House update...exterior is done!!

Well, ALMOST done. We just have one more coat of paint to put on the front door...but I had the time to take pictures today so this is as close to done as we are going to get for the moment. Man that sounds good...D-O-N-E!

Here are a few of the before pictures I took last year as things were in progress:

And the afters:

Wow wow Wubbzy right?! I am SO proud of us...this transformation was a lot of work. We painted the entire house, hung the gutters, tore out and replaced all the landscaping...mostly by ourselves. We had some help from my Grandpa along the way (THANK YOU!).

There are 2 things that I'm looking forward to next year- the door being done and the "right color" (it looks brighter here than it will be without the second coat), our landscaping becoming more "full" and to not do a SINGLE thing outside besides fill in the mulch this spring and then mow the yard.

I can't even express how good it feels to not have the ugly house in the neighborhood anymore. We have worked so freaking hard, and it is so nice to have a house that feels brighter and more like us. :)

Now we move on to Jack's room! It is almost done so stay tuned!

The big reveal!

It is finally time folks! That's right...the painting is DONE. I never thought this day would come, my hands, back and legs are killing me from a summer of up and down ladders, back and forth with brushes and painting faster than the speed of light to get as much as possible done during naps. This is our first big project to check off our list and it feels SO. FREAKIN. GOOD.

Let me just take you back to a time where our house looked like this:

And now lets all bask in the glory that is Caribbean Sunrise by Behr:

EEEEEKKKKKK...doesn't it just make you want to scream with excitement?! It is such a great feeling to take on a huge project and see the end results. As you can see we have removed practically every piece of landscaping that we possibly could (I guess we'll let the grass stay LOL). We aren't planting this year and I'm sure our neighbors are all scratching their heads wondering why we prefer dirt over overgrown shrubs. We just wanted to be ready for planting next year and not having to worry about tearing everything out (which was a very time consuming and hard core physical job...poor BB).

And here are some more before and after pictures:

At the beginning of the summer when this ALL started...here Bryan is on our first day of working on the house.

And the after! We took out all the bushes and painted. New gutters compliments of Grandpa Lucky :)

This was our project today...tear out the hedges. These babies were at least 5 feet tall. 

And after...you can actually see our front door!

This was taken during Grandma and Grandpa's first trip when the painting began. 

And here we are today! What a HUGE difference!

So next on the list for outdoors will be painting the front door (but what color?!), landscaping in the spring (front yard only) and we HAVE to figure out what to do with that basketball hoop. Who in the world decided to put that right smack in front of the house?As you can see, Bryan lowered it today so Layla could play LOL. We are taking off the backboard tomorrow so we'll just be left with the pole for now.

Here is Bryan getting ready to lower the backboard (I love that Oscar sits under the ladder)

And here is Bryan taking out a tree stump with nothing but a shovel and hand saw. The fastest way? No. The easiest way? Of course not. But did he get it done? YES!  And PS- that is SAND, not dirt. I had no idea that Michigan soil was basically sand...so bizarre.

Now that we are pretty much done working outside for the year, we decided to play outside a bit after nap. Here is Bryan helping Layla make a basket.

And here is a short video of Layla and how she acts on a normal basis. WARNING- she takes a nasty spill at the end that I know will be very hard for Grandma Mudd to watch. LOL. But she is fine! She had a little mark on her knee and that was it. But I love that she falls and we both just hold our breaths and stand their until she cries. LOL

House update

We have been waiting all summer for this...we are SO close to being done with the outside of the house. We just have a few pieces of trim to replace and some touch up painting before we can sit back and admire our work! I'm not ready to post the official before and after pictures of the paint because we have to put the shutters back up but I thought I'd share a few pictures of Bryan and Grandpa working on the gutters this weekend. Poor Grandpa worked so hard and we really appreciate all the work he has put into the house in just the few months that we have lived here.

Here they are, hard at work!

They took a break to enjoy some rootbeer floats. 

Layla had a sip of Daddy's and really didn't care for it. 

And here is Grandpa...feeling good after day 2 and singing opera. LOL

Next weekend we have to remove some bushes and then I'll take some updated pictures. I can't WAIT to compare the before and after!!

Pump it!

Like I said in an earlier post, my Grandparents weren't even here for 10 minutes before we decided that a few trees near the house needed to go. First of all, they were ugly (mostly because the previous owners didn't take the time to trim them) and second of all, they were just way too close to the house. So we got to work!

Not wasting any time

Does anyone else look at this and cringe?

Here goes the left tree

Gone!

Now for this weird one

Gone! And the guys are taking a well deserved break!

The house looks SO much brighter with those trees gone. And with the paint...we are looking at a total transformation! Can't wait to post pictures after we are done painting. Then we'll just have the landscaping to work on and the outside will be almost finished. :) YAY

PS- the title of this blog refers to my Grandpa's favorite phrase of the day. Bryan got a new electric chain saw that apparently needs to somehow be pumped (don't ask me...I won't go near it) and every 5 seconds you'd hear my Grandpa yell "pump it!!!! pump it Bryan!!!" LOL

Pick a color...any color...

When we bought this house we knew there was a lot of work that we wanted to do...what we didn't know is that we'd be getting started this summer!! We just can't help ourselves I guess...so we decided to get to work on the paint job. So far the hardest part has been deciding what color because I can't make a decision to save my life. At first the house was going to be green, then I feel in love with gray, then I realized our roof was red so we settled on yellow.

