Patio Pavers

In my last post about our tile mishap, I mentioned the pavers would be installed the following week. Well, that week turned into 3+ weeks BUT I am happy to report they wrapped up the pavers last week and its LOVE!

All said and done, it only took them one full day of work even though they were here two days.  The first day they broke up and tore out the tile. For the most part it came out pretty easily. By the end of day one, things were looking this is.

Day two they laid almost all the pavers down.  When I got home from work, the workers were gone so we assumed they would be finishing up the next morning.

To our surprise, after we finished dinner that evening they re-appeared and said they would be finishing up that evening! It also happened to be my mom's birthday so when we got home from having cake, we came home to finished patio. It was a bit dark out so I wasn't able to snap some pictures until the next day... but here is the patio now!

We still need to seal all the pavers in. We purchased Seal and Lock Super Wet Look from a local paver supply store. We had fully intended to seal it before putting the furniture back out there. However, the installer suggested we wait 30-days for the pavers to cure before applying the sealer. I will try to write a follow up post on the sealing process as it makes the pavers look even better :)

Crumbling Patio Tiles

It's hard to believe it has been three years since we had our front patio floors done. Way back here, I blogged about our front patio and our decision to lay tile out there. Well, in retrospect in was not the best decision for us. We have had some cracking which was pretty irritating. However, this past Saturday when Tim was out grilling, it literally started crumbling under his feet as he walked.

I don't want to deter anyone from using outdoor tile because I have many a friend who have had a lot of luck with it. For us, it was a waste of money. Our contractor charged us an additional $400 to level the front patio to prevent this very thing from happening. However, now that we can see under the tiles we realize he only leveled areas, not the whole patio. So once that first crack occurred, water was able to get under the tiles and run through the areas he didn't level. This has lead to tiles popping up and cracking all over the place.

While I knew it would probably be a case where we needed to rip everything out and start over, I decided to call the contractor first to have him come out and take a look and see what, if anything, could be done. Conveniently enough, his number is not in service! After trying for a few days to reach him, I decided to get a few estimates on pavers. Originally, we considered pavers out front but thought it would be too expensive. Now that we are paying to have the floors done a second time, we probably should have just went with that from the start.

I got two estimates. Originally we planned to tear out the tile and then just pay someone to install the pavers. However, the first guy who came out gave us a great price to tear out and haul away the existing tile in addition to doing the pavers. We have signed a contract with him and he hopes to get started next week. We have a few small obstacles to work around: we need to raise/trim both our storm door and our gate to get onto the patio. We plan on taking a look at both of those this weekend, with the help of my handy dad, to prepare for next week.

I am hesitant that the pavers may crack as well. I asked the intaller and he is using 1 inch pavers. He is also going to level the floor ( where the original installer missed) and does not think we will have any issues. So I am hopeful it will have a bit more staying power this time around. Fingers crossed for a completed "update" post next week! :)

Construction: Week 3

So much to report this week! We were away last weekend at Disney. We came home Monday to find our drive-way loaded with supplies and a dumpster.

Tuesday morning the framers arrived at 7am. I had no idea what to expect and was amazed with the amount of progress when I got home from work that evening. Here is where we last left off:

And this is what things were looking like Tuesday:

Ignore how "lime" my house looks in this picture!

The framers and roofers works togther to open my existing roof and tie in the new addition. They put in a FULL day. To be honest, after the slab was poured I was a little concerned about the size of the new room and patio. After seeing the framing in place, I was surprised about how much bigger everything looked.

New "bedroom".

New patio

Wednesday morning, the framers also arrived at 7am. As I was leaving to drop Charlotte off at my mom's, the roofers also arrived to begin working on the roof. When I got home from work that evening, there were NO shingles left on our house. And the framers has completely finished up. 

Standing in the new closet, looking into the room. 

Where the new window will be. 

This window will be the new door into the room. 

HUGE storage closet!

New patio. 

Thursday morning, the installer was coming to remove my existing sliding glass door and install the new window on the room. The roofers were also there working on replacing tar paper and waiting on an inspection. I came home from work and the roofers were just wrapping up. The new window was in and the sliding glass door was gone. Unfortunately, the door could not be installed that day but they made sure we were covered up for the night. 

