My Home

I bought this property in November 2008, a joint venture investment with my parents. It’s a half-plex which is a home style that dominates in my small town. While these homes are typically valued less than single family homes I love that my gas & electric bill is between $20-$60/month and I’ve never had problems with privacy as the common wall is thick.

The Photo Tour

The property was empty for about a year so with no water running the lawn was pretty dry by the time I closed in mid-November. Thankfully the grass has come back and thanks to a free lawn mower from the grandparents I keep it trimmed. There are 6 rose bushes lining the garage that bloom constantly.

However, long dead from lack of water, the willow tree in the foreground has been cut down to the stump (I’ll take the whole thing out eventually, check out my upcoming projects). The sugar maple tree closer to the front door is still thriving and produces the most beautiful leaves year round.

Oh, I also got a new water meter so the city can double the cost of sewer/water on me in a few months. yay.

The front walkway hasn’t changed much except that I keep the roses trimmed back so you don’t get attacked walking up to the front door. Soon I’ll attempt to remove one of the rose plants that hasn’t produced in three years to make more room for these guys:

Up soon: creating a layer of rocks for the water hose so it doesn’t lie in the dirt. See my pending projects here.

The sugar maple tree is thriving and while limbing it up is on my ever growing to do list, right now I’m more concerned with keeping the flowers blooming year round. Check out my favorite garden pics and names of the flowers on this page.

Again, a little water every day helps these flowers alive and blooming. The mint I planted is threatening to take over the planter box so I might transplant it into the smaller patch of dirt under the kitchen bay window.

Directly behind the maple and planter box is my front porch which is a space I completely overlooked when buying this place but is now a favorite spot of mine.

I moved in this swinging bench from my maternal grandparent’s home (wrote about it here) in 2009:

and decorated the area with these affordable pillows from Home Depot, a square planter box and this open shelf from Goodwill. I’ll be replacing the wood slats on the bench soon and touching up the paint. The rug here is from Ikea and a great outdoor option – it’s also easy to toss over the fence and beat until the dust is gone.

Wilson loves the bench too:

Near the front door I have a display of plants in metal tins I picked up for $1 around town and filled with plants:

the plants came from all over, Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Raley’s and the Farmer’s Market. They seem to be thriving despite the summer heat:

I’ve started the habit of taking short breaks from work to water my garden and keep water cans close by.

The front door has this handy little hook where I can hang wreaths and signs when I feel like it.

The screen door has a lock but more importantly, a metal grate over the screen. The dogs love sitting on the tile and watching the front yard and that grate keeps them from knocking through the screen.

Going Inside

The front door opens into the hallway/living room and while I’ve got the paint, I need to finally finish updating the front door to bright white. The living area started out with a wimpy beige and green which looked just lovely next to the pinkish red kitchen walls.

You can see my tiny skylight in this old pic which looks really funky because, no lie, the previous owner had lined it with tin foil. To… prevent alien abductions? I have no idea. I took it out and cleaned it up and that little light is bright!

The living room has just this one window which overlooks the patio and I decorated it with these great curtains that magically match the color of the living room and kitchen walls. The curtains were on clearance and a $9 steal at Target

short and sweet

In the far corner of the living room is my fireplace and mantle. I haven’t changed anything structurally but with the darker paint it certainly stands out more.

Thanks to the realtor induced flood of ’08 I ripped out this carpet and the pad the day we closed on the house (and the drywall 4′ up the wall) and spent $900 on new carpet a few months later.

The furniture in here is constantly changing but I’ve got the couch from my parent’s house (with a nice brown slipcover from Wal-Mart), the loveseat from my aunt, a foot stool from my aunt, TV stand bought from Ikea, free dresser from the grandparents and hope chest from my parents.

What? I like free furniture! Right now the dresser holds all of my linens: cloth napkins, hot pads and place mats. I’ve been sorting family photos so the TV stand has those in piles and boxes until I get them all labeled and scanned.

The living room was one of the first rooms I painted once the walls were up and I extended the warm brown paint and crisp white baseboards from the living room through the hallway and entryway adding a mirror from Ikea:

Even though I’ve yet to light a match in the fireplace, I love my mantle – it’s a fun place to arrange Christmas decorations or just a ton of candles. The mirror came from my grandparents’ house and most of the candles were thrift store finds.

While I don’t have a formal dining room, I have just as much space as I need in my small dining nook. I bought this tall bar table and six chairs which I love. The red rug came from Ikea for $40 (former display piece) and was easy enough to clean up with a steam vacuum.

The white china cabinet came from the Library Sale and I painted it white (approximately 7 coats), replaced the knobs and filled it with china and kitchen goods.

Right now I have glass jars with dry beans, lentils, rice, pasta and nuts.

Here’s a recent wide shot to show the cabinet, art from Bath & Body Works on the all and the containers full of fresh fruit on the table:

Above the cabinet I have some artwork, a pitcher with fake flowers and wire baskets:

This great display piece that I picked up for $10 and had no idea what I was going to do with it. Now it holds my favorite recipe cards and things I want to try. I might replace with holiday cards come December:

Finally in this little dining nook, my bookshelf from Target (a steal at $30) which holds recipe books, my project binders and a bunch of my portfolio photos:

Right behind the dining nook is the kitchen which started out the ugliest pinkish red color. I’m guessing the old owner didn’t prime the walls very well:

Mom and I primed and painted, including a new coat of white for the window sills and carrying the red into the window so it’s more cohesive. Plus getting rid of that green made it less ‘Christmas in the kitchen’ year round.

