixture by the new beautiful door? Tim also decided to try his hand at spray painting it. We looked for a new one, but found that they were all black or ugly. We just wanted something small, brown, and classic. 

Tim took down the light, capped the wires, and disassembled the fixture. We figured if it turned out poorly, we would just buy a new fixture.He painted the main pieces of the fixture brown and the accent pieces silver. We had both on hand, so this project was FREE! My favorite price. :)

Tim then put the fixture back together. We were a bit nervous since it came into a million pieces, but it worked just fine.

Ta Da! Looks great and functions well.

We had these monstrous bushes in front of our house (see above photo). They totally blocked the downstairs windows. I think it was a bug haven and attracted feral cats or other loose animals. Tim did his best to keep them trimmed and tidy. These 20+ year old bushes were just out of control, so we decided to chop them down.

When I say we, I actually mean my uncle Rex and his friend Johnny. Johnny does this for a living, so we'll leave the chainsaw weilding to the expert. Even we draw the line somewhere! Johnny also trimmed the trees on the front of our property. They were growing into the power lines. Sadly, I don't have any photos of this because I actually wasn't home when this happened. My family popped in from Marion one day (I do mean literally, they popped in for the day then left- I didn't even know they were coming). Johnny and Rex also chopped down some massive shrubs at the side of our house. They were awful and overgrown, so we're trying to keep that area in check too.

We were left with a massive pile of brush to take care of. A few evenings, 30 bags of lawn waste (a nasty note from the trash collectors), and a pickup by the city of large clippings yields this:

WOW. The front of the house looks so different! Nicely matched shutters, a new glass front door, and NO BUSHES! Plus, our trees are trimmed now too. We still have a lot of work to do out front, but it's making serious progress. We did manage to step up the curb appeal a little bit with our new flower bed and mailbox last year:

We've managed to maintain these two in the last year. This is all that we're likely to accomplish this year. Our plans for the future include a paver retaining wall with small shrubs and flowers. That will wrap around the corner of the house. At the side of the house, I would like to put in some decorative grass. I prefer simple, clean landscaping. We have to be cautious because the front of our house is like the desert. The house receives so much sunlight (hence the fading of the shutters) that plants have a hard time surviving. Even our hostas are struggling. I think we need to plan tropical plants out front, but I'll be sure to research the choices for the future. For now, I'm loving the fact that things are cleaner and tidier!

Home Furnishings, Updated

Remember when I neglected my blog for two months? Yeah, me too. It's been a busy couple of months in the White House. I'll have more to share on that front soon. In the meantime, stay tunes for some incredible updates. For now, feast your eyes on these teeny changes in home decor. I am terrible at this by the way. This is why people hire interior decorators. I'd rather rip out and renovate a bathroom (more on that later) than put together some semblance of wall decor. Alas, here are some photos to keep you entertained.

You also remember this post, where Tim shared some of our attempts to decorate this house (after more than a year of home ownership). I'm back with a couple of updates:

We finally put a mirror behind that vinyl monogram. Despite the crappy phone picture and poor lighting, I think it looks great (especially in comparison to our previous strategy of hanging the monogram with painter's tape)!


Here's another updated post. We bought these $1 picture frames to hold our architectural letters.Unfortunately, they looked dwarfed since White is such a short last name. We finally upgraded to a larger frame with mat:

It's not a dramatic difference, but when you see the buffet below, it looks more to scale. We searched for a long time for a 5-picture opening. I didn't think that would be challenging to find, but we wanted something large enough for the space yet horizontal.

We've still got a long way to go and the 4 boxes of picture frames on our guest bed prove it. I'm going to try to tackle some of those this month and in August, but we shall see (my track record is pretty poor at this point). I'll be back soon with updates on the exterior and interior of our home. What's been happening in your home? Care to share? Guest posts can be submitted to me via email!

Going Pro

Apparently we shop at Home Depot way too often because I recently received this in the mail:

Do you know what that is? It's a flyer, mailed to me directly, inviting me to join Home Depot Pro. We purchase so many items from Home Depot that they think we are professionals (I do even have a favorite cashier at Home Depot, Louise). That, my friends, is hilarious and also the farthest from the truth.

