Front Yard Makeover

This weekend we got lots of work done! In the front yard, we put up new house numbers over our garage door and added shutters on our front kitchen window. It's looking a lot different (to us) than when we first bought the house.

Here's a photo from right before we closed on our house, in September 2009:

 

And here it is today, August 2011:

 The shutters, exterior lights, trellises for the clematises, and house numbers really make a difference for us. The shutters were surprisingly easy to install. We followed the directions and had them up in under 15 minutes. Super easy!

 

I have a four-day weekend for Labor Day next weekend, since my company gives us Friday off as well as Monday (awesome!). This means I have lots and lots of plans... we'll see how many get finished. Number one on the priority list, though, is painting the front door — the same dark green color as the shutters. We already bought the paint, so I'm all set! We originally had a screen door on the front door too, but it was damaged beyond repair in a big storm this spring. But once we took it off, we realized how ugly and in need of TLC the front door was.

 

It probably wouldn't hurt to upgrade our welcome mat, either!

Installing Our Last Door!

Here it is: our brand new guest room door!

Today we installed our last (new) door! We've been working on this project for over a year, starting with the bathroom door in early 2010. We still had two to go and were able to wrap them up over the last two weekends. Now our office and guest room also have matching six-panel white doors:

 

On the right, you can see the non-paneled door to our linen closet, which we painted last week after finally finding the correct paint color. We are planning to paint all of the similar closet doors to match instead of tearing them all out, since most of them are not in terrible shape, and it will save money over buying new ones. Here's what they currently look like (this is our kitchen pantry door):

 

Next, we'll be painting all of the trim white to match! I'm excited for this part (I like to paint stuff), especially since I think we will see a big impact for a low cost.

Summer Fun

It's already starting to feel like fall--the last two days have been in the upper 70s instead of the 90s! But we're still wrapping up our super busy summer. We headed up to Rockford on July 23 for Art and Becky's wedding, where Adam reunited with the Posse:

Adam then went to Madison for a few days for a work-related seminar, while I hung out in Roscoe. After that, we headed up to Three Lakes, Wis., for some vacation time with his family. Now we're finally back home and not planning on traveling any time soon... this summer has worn us out. Luckily, other people seem to be traveling in our direction (Anne and Brian, Becky and Sam)!! Which is always super exciting. 

On the home improvement front, we've been stalled for some time due to travel and financial constraints. But now that we're back for a while--and since we've had a long break--we're excited to get started on some more projects. We have two more bedroom doors to install (we've been at this point for... approximately a year. Oops. See our first door installation here). We probably would have had them done by now, but when we went to Menards this weekend, they were sold out of the ones we needed! Instead, we spent last weekend buying paint that matches our existing doors so that we can make the trim the same color. We're also going to try painting some of the doors we don't want to replace: our linen closet, pantry, and entry closet doors.

We're using Pittsburg Paint for these, since that was the brand that the pre-painted doors came with. It matched wonderfully (even though it wasn't exactly the same), so we went with it. Seems to be working so far: 

We did prime before we painted, although we just went with a water-based primer... we decided that the doors weren't "real" wood (they're hollow and plywood-y feeling. Yes, that's the technical term.), so we just winged it with water-based primer, since it's soooo much easier to deal with. The bleed-through hasn't been bad so far (sometimes you can still see wood-colored stains through the paint, unless you use an oil-based product), so I am hoping that it will stay that way. I just finished the final coat of paint on that door, which is for the linen closet, so I am hoping we can put it up tomorrow and see how it looks!

Back from Vacation

Last week we returned home from our awesome vacation in the Florida Keys. We had a blast! We visited Key Largo, Marathon/the Middle Keys, and of course, Key West. Here we are at mile marker 0, the start of U.S. Highway 1:

If you didn't already see our Facebook album of photos, check out the Shutterfly album I made below (I got it free after writing a TripAdvisor review--yay!).

Click here to view this photo book larger

This month is very busy for us! We'll be attending Adam's cousin's high school graduation party, Art's wedding, and then heading up to Wisconsin to see Adam's parents for a few days.

Summer Projects

Even though it's not officially summer until Tuesday, it's felt like summertime for forever here! And one fun part of summer... is garage sales. Last weekend, while Adam was in Wisconsin Dells for Art's bachelor party, I hit up several sales in Bloomington. I started at 8 am but had to cut myself off by 10:30 -- I had already bought way too much!

Last weekend's treasures:

Of course, most of these things are stuff I plan to paint/redo in some way. Except for that bowl. And the vase, which is for our office -- we're currently redoing it, and I'm adding in lots of lime green. We spent yesterday painting the office (changing it from a yellowy-tan to gray). Which means we've now painted every room in the house except the bathroom. All in good time ;)

Here is the vase in its new home (a sneak peek of the still-in-progress office):

Of course, the moment we put up that IKEA Lack shelf (and even before it was fully installed), Jack had claimed it as his new favorite spot. Now we've just got to finish moving EVERYthing back into the office that we had to move out in order to paint it.

Happy anniversary!

Adam and I are celebrating our wedding anniversary today. I can't believe it, but we've already been married three years! We're going out to dinner tonight to celebrate.

Happy anniversary!

Picture frames and cabin trip

When we first moved in, I put up these five pictures: Us, friends, and cats. But since then, it's really looked a little sparse.

Inspired by YHL's gallery of frames project, I started collecting frames from garage and thrift sales. I bought several at a "barn" sale in Bloomington earlier this spring, and spray painted them black to match our existing frames (with feline assistance, of course):

No before picture for those--but they were all ugly to start with, so much better now!

We took a trip to visit my parents' cabin in northern Wisconsin over Memorial Day weekend, and stopped at a few garage sales while we were up there. I picked up even more frames there (although I forgot them in Roscoe), so I'll be painting them soon. Eventually I'd like to cover the whole wall.

Our trip up north was fun--great weather, Friday night fish fry, went out on the boat, and rode the ATVs! Here's the view from the front yard:


And Adam on the dock:


We spent a lot of time playing with our digital SLR camera. We got it as a wedding present from Adam's parents and have been using it for the past three years, but are just now figuring out how to change the more advanced settings. It was pretty fun to see what you can actually do, but we've still got a lot to learn.