Operation Staging a House: Exterior Makeover in 1 Day

I'd always wondered how things would go if we ever had to move and stage our house. Now I know. Things get seriously crazy!

I don't know if I can even begin to explain the rushing and stress and running around we did for almost 2 weeks prior to putting our house up for sale. All of a sudden we had to get all sorts of home improvement, cleaning, and staging done - and it was really overwhelming! We knew we would need some serious time commitment from both of us, and with the little Con-man around, that just wasn't happening - we needed a backup. Thankfully we were able to fly my mom out for a week to help - and boy, did she save our butts! I don't think we ever would have gotten everything done if it weren't for her. And Tom's mom also dropped by on several occasions to help out when we called her freaking out about how much we still had to get done, haha!

All in all? We got it all done, but it was probably the most stressful 2 weeks of my entire life (well, aside from this incident - but that's a whole different ballgame right there!).

Anyways, when you go to put a house up for sale one of the most important things to attracting buyers is....? C'mon, I know you guys know this - curb appeal! If it ain't got curb appeal, you're gonna have a much tougher time getting buyers inside the house. The exterior of the house needs to appeal to buyers to get them inside the house, which is where you really make the sale.

Unfortunately for us, the exterior of the house had been, for the most part, pretty much neglected while we've owned it. Now I don't mean neglected as in the-grass-is-4-feet-tall-and-is-being-taken-over-by-a-weed-forest type of neglected; I mean neglected as in we had only done a few things to the outside of the house in the 3 years we've lived here.

And it showed. Yikes.

Now, don't get me wrong - it wasn't horrible. But it wasn't very appealing, either. It was dark and very dated. There was practically no landscaping. In short: not welcoming at all.

Thankfully, we had a plan for taking the exterior from drab to - yep, I'm gonna say it - fab.

And the best part?

We did it in less than 24 hours. Booya!

Are you ready for this?

Here's what the house looked like in the morning (well, mostly - this photo was taken the previous summer, as evidenced by the green leaves on the tree and shrub..)...

And here's what it looked like at the end of the day (although it was dark by the time we finished, so I took this photo the next morning!)

Big difference, huh?

Here's the breakdown of what we did:

1) We painted the window/garage/front door trim white. 2 coats of Rustoleum paint is all it took to cover up the dated brown trim and really brighten up the whole house! It was the best 10 bucks we've ever spent.

2) We spray painted the shutters navy. The house is mostly yellow, with some browns and whites thrown in. With the window trim getting brightened with a coat of white paint, the house really needed some contrast to really make things pop. Spray painting the existing shutters accomplished exactly that. And? Funny enough, the yellow-navy color scheme continues as you step into our living room as well... what can I say, I guess I'm just drawn to yellow and navy for some reason.

3) Planted some flowers. We ran up to our local Lowe's to see if they had any flowers in yet (it was fairly early in the Spring, so we weren't sure if they would have any yet) - but luck was with us and they had just gotten a few shipments in! We picked up some fairly cheap and colorful pansies, along with a funky spiral grass plant thing and some other types of plants/flowers. We already had pots and potting soil on hand, so it was easy to just plop the flowers in the pots. Instant color and hominess.

4) New mulch. Nothing says "fresh" and "maintained" like throwing down some new mulch. Bonus: We learned a nifty money-saving tip. If you happen to find a bag of mulch (or soil or fertilizer) at your local Lowe's that has a tear or rip in it, find a salesperson and let them know. They should re-bag it for you (so it doesn't spill) and mark it down to half off! We saved a pretty penny this way!

5) Easy and simple landscaping. We bought some plants and placed them in the ground. Spread a little mulch and called it a day. We had two perfect existing areas to plant them in that had been empty and boring and ugly for years. Not anymore! (we decided to plant them in their pots since it was so early in the Spring season, so if a freeze came we could just take them out of the ground and store them inside to keep them nice and cozy!)

6) No time for landscaping? Here's another solution:

We put some plants into 3 pots of varying sizes and marked in the grass where we wanted a little mulched area to be. We pulled up the grass and put in the mulch. Super easy and it looks pretty cool, if I say so myself!