Out of all the colors of the rainbow, yellow is probably my least favorite so I needed some options. After picking up about 10 pounds of paint swatches from every hardware store within a 30 mile radius we decided to use Behr paint from Home Depot (pronounced "deeee" - "pot" for those of you that didn't know). We found 4 colors that we liked, had deeeepot the mix up some samples and then started randomly painting the exterior of our house like we had the faintest clue what the heck we were doing.  Here is what we ended up with:

Quick tip- make sure to label your paint samples when you are testing them (see the notches next to ours?). I quickly realized there wasn't a huge difference between our colors and I wanted to make sure when we picked the right one, that I didn't take in a different color and buy 10 gallons of it!

So after letting the paint dry we decided to go with the most yellow color we had which was 1. It looked the best with our brick and we thought it would lighten things up. We picked out paint in perfect timing because Behr was running a rebate program on their paint ($5 a gallon back) so we picked up 10 gallons and a few paint brushes and went to work.

So far it has taken us about 6 days of on/off painting (during naps or after bedtime for L) to have about 75% of the house done with coat #1. Our cedar siding was starved for paint so it is just soaking up the first coat (good thing we bought those 10 gallons!). I don't want to share any after pictures yet because the first coat is very spotty with a lot of bleed through so it isn't looking that great. Hopefully we will only need to do 1 more coat or I might shoot myself.

Although it is hard work and a lot of time, painting the house ourselves is going to be SO worth it. We estimated we are saving about $5k by doing it ourselves. Cha ching! I think I'm going into business as a painter after this. ;o)

And on a slightly random note we started taking up the carpet in our sun room. Gross!! It was so dusty/moldy/gluey and just had to go. So here is a "before/during" shot of Bryan hard at work. We still can't decide what to do on the floor in here (paint it or do outdoor carpet) and the walls...but maybe we just need to save this for next year?

And on an even more random note...we have a hawk in our back yard! Here is a picture of it's nest. I've seen it circling the neighborhood once (Layla had to wave to it) and I'm not sure how I feel about this. We won't have a mouse problem, that's for sure...but it is a HAWK in our backyard.

"Is that a tree or a bush?"

Oh boy did this Sunday turn out much differently than we planned. First Layla, aka our alarm clock, slept in until 9:45 today! I think she was still worn out from chasing cousin Grayden around all last week. ;o) Church starts at 10:00 so of course we missed it and went grocery shopping instead. After just hanging out around the house and having lunch, it was nap time for a very grumpy girl (how in the world could she be grumpy after sleeping almost 13 hours the night before?!). Right after putting her down for nap Bryan and I decided to go outside and take a look at some paint colors against our brick. This turned into about 15 minutes of standing in the driveway looking completely dumbfounded as to what color looks good with orange brick.

So after getting sick of trying to figure out the difference between "cool cucumber" and "silver cucumber" we took a stroll around the house to pick out what landscaping we were going to demolish. And by landscaping I mean completely over grown bushes/weeds/trees and by demolish I mean pick apart with hedge clippers and a shovel (we like to do things the hard way). After marking about 13 bushes we decided today was the day to start. So armed with literally one pair of gloves (which I made Bryan stick his hands into to make sure there were no bugs in...you can never be too careful), hedge clippers and two shovels we started to tackle this:

 

Our main focus is to get rid of the 3 bushes under the window and the other 3 bushes that wrap around the house. Eventually we are going to do something about the bushes on the left (X marks the spot) but those things are mega huge and we HAVE to do something about the horrendous tree that you see there on the right. There are two more like it right there and they are really REALLY ugly. 

Now it was time to delegate responsibilities. Oscar and Moose were responsible for hunting bugs, Bryan got the job of axe man and my contribution was pictures and taking every branch down to the road. I have to now explain that I had gloves on the entire time and you better believe every branch, twig and leaf was inspected for spiders and beetles. I don't want to think about those missed but I'm happy to report no incidents. 

So after about 5 minutes of watching Bryan cut down a bush with hedge clippers our wonderful neighbor asked if we wanted to borrow a saw and axe. He must have felt very sorry for Bryan. #1- it was hard work and #2- his wife was standing behind him making comments like "is that a tree or a bush?!" and "that tree is bleeding, omg look at that tree, it is bleeding!". After gaining the proper tools, the job went much faster and easier. Poor Bryan, but at least he didn't have to take the sticks to the road. 

Overall, things went very well. We got 3 bushes completely out on the left side of the house and even had time to trim one down to the "nubs"on the left side of the house. Then we realized something...it was right next to the electrical box were all electric lines, cable and phone lines run into the house.

Well crap, now what do we do? I have a feeling if we call the city they will just tell us not to dig there but COME ON, that thing looks like Medusa's hair! I guess we'll figure that out another day. At this point Layla was still asleep so Bryan decided to tackle some out of control vine (I think that is a vine)

I must tell you that he started removing these with his beloved hedge clippers. I think he thinks it is appropriate to use them on anything from cutting down large trees to trimming the grass. After a few minutes I said "why don't you just use your hands?" and would you look at that...it went much faster/easier without those clippers. LOL

At this point Layla woke up so I took a few "after" pictures to share with everyone and ran inside. Look at what a difference this made!!

Front of the house by the garage:

Same side of the house, just a difference angle:

Left side of the house:

Our house already looks so much lighter! Now we just need to throw down some grass seed in the yard areas that were totally shaded by those bushes and figure out what we will plant in their places. And figure out what to do with Medusa's hair of course. We only have 7 more of the big boxy green bushes to tear out and we can start planting. Woooo hoooo!