Day 25 - Curb Appeal, Outdoor Spaces

It's Day 25 of the 31 Days to a Clutter Free Home series already. This month is quickly coming to an end! And here I am skating in at the last minute at 10p.m. with this post...my apologies, but I was off this evening helping a friend de-clutter. Such a fun time!

In case you haven't figured it out... I love houses. I love driving through the countryside, looking at  houses and imagining the families that live inside. After years of studying homes, I've begun to see a trend. Usually when you see a house like this...immaculately kept yard and trimmed landscaping...

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...you can about guarantee that the residents are over 60 years old, are retired and care a lot about how their home looks. It seems like the older generation really takes a lot more pride in their homes.

And then you see a place like this...

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And you guess that Cousin Eddie from the National Lampoons movies lives there.

When we started renovating our home and preparing to list it, I pointed out several examples of homes to David and explained to him that when people drove past our house I wanted them to guess we were 65-year-olds living here not 20-somethings.

So we attempted to undo 8 years of neglect by us (the 20-somethings). We put on a new roof, ripped out the overgrown bushes and replaced them with less intrusive landscaping, installed new exterior doors, repainted the shutters, wrapped the facia boards in aluminum,  had new gutters installed, and restained the deck. Read more about all that here.

Here's a before and after:

Much better, huh?



I wanted some porch furniture but wanted to keep it pretty simple and un-cluttered. We just got a couple small chairs for the front porch and my mom made those two planters for us.

We also did a few other things to improve the appearance and reduce clutter on the property. We tore down the "hillbilly attached garage" a.k.a. carport that we had butted up against the house. It was nice since we don't have a real garage but was definitely an eye sore.

We removed a split rail fence by the driveway and several small scraggly trees. 

Dave also trimmed a lot of branches that were close to the house and really improved the curb appeal. Since we no longer had a working chain saw, he just used a reciprocating saw. Gotta work with what you have, I guess!

We also replaced the paver walkway out front with a new concrete sidewalk.

In the back of the house, we tore off the satellite dish and wood stalls that we didn't even use and the deck that was in disrepair and replaced it with a concrete patio.

Unfortunately this picture was taken when we still had a few projects going on (painting furniture and seeding grass), but you get the idea. The new patio is a huge improvement.

We just love dining outside on our new picnic table! Read more about the picnic table makeover here. We got it for just $55 on Craigslist.

Take a look around your property. Does it look like senior citizens live there? In this instance, that would be a good thing ;) Is there anything that you could easily do this weekend to really make the place look better? Throw away some trash? Put away the lawn mower? Or donate some of the kids' outdoor toys to Goodwill? Anyone ready to get busy beautifying their place before winter? 

Trash to Treasure - Our Picnic Table

In keeping with the August Kitchen theme, today I'm going to reveal our upcycled picnic table!

I thought it would be nice to have some furniture out on our newly poured concrete patio. If money were no object, this is what I would have purchased. The Eastfield Collection from Lowe's. The set is only $998! Ha!

So, obviously, I realized I had to come up with another option. Money doesn't grow on our trees, after all. So that's when I hopped on Craigslist looking for a deal. And it was almost as if the clouds parted and God smiled down on me. The very first item to come up, no joke, listed just 30 minutes prior, was this round picnic table with 4 benches. Priced at only $55!!!

So I promptly emailed the couple and asked if I could come get it that night. A few minutes later, we were on our way. When we brought it home, it looked like this:

The Craigslist ad had stated that this was in excellent condition. In all honesty, we did NOT agree. There were about 5 layers of paint on this puppy and they were all bubbled up and peeling off. Not to mention, I absolutely hated the color. It was rather depressing. But we still thought $55 was a fairly good deal. And I loved the "X" legs on the table and benches. And the fact that the table was round was cool too. So I got to work restoring it. Slowly over the course of a couple weeks, Levi & I plugged away at it. (He mainly watched from his stroller...)

First I tried just scraping the paint off with a scraper. That only got me so far (mainly the areas that were already loose came off easily...)

So then I decided to try a can of Paint Stripper that we already had from Lowe's. It peeled off the top layer of paint easily but would have to be reapplied over and over to get all the paint off. I did not have the patience for that. Nor enough paint stripper. I'd already used most of the can on half the table top. Not to mention I had to wear gloves and this stuff was Toxic (with a capital T folks!). It smelled horrible!