And - just for reference, here's what that area looked like before:

Much better, right?

So that's everything we did to take our house from this:

To this. Not bad, huh? And it only took us 1 day. Sa-weet.

And because I love big before-and-afters, let's go back in time and take a peek at what the house looked like when we bought it:

Wow - sometimes we can't even believe it's the same house!

It was hard work, but everyone chipped in - including Connor. He was double-checking that the plants were all planted properly before giving them his seal of approval.

Overall it was super satisfying to make such a big difference in just a day. Usually our makeovers take several months, so this was very exciting to see the results so fast!

What do you think? Do you have any tips up your sleeve for staging the exterior of a house for sale? Have you ever planted plants while they're still in their pots, like us?

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Heirloom Bookshelf Redo

We had another slightly slow weekend this Saturday and Sunday (hence the missing post yesterday). What can I say - sometimes life gets in the way of DIY.

Despite being up-to-our-elbows in other life matters, I still managed to squeeze in a little furniture remodel. Nothing too big or shocking, but hey, it still counts!

I was raised in a very book-and-reading-encouraged environment, which is probably why I still love a good book to this day. Seriously, nothing beats snuggling up in bed with a good book (especially if it's storming outside). And so one day my dad made me this:

Yep, when I was about 10 or so he made me a bookshelf. Actually he made me two of them, but I let my brother have the other one - I figured it was only fair (I feel like I should win some sort of Awesome Sister of the Year Award for this one). I have many fond memories of these two unfinished wooden bookshelves sitting in my room, where they held everything from my first phone (yep, it was a "normal" landline phone, but I thought it was the coolest thing ever to have my own phone and line in my room, haha), candles, books, and my extensive model horse collection (which I still have in storage.... somewhere). I think at one point the bookshelves even had posters - probably Backstreet Boys or Ricky Martin or NYSNC ones - plastered all over them in classic teen fashion.

Good times.

Anyways, I thought the bookshelf would be a perfect piece of my own childhood to pass onto Baby M, so he can use it to store books and toys and create his own memories around the very bookshelf that his own Grandpa built and his Mom used and loved for many years. Plus I really like the simple and clean lines of it - no fuss or frills on this baby, nuh-uh.

But first - it needed some touchups and a facelift STAT. So I broke out the caulk and wood putty and got to work filling in the gaps and dents and slapped on a coat of no-voc primer. Already lookin' better! (Why yes, that IS a plunger on our fireplace. Don't ask.)

And 1 coat of paint later...

And since 1 coat wasn't enough, a second coat of low-voc paint later and the bookshelf was done!

Here it is all done up and pretty in it's new space. It fits underneath the double-window perfectly! Whether or not it will stay there is up in the air, seeing as how we still have to paint the room and move the crib in (did I mention we got a crib already?), but I have to say that I'm super-pleased with how the bookshelf turned out. A simple redo, but it really puts the finishing touch on the bookshelf.

In fact, I was so excited about it that I had a hard time not filling up the bookshelf immediately with books and fabric toy bins, but that would've been a waste of time since we're gonna be getting our paint on this weekend to slap some color on those boring off-white walls. Sigh.

Anyone else have any special pieces of furniture that mean something to them? Maybe it's a piece that was made by you or for you, or a piece that holds special memories? Spill the beans and let's get all nostalgic in here.

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Bathroom Redo - Part 3: Demo

Ahh, demo is always the funnest part of any home remodel, am I right?

After installing a fan vent, shopping for supplies and planning our attack on the bathroom, it was time to break out the big guns.

Oh yeah.

Tom spent one lovely afternoon ripping out the old and cracking linoleum, along with the thick piece of plywood underneath, to reveal our wood subfloor.

Well... after we cleared out the huge mess, that is!

Then we realized that the wall tiles needed to go as well...

And this is what we were left with.

