Around the House #3

I’ve been trying to work on things around our house lately. There’s so much I want to do around here. None of it needs to be done, but it will all make this a better place and more personal to us. I’ve done quite a few things already. We painted almost the entire house, changed out the dim light bulbs for day light bulbs, ripped out the monstrous over grown bush that was suffocating out outside A/C unit and replace it with stones, mulch, and new plants.

On the list of things to do:

  1. Paint the guest rooms and finally set them up.
  2. Remove trees around the pool screen
  3. Build a deck for our grill, smoker and fryer.
  4. Fix the brick walk way around the house.
  5. Paint the pool deck
  6. Take down the weird popped out wall around the fire place and add a real mantle.
  7. Paint the house (it’s currently a different color on the back then the front?)
  8. Laundry room makeover.

That list could go on and on and on and on!! I’ll stop there though because those will probably take up the next year to get them all finished.

When we moved in we painted the entire house because the previous owners had some bold taste in colors. The office they used as a play room for their kids had two blue walls and two dark purple walls. The kitchen had brown cabinets, brown counter tops and brown walls! (Brown by the way is my least favorite color). The Guest bath and one bedroom was also painted brown. The master bedroom was dark eggplant purple and the master bath was dark teal, while that would be a teenage girls dream room, it was way to dark for us. We pretty much painted most of the house a neutral gray that we had used already in our previous house so we knew we would like it. I skipped painting the guest rooms though because I was so sick of painting an figured I could live with it for awhile.

 

 

The red room was their son’s room which is why is has a huge chalk board in it. So I’ve lived with the rooms just fine til now, but because they’re not painted I haven’t hung anything on the walls and it’s all still in moving boxes in one of the closets. I really want to empty out and organize that closet, so up next is painting those two rooms.

We have a lot of Oak trees around our pool that need to be taken down because cleaning all the leaves off our pool screen is a PITA! Plus they are so close to the house they will definitely do some damage to the foundation down the road. However I’ve had 4 quotes on taking them down and trimming a few other and the prices have been anywhere from $3200 to $7400!!

We currently have a huge area of our yard that is outlined and filled with rubber mulch. It previously was the home of a play set for the the kids who lived here. The play set is gone so it’s just a big area of mulch. We put a table and my husband’s grill and smoker on stones in that area. I’m not a fan of the rubber mulch as it’s very hard to clean the falling leaves off it so it just looks like a big mess. We originally thought maybe we’d do a paver patio but after getting a quote of about $6000 we decided that just was too  much to spend on basically an outside kitchen area. We decided to instead DIY a deck in that area that should cost us around $1000 in supplies.

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The walkway around the house was probably laid over 15 years ago and was sunken down into the dirt, uneven and so dirty that it got so slippery when it got wet. I started straightening them but still have the end that meets the pool deck to go. Our yard slopes a little so that end needs to be built up some so the bricks aren’t floating high above the grass.

The pool deck for some reason was painted, you guessed it, BROWN! I don’t know, but someone really liked brown that previously lived here. While I don’t like brown that’s not the main reason I want to paint it. The previous owners had a large hot tub on the deck and when they painted it brown, because the hot tub is so heavy the area under it was not painted so we have this huge spot that’s different colors. They tried to get us to buy their hot tube but I did not want to spend another $10k for a hot tub I’d probably barely use. We’re in Florida after all it’s hot enough with out sitting in a tub of hot water.

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This house was built in the early 90’s and I guess fireplace mantles wasn’t a thing at that time. Instead of having a nice pretty mantle we have this weird area around the fireplace where they popped out the wall. Every house in our neighborhood that had a fire place seems to have this same style. I want to get rid of it and get an actual pretty fire place mantle.

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The previous owners told us the first time we came to look at the house they had started repainting the house in the back and would finish before they left. It was one of many things they said would be completed before they left. None of them actually got done. They made the whole process so incredibly difficult that those things were the least of the issues we wanted to press. Plus I wasn’t a big fan of the green they were painting it so no big deal. At some point maybe in the next year we’ll work on painting the outside a fresh new color.

This last item is what I’m currently working on. Our laundry room isn’t big, but I’ve always wanted to have a cute laundry room. I always browse inspiration on pinterest and imagine what it could be. This time I’m going to make it happen. They had ugly white cabinets off centered in there and because we had to have the pipes replaced a big white spot on the wall behind the washer.  Here’s our current situation (left) next to my inspiration picture (right).

I currently have removed our ugly old cabinets and painted. Now I’m just trying to figure out how to make the next steps happen. New unfinished cabinets at Home Depot are $51 each but I was trying to find some at the local habitat store. I found 1 for $8 the other day but I need two. Hopefully I’ll find them soon. I also replaced the lights with daylight bulbs and it made such a difference! Can’t wait to get it all finished!

Have you guys done any projects lately? I’d love to check them out so leave me a link below!



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