That night, my dad came over and we walked the room and marked where we wanted electrical outlets/ cable etc. We thought the electrician was coming Friday morning but he isn't actually coming till tomorrow. The roofers got held off due to another issue with the inspector. We also had another a/c company come out on Friday to walk the house and give us a second estimate on some work we would like to get done. We are waiting to hear back from them before we make a decision on that. Hopefully will be able to do so this week as we are ready for a/c rough in on the addition as well. Luckily, we did get a door and a deadbolt installed where the old slider use to be.

While Friday was a slow day, I am SO, SO happy to see some real progress this week. Tomorrow morning we are scheduled for an inspection. If all goes well, the roofers anticipate finishing up either tomorrow or Tuesday. We also have the electrician coming tomorrow.

Construction: Week 2

The forecast this week was looking pretty rough so I wasn't sure what, if anything, would be done to the addition. Luckily, Monday morning was overcast but no rain! The construction crew showed up before 9 and got to work on the back patio. I was at work all day but was able to meet with the them briefly before heading out for the day.

We decided against pouring new concrete over what will be the new patio. You can clearly see this in the photo above. There are several deep cracks in the concrete already and the contractor felt pouring over it would ultimately result in the same cracks showing through. We eventually planned on either tiling or putting pavers out there anyway. You might remember that we did tile in the front patio over 2 years ago due to the cost of pavers. In retrospect, I am not sure that was the best idea. There are several areas that are cracking and I am pretty sure it is due to the same issue that our current contractor is concerned about for our back patio. So as of now, we are pricing out pavers since it is a smaller area and we want something to last.

Tuesday and Wednesday it rained. We tentatively had the framers/roofer scheduled to start on Thursday but due to the rain earlier in the week, everything got pushed back. Everyone did come out and take final measurements for supplies. We are scheduled for a supply delivery on Monday morning and to start framing on Tuesday. The weather looks good for next week so I am hoping for a lot of productivity!

Construction: Week 1

Construction started on our addition last Friday. Unfortunately, its been a pretty unproductive week since then!

Around 7:30am last Friday the crew showed up to prepare our existing back patio for the addition. I didn't take any " before pictures" but here is a shot of the back patio a while ago.

The new plans involve replacing that double window with french barn doors. The sliding glass door ( half pictured on the left) will be replaced with a single glass panel door. Our third bedroom window ( not pictures but would be to the far right in the above picture) will be filled in and will be the wall for the new closet.

We will also be getting a new roof on the entire house. The new roof for the addition will cover the entire existing slab. Most will be "addition" but some will be saved for a new screened in patio. Charlotte LOVES being outside and we really have no shaded area to take her. Currently, my car has been given the boot from the garage to allow her to play in there.

Last Friday, they came and dug for the new footers. This was pretty much wrapped up in half a day and they called for inspection. I was super excited because the roofers were even scheduled to start this week. Unfortunately,  due to issues with the inspector we didn't get a full inspection till Thursday! They were set to pour concrete this morning however due to all the rain we had yesterday, we got bumped to Monday so they could finish up the job they had scheduled for yesterday.

I am so anxious to get things moving. Because we have decided to do a lot of the finishing work ourselves, there is a ton to be done before baby #2 arrives! As of now, the forecast next week isn't looking too promising either but hopefully I will have more progress to report. Here is what we look like now.

Love it or List it?

Not too long after Charlotte was born, Tim and I started to talk about our house, space and future kiddos. We knew we wanted to have one more kid and while we do have three bedrooms, we really needed a 4th for an office/ play space. We started to look at houses locally just to get an idea. I am a *bit* more particular than Tim in that I did not want to move outside of our current school zones. This means we are limited to a pretty small area. 

I went to a couple of open houses and religiously checked the Real Estate listings. To gain a 4th bedroom and a mere 100 more square feet, we would be paying nearly DOUBLE what we paid for our house just 4 years ago. Then we started thinking about how much work we have done here and how we would need to essentially start that process all over with a new house. Only this time with a toddler running around. 

So back in October/November, we decided to get a few estimates to see how much it would cost to add a room on to our existing house. We have a 500 ft back patio and a 500 ft front patio and quite frankly we do not utilize our outdoor space. We got two estimates that were pretty comparable. We sat on it for a while, really weighing our options. We like our neighborhood, we like our schools, we are close to my parents who help our tremendously with Charlotte. We decided financially, it made more sense to stay put. 

Then in December we got some pretty exciting news... 