 

A day or so after I'd given up on the paint stripper and about given up on the table itself, our friend Drywall Daryl was over painting our foundation for us. He sat down for a few minutes to eat a slice of our homemade pan pizza with us and suggested we use a heat gun to heat the paint and then it would easily scrape off. He knows all kinds of tricks! Love this guy! So Dave brought his heat gun home from work the next day (I'm so lucky to be married to a mechanic with all the tools!) and I set to work using it. It's basically an industrial strength hair dryer, ladies. It gets HOT. I set it somewhere between 600 and 900 degrees and it would heat the paint in a matter of seconds and it would scrape right off. All 5 layers at once. So amazing! And so much better than dealing with toxic chemicals.

So after maybe 3 hours in 90 degree weather, I scraped all the paint off the top of the table then realized it would take FOREVER to scrape all the paint off the table legs and all the benches and it wasn't even that loose in those locations anyways. So I ended up just sanding the table legs and benches and knocking off the worst of the peeling paint and then I just started priming all of it. I put 2 coats of Kilz Primer on the table and benches.

Then I had to make up my mind about what color to paint the table. I had all kinds of ideas running through my mind (thanks to Pinterest!). I thought about painting it turquoise

or bright yellow

but I did not have any turquoise or bright yellow paint and would have to spend more money! and I thought maybe they would look too bold or modern for our house, especially next to our pale yellow siding.

Then I realized I had some really nice quality exterior red paint leftover from our front door. Almost an entire gallon! And white trim paint leftover from the interior and exterior of our house. So I thought about painting it red and white striped (alternating colors on the boards of the table to) - sort of like what was done on this deck:

But Dave thought that would look too much like a candy cane. And then I considered taping off a geometric design on the table top like this credenza from Centsational Girl:

In the end, the geometric design is what I finally decided on. So I began painting the table and benches red. And planned to tape off lines for a white geometric pattern later on.

But after painting and painting and painting....for days...and days....four coats in all, I was just done. I decided a plain red table and benches was going to be ok. And so far we are loving it. Maybe someday I'll decide to add that geometric pattern. But for now, it works just fine.

And we are having SO MUCH FUN eating outside on our spacious new patio!

What pieces of furniture have you painstakingly restored to beauty? Do you have any tips/tricks to share?

By the way, I'm linking this post up to Beth's Home Stories A2Z Tutorials & Tips Link Party {23}. Head over there to enter the Stella & Dot $50 giveaway this week. And if you enjoyed my little "You've Been Remodeling Way Too Long IF..." post, check out Beth's post from last Saturday. It's a similar idea and absolutely hysterical!

Financial Friday - Curb Appeal Cost Breakdown

I'm going to attempt to start a little tradition of financial related posts on Fridays. Since doing the Dave Ramsey Total Money Makeover a few years ago, we attempt to hold a Budget Committee Meeting each Friday night (after Dave gets paid) so we know what to do with our money for the week, so it's only natural that I have financial topics on my mind on Fridays.

Here's the breakdown of what we spent on curb appeal on our home...

Landscaping / Curb Appeal

Today I'm planning to share a little post about how we improved our home's curb appeal with a little landscaping project.

Yep, that's what we started with. Very blah. With overgrown bushes and trees (which you can't really actually see because this photo was taken in March before the leaves grew in...). Our house was in desperate need of some curb appeal before we put it up for sale this summer. We had pretty much let everything outside go while we worked on the inside for the past 3 years. And it showed.

Wednesday Makeovers - Mailbox

We bought our house 8 1/2 years ago. It came complete with one of the world's ugliest mailboxes. It had a roof on it. A cedar shake roof.  I believe our neighbor told us that one of the previous owners hung a sign advertising an in home daycare underneath the roof. Makes sense I guess.

Still, it was hideous and I hated it since DAY ONE. Dave always thought it was a great defining characteristic of our home, however. (Don't you love the little arguments like this between husband and wife?) He enjoyed giving people directions to our place and ending with "You'll know you're here when you spot the mailbox with the roof on it." Ugh!

What's worse is that over the past 8 1/2 years the shakes have been slowly rotting in the rain and growing disgusting green stuff. I was SO over it.

Anyways, we're preparing to put our house up for sale soon and are currently working on curb appeal. On the Fourth of July, I finally talked Dave into taking the circular saw to the mailbox post and getting rid of that ugly roof.