We noticed that there was a small area of the wooden subflooring that was beginning to rot next to the tub. After talking to some pros, we were left with two choices on how to handle it: 1) rip it out and replace it, or 2) fix it. We chose the fix-it method. First Tom gouged out all the wood that had rotted to reveal the intact wood underneath, and then he applied a wood solution that halts rot in it's tracks while reinforcing the remaining wood. Score. To make the area level with the rest of the subflooring (since it was gouged to get rid of the rotten layer), Tom then applied half a tub of wood putty.


While not the prettiest, the important thing is that we prevented the subflooring  from continuing to rot away unknown underneath the flooring, and further reinforced it.

We also noticed that the bottom part of the drywall was a bit, um, crumbly. Not good right? Tom replaced the bad drywall with some nice sturdy plywood (more on why we went with plywood over drywall later).

And? We were left with a blank slate to work from. Finally.

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Bathroom Redo - Part 1: We Gotta Vent

Last week I spilled the beans about how we're tackling the bathroom first instead of the nursery (although it's really killing me not to get started in there yet! I blame the hormones.)

The first part of our bathroom remodel actually didn't involve demo - surprising, huh?

Instead it involved installing a fan vent.

While not the most exciting remodeling update, fan vents serve a great function by venting out the steam from a shower so it goes outside and doesn't stick around your bathroom. They're pretty standard in homes nowadays, but oftentimes older homes will be lacking in the vent department.

Why are they so important? Here's what would happen everyday when it was shower-time: Steam would rise from the shower, causing it to get really hot and sticky in the bathroom. Condensation would form on the walls, the sink, heck - even inside the medicine cabinet. Said steam/condensation would then hit a point and start streaking/dripping down the walls, causing mildew buildup everywhere in our bathroom and actually causing things like the door handle and glass shelf supports to rust (admittedly, we do take hot showers, but this even happened in the winter time when we only have a 15-minute window of hot water to work with and the starting temperature in the bathroom was pretty chilly. Honestly, I think it's the combo of not having anywhere to vent and having such a small bathroom space).

Lovely, right?

So in order to protect and preserve all our efforts of the future bath remodel, we knew we needed to install this not-so-exciting-but-totally-functional-and-worthwhile vent in there.

While I was busy at work, Tom got right to it.

First he examined the light switch. And immediately hit his first obstacle (figures, right?).

The electrical system for the light switch was a nightmare. What the heck is going on with these wires?!...

Fast forward 3 hours later, and he finally got it figured out. Don't ask me how - I've no idea how he did that. I must say I'm totally impressed, though. You go, Tom.

He installed a new light switch and ran new wires up the wall and into the attic, which required that he completely empty out our office closet nook, since that's where our attic access is. Fun, right?

Then it was time for fan installation!

Bathroom fan vents are usually installed in about the middle of the space and not directly over the shower for safety reasons. So Tom took apart our towel rack and marked where he wanted the fan vent... with the towel rack rod. Nice, honey. (it's a good thing I'm still on the fence about keeping that particular towel rack!)

It was a special way of marking it, but I can't argue with the logic - once he was knee-deep in insulation up in the attic, he said it was super-easy to see that rod sticking out of the sea of newspaper-like insulation. Then it was an easy task of cutting out the drywall to fit the new vent, creating a cardboard "barrier" to keep the insulation away from the vent, and installing it (sorry, no photos of that part - it was too hot and cramped up there for him to lug up the camera!).

Then comes the fun part (because we hadn't had enough fun yet, apparently!). It's strongly recommended to vent bathroom fans to the outside, since venting straight into your attic can cause all sorts of problem, thanks to the steam buildup that would be accumulating up there.

There are several different ways to vent a fan: through the roof, through the side of the house, or through the roof's soffit.

Since we didn't want to touch the roof (roof leaks scare us!), and venting through the wall seemed impossible (how would we do that?!), we opted for the soffit vent.

So Tom ran some duct tubes from the vent over to the roof soffit area, and marked the spot. We went outside and he used a variety of tools to cut into the soffit. We followed the directions on the soffit venting-thing and traced an outline of the circle onto the soffit, which Tom then cut out. After taping and screwing in the duct tube to the soffit vent, it was a simple matter of caulking and screwing in the vent.