So we decided no time like the present, right? We started the construction plans with one of the contractors and JUST got our permit approved this week! We will be getting a new roof on the entire house, adding a room with lots of storage and getting a new back patio! We decided to do all the finishing ourselves so we have LOTS of projects coming up. They actually just started construction this morning so I am going to TRY to do a weekly update as it comes together. I am both excited and nervous for everything to come together before this baby arrives in early August! :) 

Front Yard Makeover Part 2

After my original battle with the City I mentioned in this post, I had a REALLY hard time finding a Palm on their "approved tree list" that was less than $2k just for the tree. I called the City several times and no one ever got back to me. So honestly, I left things looking like this a little longer than we had intended too.

Finally, I decided to plant a tree on their list but it did not meet the size requirements. I went to a local nursery and purchased a Large Triple Robellini Palm and picked out several other plants to compliment it. Due to the size of the Palm, I decided to go ahead and hire the nursery staff to go ahead and install everything.

 Lucky for us, we had a HUGE rain storm after they got done planting that day. We were able to center the new plants and transplant the sod to the circle area where the tree use to be. Everything filled in really well and we had quite the weekend transformation on the front yard!

Part of me loved having the tree in the front.  I always thought we would hang a swing there for Charlotte. But this makes things so much easier! Tim was spending so much time each weekend raking and cleaning the front patio. We couldn't let the dogs out front because of the all the acorns (they try to eat them)! Overall, we are really happy with the way things look now. The best part was all the plants and the install cost me just under $900!! Way better then my original $1700 estimate.

Oh and the best news... I requested an inspection from the City and passed:)

Unplanned Front Yard Makeover

Since we moved in, we have had a love/hate relationship with the tree in our front yard. We got it cut back a few times to help control the leaves and acorns but noticed it was still killing our grass. Tim spends an hour every Saturday raking the front yard so we decided to get an estimate to have it trimmed back again.
We called out a new service as we felt like we overpaid last time. The arborist was very nice but he refused to trim back the tree saying that if we cut it back any more, it would die. At that point he told us that it was a mix of two types of trees that grew together. He explained that the tree had another 5 years left to it before the split in the tree would cause the branch over our patio to fall. We got an estimate on the tree removal and after some back and forth, decided to get it cut down.

The man from the City and I had quite the dispute after he denied my permit. He said we should wait the 5 years before cutting it down. Finally he gave in and said " Lady, I don't need you suing the City if this branch does fall on your house so your permit is approved".

I don't think I shared what the front yard looked like in a while. But I know I shared about some improvements here. But this is the difference from Sunday till Tuesday.

Tim spent most of Saturday removing the stone border and scooping out all the mulch in preparation for the cut down. They got everything cut down Monday but came back yesterday to clean up the yard and mulch everything. It looks so bare now. I have been searching Pinterest for ideas but don't want to rush into anything quite yet. I really want something low maintenance so this is what I am leaning toward as of now.

A while back there was a Groupon for an arborist that I wish I bought!  I would love to have someone come out and help me decide what to plant that will go well with what we currently have. I priced a few palms so far and they can go up to $1100 plus a few hundred for install based on the size of the tree so we my be going the DIY route :) 

A fully functioning guest bathroom...finally!

Two and half months ago, I purchased a new shower fixture for the guest bathroom. I mentioned it here but didn't really get into details. Basically, I wanted to swap out the shower fixture for something detachable: both for the dogs and for the baby. Detachable shower fixtures are not cheap, especially when you factor in the Oil Rubbed Bronze. Back in June, Save-A- Lot had a promotion of Home Depot gift cards where you got a $25 gift card for $15. When the promotion ran, they didn't have a limit so Tim and I bought a bunch of them with the intent of purchasing a new shower fixture.

 I came across this Glacier Bay fixture on the Home Depot website. While Glacier Bay isn't the best brand, it was virtually the only one that matched our current set up and would cover the pre-drilled holes in our tile. We went to one of the local Home Depot's and they had NO detachable Oil Rubbed Bronze Shower Fixtures. We walked the store as we had a few other items to get. I randomly stopped at the clearance section near the shop vacs and found one of the Glacier Bay fixtures, box still sealed marked down to $84. SOLD!

The next day we took everything apart. Turns out we had to replace the ENTIRE shower valve to make the unit work. Since that is beyond the scope of our knowledge, we had to call my dad. He of course knows how to do this with his eyes closed but we have both seen so busy that my shower has looked like this for the past 2.5 months.