Tim and I are definitely ambitious. We take on a lot of projects, like renovating both bathrooms in our home. We're definitely not experts though. Our motto is "A for effort." We begin each new project with a lot of research, namely Google. We watch how-to videos, read articles and product reviews, and ask family members for help. The expert advice of family members has been invaluable in our various home renovations. We don't claim to be experts, but we might be crazy.

Even though I love a deal, we won't be joining Home Depot Pro. I definitely considered it when I received this flyer in the mail; however, I believe that the program has a membership fee. Also, the flyer advertises bulk items like a 12 pack of caulk. I am definitely a huge fan of caulk and it's probably my favorite household fix-it product, but 12 tubes is excessive for one home.

Carpet 101

Chanelle and I finally bit the bullet and purchased new carpet for our upstairs. This included 3 bedrooms, hallway and stairs. Most of the carpet up stairs was either original to the house or just dirty beyond repair. My biggest piece of advice for carpet? If you buy a house and think you need to replace the carpet, do it before you move in! Moving furniture out of the upstairs was a CHORE! We're going to shampoo the downstairs in hopes of getting a few more years out of it. Attached are some pics of the carpet. Hope you enjoyed my first mobile post!

The Little Things

We hoped to update the downstairs bathroom without ripping out the shower, so we're working with what we've got. The pastel yellow tiles are in fantastic shape. The camera lighting is terrible in these photos, so I apologize in advance. It really doesn't read that yellow in person. Though we were keeping the shower tiles, we knew we had to replace the fixtures. They were awful and dated. Tim swapped out the old showerhead for this guy:

Isn't it amazing? Tim chose brushed nickel to match the rest of our house (door knobs, cabinet knobs, etc.). I wanted a shower head with a hose because the downstairs bathroom is our primary dog bathing shower. It's so much easier to give the rascals a bath with the hose attachment. This one is perfect and luxurious. It was a bit pricey, around $45. With all of the cost savings elsewhere, we felt like we could afford to splurge on new fixtures.

Our house had Delta fixtures before. Apparently, it's easier to replace a Delta with a Delta, keeping with the same brand. We purchased this fixture from Menards and it's designed specifically to match with Delta replacement fixtures even though it's a knock off. It also wasn't cheap, at about $40. It was shockingly complex to install because it has instructions for replacing this on 3 different types of fixtures. Who knew this would be so complicated? I did figured it out after slowly walking through the instructions and it couldn't look better! It's amazing what a huge difference $100 worth of shower fixtures makes.

As we've painted each room, we've slowly been replacing all outlets and light switches. We want everything to have a crisp white look when we're finished. It's been a slow process, but we're getting close!

This is the light above the shower. I realize photographing a light is tough to do and results in terribly lit pictures, ironically enough. We planned to replace this recessed light above the shower, but decided it looked good enough after Tim cleaned it well. Again, we're cheap!

While shopping for our faucet at Menards, we happened to find a 3 pack of fixtures for $35. Are you kidding me!? That is so cheap! It's crazy that you can buy an entire vanity for the same price that some fixtures cost. This is where a project will really kill you-- all of those seemingly little items. Shop around for things that won't break the bank.

I wasn't sure about the 18" length of this towel bar, but it works fine. We can comfortably hang two bath towels on it. It does the job, especially for a guest/lower level bath!

I also wasn't crazy about this hook style toilet paper holder. I've only had the traditional style prior and I worried the toilet paper might fall off, but worry not! I've actually liked this better than the traditional style holder. It has a more modern look.

Finally, Tim painted the door and reinstalled it with new hinges and handles. Easy enough? Not quite. It's actually quite a tedious process to prime one side, flip, prime, paint 2 coats, flip, paint 2 coats. AND you have to make sure the door isn't too thick to fit, otherwise you're faced with a sticky door-- a problem we have upstairs. We're still working to resolve that issue upstairs and will let you know when I figure out the magic trick. We decided to paint the doors so all of the doors and trim are a seamless color (America's Finest Semi-Gloss White). Also, we are cheap and replacing them all would have been wowza so much money.

This bathroom isn't quite finished, but the little things make a HUGE difference! We would love to get a new shower door. Unfortunately, it's $200, so that's not in the budget right now. When our upstairs bath is finished, I will purchase new rugs (I've been on the hunt for pastel yellow rugs), get some art in there, and place some scrapbook paper for pops of color. I will post a before and after picture when we're done!