And we were done! Hallelujah.

Check out these beautiful before and after photos of our bathroom ceiling...

I know this post makes it sound decently easy, but in reality it took alot of work to get that simple, innocent little fan vent up in our bathroom. Of course anyone can do it, but it took us amateurs (although mostly Tom) a good 8 hours or so once it was all said and done.

But the good news? It was alot of work, but it was totally worth it. We noticed an immediate difference the next time we showered with how much moisture was in the room and was accumulating on the walls, which was fantastic! It means a cleaner bathroom and much less damage to everything in it, which is a priority since we'll be totally redoing the space (and why spend valuable time and money redoing something if it can't stay nice, anyways?).

And even more good news? In our area a bathroom fan vent installation runs about $450. Guess how much we spent total? $100 on supplies. We saved $350 by doing it ourselves.

Gotta love DIY.

What about you? Have you ever installed a bathroom fan vent? Have you ever dealt with an older bathroom that didn't have one? Anyone else know what I mean with the "dripping wet walls"?

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Master Bedroom Progess: Paint and Layout

Since I know it's killing you guys (and honestly, it seems like it's been forever!), I've decided to update you on our progress in our Master Bedroom remodel.

Our last post featuring this remodel identified several different ways of arranging the furniture to find a layout that works perfectly for us, and looks nice in our shoebox-sized 10 x 12.5' room. After looking and viewing lots of inspiration photos of different rooms with all kinds of layouts, we got to work.

Our first step: assessing our furniture. We looked at each item in the room and decided if we needed it and it served a function. Thanks to our recent closet remodel (where we took our super-tiny closet and actually doubled the storage space on the cheap), Tom was able to get rid of his dresser. How? The new closet organization system has so much storage space, that he was able to completely empty his dresser and neatly put away the contents into his part of the closet.

Score.

Getting rid of that big dresser freed up alot of floor space for us, so then we only had 3 pieces of furniture left to work with: the bed, my dresser, and a small side table that holds my hair and makeup supplies (oh, the downsides of having a tiny bath!).

Our second step: prep the room, and then paint! After prepping (filling in gaps/holes, sanding, etc), I primed everything in that room.

Ugh. That took forever.

Then I painted all the trim in the room (Valspar's Ultra White), followed by painting the ceiling (20% of wallcolor) and finally the walls (Valspar's Winter in Paris). We chose the paint color by matching our existing comforter and bedding to a blue on the paint chips, and then taking that paint chip and finding a lighter- slightly-grayer-with-a-hint-of-green color - and then making sure that color works with the paint colors in the rest of the house. The result? A color we love that really opens up the room.

Third: we moved in the furniture. After taking down all the tape, reinstalling the ceiling fan, installing new light switches and outlets and plates - it was time to move everything back in (good thing, too - we were starting to feel like college students again with our mattress and boxspring laying on the living room floor!).

And now this is where normal people would try out a few different furniture arrangements, step back after moving and decide which layout they like the best - but not us. Boy, as soon as we moved the furniture into their first resting place, we fell in love with the layout.

And there it's stayin'.

Yup, we decided to go with the angled-bed-in-the-corner layout. Why'd we choose this one? For a few reasons: 1) Butting the bed up against the 2 logical walls was awkward due to the window placements (the windows were half-hidden behind one side of the bed) and the location of the closet, and barely left any walking room around the bed. 2) The room felt much larger with the bed on a diagonal. 3) Who says beds have to be flush against a wall, anyways? and 4) It's unexpected - and so we love it.

Of course, there are additional challenges and obstacles to overcome if you decide to place a bed angled in a corner, as we've come to find out.

Especially if you don't place one at a perfect 45 degree angle against the corner.

Stay tuned for our plans to tackle that little pesky problem.

So what do you guys think? Are you a fan of the paint color? Would you have placed the bed on a diagonal, too? What obstacles do you guys think we'll run into, and what do you think our plans are for tackling them? We'd love to hear your thoughts!

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