In my own defense, we don't use the shower in there much. Mainly for washing the dogs but I also have a slop sink in the garage so we weren't in any huge rush. But with my due date in approximately 24 days, we decided it would be best to get it done now. Saturday, my dad come over and we went to remove the access panel inside my linen closet. Turns out what we thought was a wooden " panel" was really two layers of drywall.

All we did Saturday was to open up the wall, check the connectors and make sure we had everything we needed to switch out the valve on Sunday. Since I am HUGE and not very helpful at this point, Tim and my dad worked on this project. First we had to cut the boards to have access to the valve. We later reattached them. The whole process went fairly well. We did end up have to cut out a small piece of tile which made me extremely nervous! This is how things were looking about half way through...

Aside from the whole drywall incident, we only had one small glitch. After we were all installed, we had no hot water. First we checked that we flipped the breaker back on and we did. The new shower valve has a anti- scald feature that comes enabled. It was an easy fix once we realized the cause.After that we switched out the drain (the one item we had to purchase separately). And here is the new fixture all installed.

While we are on bathroom upgrades, we made one more minor addition to this bathroom as well. If you remember I painted the bathroom ceiling a few months back. I still love the color but always felt like something was missing. After completing our Kitchen Tray Ceiling, I realized what it was... moulding! So we picked up a couple of pieces of mini crown moulding and installed it where the gray paint met the ceiling in the guest bath.

So much better! It really is amazing to me what a difference it can make! I think that officially wraps up the list of " To Do" items for this room! :)

Oh this morning, I tested out the new fixture by giving the dogs a bath after their walk. It was so much faster than rinsing them with a cup ( the way I used to). Lola however was not amused!

" What is this thing"? 

Guest bedroom

This  post originally was just going to be about the fact that we added Crown moulding to our guest bedroom. Then I realized that I have never posted about our guest bedroom before. See we don't really have that many "guests" but I was sick of having two empty rooms on that side of the house (we would literally just dump stuff that didn't have a home). So maybe 6-12 months after we moved it, I decided to make one of the rooms into a guest room. My parents were in the process of converting my old bedroom into a "man cave" so I took the bed, sold my old bedroom furniture and decided to make it work.
Since the room doesn't get a ton of use, I didn't want to invest a ton of money into it. I selected three coordinating fabrics from Joann's for curtains, pillows and a headboard. I ended up using the fabric sample to have Lowe's color match paint for the walls. I made the headboard using pegboard. I used this tutorial and picked out a fun zebra print and used solid black fabric buttons for the tufting.

I made the curtains myself using fabric and hem tape. It was very easy and they have held up surprisingly well. I simply hemmed all 4 edges and attached them to the rod using curtain clips.

I purchased all the furniture at Ikea. The dresser and two nightstands are both the Hemnes collection in black-brown. The two side lamps are Magnarp table lamps. The floor vase in the corner is the Havtorn collection and is available in two colors, we went with the black.

The mirror was actually a Kirkland's find. There was one right by our house that went out of business. I think it was under $20. 

The bedding is a duvet set from Ikea. The trunk was  moved in from another room and currently houses my sewing machine. The black pillows were handmade but the red center pillow was a Kohls find. The pictures over the bed are from Bed, Bath and Beyond.

 The room remained 90% done for the past year. The only recent addition was the Crown moulding. Because of the texture of our ceilings, we didn't really have a nice smooth line where the wall met the ceiling. This is probably the best example.. notice the right side of the wall.

While we were doing the nursery moulding, we bought a Pro-pack of Crown and realized we would probably be able to get both rooms done with the one pack. We did end up having to buy one additional piece to account for the cuts around the closet but its DONE. And its amazing how much crisper it makes the room feel.

Crowning Around

I shared in my Week 27 post that we FINALLY got around to hanging up the Crown in the nursery. I purchased the Crown back when we installed the Panel and Picture Frame moulding. If I was already painting, I wanted to go ahead and get the Crown out of the way too. Everything got two coats of Benjamin Moore Advance in Super white.

I ended up buying a contractor's pack of moulding from Lowe's. All the other Crown in our house we purchased at Home Depot and was traditional one sided crown. This was flip face moulding. So after painting we were sure to mark the "bad" side with a sharpie to insure there were no mess ups during installation.

Tim and my Dad started the day by installing the crown moulding on their matching camouflage ladders. We weren't 100% sure on how the flip faced moulding would lay... turns out it is exactly the same as the one-sided. The only thing a bit tricky were the cuts. We have a templates that my dad made 2.5 years ago when we first installed Crown. We refer to the four templates as RIC, LIC, ROC, and LOC: Right interior corner, left interior corner, right outer corner, and left outer corner. They haven't failed us yet!

