Introducing Ava!

I gained another niece! Ava Holt Garrison was born to my brother, Matt and sister-in-law, Amy on Nov 1. She is a perfect blend of the two of them, and I can't wait to meet her and kiss that little round face!

Flowerbeds

After several weekends of hard work, Dad and I finally finished my flowerbeds this weekend.

First we ripped out all of the old plants and built a little retaining wall so we could build the beds up (they had a huge slope away from the house due to my lack of gutters). The wall actually took 2 weekends....it's quite a task!

Today we filled the beds with all sorts of bushes and plants. It's sort of hard to tell from these pictures, but there are actually several layers of plants with various monkey grasses and annuals towards the front. If you're really curious I can tell you the names of all of my plants.....I'm getting pretty good at landscape lingo! But I'm not that good....I can only tell you the common name.

Here are a few pics from tonight. If you're thinking that the two walls look different colors...you're right. I've stained the wall on the left because I prefer a more natural looking stone than the red clay. With recent rain and today's planting, I haven't been able to stain the wall on the right yet. Maybe that will be a project for tomorrow!

Gutter-less

Well, ever since I bought my home I knew that I'd need to add gutters as soon as possible. I'd also decided that I'd proabably need some sort of leaf guard since I have huge trees with tons of leaves. I had one quote from a guy that had been referred to Dad, but I figured I ought to at least get another quote just to check out my options.

Friday night, a guy I like to call Sweaty Gutter Man came to give me a quote. I should've just called off the meeting after I met him at my house and the first thing he said was, "Oh, I thought I was meeting a guy." Hmmmm...didn't they teach him etiquette when they gave him a job as a salesman? Rule #1...don't insult your customer by inferring that she has a man's name. My second huge warning was when he immediately started telling me about his financing options. Never a good sign.

The guy sent me inside to call some of his references while he worked up my quote. What do I do? I go inside and call Mom and Dad to rush over and help me fight off the sweaty salesman. The guy did have a good product, and he was very persistent, but it's never good when someone shows you a quote but holds his hand over the amounts and reveals them line by line. No peeking!

After telling me that I had a very simple house with few corners and only one level, Sweaty Gutter Man revealed how much his gutters would set me back.

(Drumroll, please.)

...a mere $7,200. Yes, folks....that's seven THOUSAND, two-hundred dollars! It was so hard not to laugh in his face. That's more money than I've spent on the remodel of my ENTIRE house!!!! Of course, Sweaty Gutter Man didn't even leave me the quote and I certainly wasn't going to ask for a copy since there's a 0% chance I'll be needing his services.

Of course, I could get a couple hundred dollars off if I were willing to be a reference and also stick a sign in my yard a couple times a year. Why would I want to do that....then everyone would know that I was the schmuck who forked over $7,200 for gutters.

No thanks, Sweaty Gutter Man....you'll have to try and sell your goods to some other sucker.

Trying to Catch Up

My house is almost completely remodeled, but my blog isn't keeping up with the pace. Sorry 'bout that.

The kitchen was a total remodel....here are a few pictures of the cabinets after we added the knobs and pulls. You can see the side of the old fridge in one of the pictures, but it's not there anymore. I replaced the fridge and the dishwasher, and I hope to replace the range soon too.

I love my kitchen! It looks fabulous, it's huge for my little house, it has tons of cabinets, and it's a good layout for cooking!














When we ripped up the kitchen floors to add hardwood, we also tore the old floors out of my laundry room. For a while I just lived with a concrete floor in there, but a few weeks ago we finally put a tile floor in there to match the tile in the bathrooms. It was the first time Dad and I had set tile, but we did a great job. Of course, I couldn't walk without pain for a few days but it was completely worth it! I just hope he agrees!

I'm so thankful that I only had to tile one area of my house. It was one of the messiest projects I've ever done! I was so frustrated because I'd get the thinset on my hand, and then I'd smear it on the tile, then I'd start to lose my balance and get it on the wall....I wanted to scream! I am so thankful I don't do tile work for a living.

Pecan pie, anyone?

In recent weeks I was surprised to see that my 2 little pecan trees have quite a crop of pecans. The trees aren't really big enough to support the pecans they're growing, so Dad and I propped up some of the heavier limbs with some old fence posts. It's kind of hard to see in this picture. Now I can actually kind of mow around the trees, but before it was getting really hard since some of the leaves were actually touching the ground! I sure hope these huge pecans taste good!

Hardwood floors

Most of my house had new carpet and tile, but the kitchen and utility room still had really old linoleum (with pastel-colored flowers!). My plan all along was to put hardwood floors in the kitchen, but I also decided to pull up the carpet in the dining room and extend the hardwood into that room. It seemed more practical to have hardwood in the dining room since it's my only eating area and hardwoods will stay cleaner. Dad and I had never actually laid hardwood floors, but we tackled it by ourselves anyway. It was a long, sticky job, but I love the floors and think they're beautiful!