When installing Crown in an older home, you often end up with corners like this... but trust me, it is invisible in the end!

After everything was pinned down, Tim and my dad went around and caulked everything with White Lightening Caulk, using a damp sponge to rid of an any excess caulk on the fresh paint. They also caulked several areas on the paneling that needed some touch ups as well. 

Once everything was installed and caulked, I come around for paint touch ups: I went over every corner and pin hole in the crown and paneling. I also decided to roll another thin layer of paint over the paneling, now that it was in place and settled. 

Everything is looking nice and crisp...

So much so that we decided to go ahead and move in the furniture once everything was dry. 

 And since there is no baby yet... we used our current "baby" as a place holder. 

Its feels so good to make this much progress on the room. Now on to the fun stuff.... Accessorizing! :) 

Tray Ceiling Upgrade

A few weeks ago, I decided I really wanted to do something different with the tray ceiling in our kitchen. I scouted Pinterest and Google for ideas and came across this. It was just a picture, no  "how to" or material list so I decided to check out Lowes.

Right near the Aspect Backsplash, they had Fasade "Thermoplastic Multipurpose Backsplash".  I ended up purchasing two sample sheets: one of the silver cross hatch pattern and one a brushed nickel pattern.   Tim was on the fence about this project because it thought it was going to be "too much" with our stainless steel appliances and backsplash. That being said, he was a good sport and went along with it. We both LOVED the brushed nickel design in the store but HATED it once we held it up to ceiling. We decided to go with the silver cross hatch pattern.

Our measurements worked out pretty well for this project. We needed exactly 8 sheets: 2 sheets across, 4 sheets long. This left for very little margin of error but we were confident we could make it work.

I always say that one project leads to another and it proves true again here. We have the original kitchen light that was installed when we bought our house. It's a track light from Ikea that they no longer sell. We don't hate it and it lights the kitchen well. The problem? Changing the bulbs was near impossible. Due to the design of the fixture, there was no where to grab the bulb in order to get it out. We decided that if we wanted to replace the light, we should do it now to ensure the tiles we were installing would cover the electrical opening appropriately.

So when we went to buy our supplies, we also checked out the light fixtures. Luckily I had a 10% off coupon from Lowe's for signing up for electronic statements. We ended up purchasing 8 tiles, adhesive and a new light fixture. We went with an Allen + Roth track light for $88.

First, we painted the edges of our tray ceiling green. Its the same color green as our dining room. Since the kitchen and dining room are attached and the kitchen is basically colorless, we decided to bring in the green. I have to admit I was skeptical of the green at first but ultimately it grew on me.

While the paint was drying, we took down the old light to see what type of mess was under there. We were shocked to find it was actually a normal electrical junction... a rarity in this house.

Next, we laid out our pattern on the floor. It was a little confusing at the start because we essentially had to "flip" our pattern for it to go on the ceiling and keep with the right and wrong edges in order to attach additional sheets.

We started slow but quickly got the hang of it. It was definitely a two person job, especially when it came time to trim around the fixture.

The tiles were relatively easy to cut. We used a cutting mat, ruler, scissors and an X-acto. For around the light fixture, Tim held a tile in place and I used a dry erase marker to outline the fixture right on the tile. After cutting, we simply wiped away any trace of the marker and adhered our tile to the ceiling.

After all the tiles were secured, we attached our new light. When all was said and done, I liked it but I didn't LOVE it. Tim agreed but since it was after 10 pm, we decided to call it a night and re-evaluate in the morning. I thought that maybe it was the green paint and that I would repaint it tan but didn't want to rush into anything.

The next day I went to work and received a text from Tim with this picture...

and I LOVE it. The white (mini) Crown moulding made a huge difference in my opinion. It cleaned things up and really made the ceiling pop.

We ended up using a PVC composite moulding we purchased at Home Depot. It was just over $6 for an 8 ft piece. Tim used the miter saw to cut the interior angles and secured it with the pin gun. A little caulk and white paint and things were looking pretty seamless.

There is NO natural light in my kitchen so pictures are difficult. At one point there was a window over the sink but since we have an addition on our house, that "window" now serves as the bar area. Here is a picture from the floor.

Inexpensive, not labor intensive but lots of impact.