In these pictures you can also see my new countertops! I love those too!

Kitchen Re-do

I would say the kitchen re-model has been the most dramatic of the whole house. It's just about complete now, but here are some more pictures of the process. Once Dad finished painting the cabinets we textured the walls and painted them green. This kitchen is certainly not the hodge-podge of white that it was when I first bought the house!

Move-In Day!

On March 29 I moved into my new house!! The work on the house certainly was not complete, but my apartment lease was up so it was time to go. The move wasn't too much of a hassle, but I learned which moving company I would not use again. The move took way too long for my small amount of furniture, but that afternoon I was finally moved in and ready to get settled. Although pictures of my mess during the move aren't very exciting, I'm attaching these pictures because they show the beams in my living room. We painted them dark brown so they look warm like wood....before they were painted white to blend in with the ceiling. I love how they turned out! Also, you can see the new windows in the dining room. I replaced all the windows in the house because they were really old and inefficient. These look so much nicer and it's a lot quieter inside. Note: the windows aren't tinted...it's just dark outside.

More changes

Work on the house continues on, but here are a few pictures of changes that happened months ago. Dad put up new porch lights for me since there was just one and it blinded the peep-hole so you couldn't see who was standing on the porch....not the best design considering there isn't a window there to look out of either. Yes, the street numbers in the picture are being held up with tape, but they had fallen and Dad used the tape to hold them in place while the other adhesive dried. Of course, we've had so many storms that the numbers have taken a beating and now the 1 and the 3 have fallen off......now my address is just 36. One of these days I'll get a real address that stays in place. My favorite part of this picture is the little patch of flowers that you can see in the bottom right corner. The elderly woman that lived here before me stuck a whole bunch of silk flowers in the dirt so it looked like she had flowers. I honestly had never thought of that as a quick fix to add curb appeal (but don't be fooled....it wasn't appealing)!


Have I mentioned lately that my dad is amazing? He built me a mantel! My fireplace was pretty boring before, but he built this mantel that is perfect and really makes it look nice. The box on the hearth is the fireplace screen that I will use later, but first I need to take the brass fireplace cover off and clean the bricks. I'm so excited to have a fireplace this winter! I really could have used it last year when we had so many snow and ice storms.

Dad has also put a lot of time into the kitchen. I really didn't like my cabinets because they were stuck in the 80's and thankfully Dad agreed that it was going to be difficult to sand and paint the current cabinet design. So, he cut the dated trim off the cabinets and made new trim to update the look of the cabinets while using the original wood doors. Pretty clever! Here are a few pictures of the work in process and the first coat of primer on the doors. They looked pretty funny for a while since the original cabinet was beige but the new trim was brown. Don't worry...they're white now.

Emerson Lee

I've got a niece! Emerson Lee arrived June 5 at 1:17pm. She was 8 lbs 4 oz and 20 inches long. I can't wait to meet her!

Surgery slow down

Unfortunately I had to have my gallbladder removed 2 weeks after getting into the house. Mom and I didn't do any work on the house that week since I had to lay low, but Dad kept on working. He stripped the paint off the kitchen cabinets and began designing a way to update the cabinet doors without starting all over.




A couple of days after surgery I was feeling pretty good so Mom and I decided to start painting the living room and dining room. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I sure regretted it in the days that followed! Not to mention my surgeon wasn't too happy with me. :) Slowly but surely the walls got painted, and Mom and Dad's neighbors, Harriet & BJ, even came over to help!

Demolition

Many changes happened just days after getting into the house. The dark wood paneling quickly came down and the walls were prepared for a new texture. The old, brown, scratched sliding door was replaced with new french doors and the holes that held lattice were covered over. Karen taught Mom and I how to apply a heavy texture. And boy did we quickly become experts! We ended up texturing the living room, dining room, kitchen, master bathroom, and entry hall. I still need to texture the guest bathroom and hopefully that will be the end of my texturing days for a while.....unless I change my mind and texture another room.



As you can see, Dad also added recessed lighting to the living room because it was so dark before. Don't worry, I've replaced the fan from that picture too....it was sad.

My first house!

On February 15, 2007 I closed on my first house. ...and the demolition began about 30 minutes later! My house was definitely stuck in the 80's and needed some serious work to make it my style. Here are a few of the "before" pictures...the kitchen was every shade of white and off-white you can possibly imagine. And how about that lattice-work in the living room? Nice. Please note that these pictures were taken before I purchased the house...i.e. the tacky chair is not mine!

As I look at these pictures now I just laugh because you would not even recognize the inside of my house now. Everything has completely changed. I've also included the first demo picture that took place about an hour after closing on the house.....the lattice had to go!

My first post

I'm new to the world of having my own blog, so please bear with me. I've never started a blog before because there was nothing to report about my life. Now I've decided to start a blog to at least journal the progress on my house and share pictures of the changes with friends and family. Hope you enjoy it!