Aside from the new dishwasher I haven’t done much in here. Next to the stove I added shelves and took out the paper towel holder and around the sink I added some artwork including two coordinating frames like this:
There is no mat, just glass so the wall color shines through and makes it look coordinated. I picked these up way back in 2002 for my room at my parent’s home. This one is above the large window and came from the Salvation Army:

Someday I’d like to replace the blinds with white roman shades and replace the door and drawer knobs. Also, the $40 garage sale fridge/freezer is dying, it’s less than energy efficient and a broken seal means ants can get in, die a cold deal and don’t come out. Ick.

But the stove and oven work perfectly and even the microwave doesn’t have any problems. We did replace the food disposal in the sink as it had rusted through and leaked but that was a simple, if smelly, job for Dad.

My favorite part of the kitchen right now is the storage for all those kitchen utensils. They tend to get dusty but it’s no trouble to rinse before using and I found all of these turquoise containers at thrift stores:

On the other side of the kitchen is the Garage and as you can see in the first pic on this page, the garage takes up the majority of the front of the house. There’s an access door between the kitchen and dining area and I’ve managed to squeeze a lot of utility into this two car garage.

The Laundry Area has my still-going-strong-freecycled-dryer (left) and newer washer on the right. The freecycled washer turned the garage into a whirlpool so I replaced it in December 2010. Still, two years out of a free appliance is pretty good.

To the left of the dryer is a collapsible air dryer that I picked up for $1 at a thrift store. I like to keep several clothes baskets handy and a fan provides some air circulation. The black curtains were a perfect $5 find to block out the heat of the sun.

Food Storage outside is really nice because my inside cabinets are not overcrowded. I have a small chest freezer and the top cabinet has all my booze.

Pantry added here by dear old dad, my little overachiever, who took my sketch and created a custom pantry with adjustable shelves. The only thing I vetoed was doors as it would take up too much room.

Storage is all over the place in this room – you can see these gorgeous cabinets with glass fronts installed by Dad. He “saved” them from the dumpster at work and they came out of chem lab at a school undergoing renovation. My brother and Dad have the same cabinets in their garages too!

You can see these small glass jars are a great storage solution, I found them thrifting for 16 cents each and they hold all of my nuts, bolts, screws and nails.

These metal shelves were another gift from Dad to store all of my tools, camping supplies, seasonal decorations and dog stuff. Nothing is labeled but I can find whatever I need.

On the other side we have these handy tool hangers so I can keep my cleaning and garden tools organized. We added some hooks for the extension cords (electric lawn mower, leaf blower and string trimmer remember) and since the ground is mostly dead space, hung my bike from the ceiling.

I do keep my trash cans inside so I can put out recycling and trash anytime day or night without the dogs freaking out. It never gets smelly and I typically put them out for pick up every other week.

The middle of the garage will soon have a 1970 Cadillac (once I finish payments) but until then I’ve got a couch for the dogs, an old Ikea chair and a make shift work station for painting baseboards (propped up on containers full of Christmas decorations)

Back inside

Hallways are boring, I admit. Right now my number one pending project is to scrape the popcorn like ceiling when I have a long weekend free. I’ve decorated a bit with two bright prints from Freecycle and collage frames with some of my favorite prints.

While I’ve been working on painting the doors throughout the hallway, I also spray painted the door knobs, since I like the look of white doors and dark hardware. The knobs are pretty unique so if I had to buy something else not boring it would run me $30-40 each door. And I have six doors so it was a win all around

The main bathroom is bright and colorful after I painted the pink (yes, pink) cabinets white and covered the walls with a paint color called Rice Grain. I added new mirrors during a work-a-thon Memorial Day weekend in 2011. This awesome set of 3 mirrors was just $60 at the local Thrift Store:

and two smaller ones like these:

Here’s what the room looked like before the mirror and towel bar upgrades and with the old shower curtain:

I like the crisp look of the bathroom, most of the color comes from green & blue in the form of striped towels:

and a bright new shower curtain I found for $11 at Wal-mart:

Dad also installed the new towel bars and hand towel ring – details and pictures here.

While it’s almost done projects include a new lighting fixture, a new shower head and new flooring. Someday…

My office space has come a long way since the early days of purple and green walls (yes alternating wall colors) and painted plaid closet doors. Yeah. I brought in my Grandma’s desk, bought and installed bookshelves and installed an overhead light and fan.

One of the early projects was priming the walls and painting them this beautiful deep green which just feels calming while I work. It took me several years to find the curtains I could love and ended up making two pair from this fabric I picked up at Ikea:

Since this is an odd room with five walls (see the odd angle of the entry way for explanation) I opted to build customizable Ikea bookshelves that wrap around the odd corners.

Assembling the set was fun and I’m constantly shuffling stuff around. Right now the shelves hold pictures, lots of books, journals, old yearbooks, boxes for techy stuff, receipts and a lot of DVDs.

My desk is one of my favorite pieces of furniture and is usually populated with screens: laptops, external monitors, ipad, cell phone… lots of good stuff!

Recently I started moving around my picture frames to create new prints in each room. The office has silver frames in a variety of styles and I’m working on selecting the best print for each one.

The Guest Room is one I’ve covered in a lot of posts already, mostly because it’s such a fun room to work on.  I used furniture I already had on hand, like these white Ikea bookshelves I’ve had for years and an antique twin bed frame that belonged to my Grandpa George.

The side table was a $8 Salvation Army find and I love that my boxes fit in perfectly!

This quilt came from a wonderful friend as a housewarming present and I knew I had to hang it here.

I’ve also painted the room smurftastic blue, including the closet, used fabric from Ikea to sew curtains and pillows and optimized the closet space by hanging wrapping paper on small curtain rods.

Unofficially, this is the fun “kids room” because it holds all my toys. A labyrinth. A Light Bright. Lots of Legos. And more young adult and kids books than most adults would ever admit to owning.

The last bedroom is of course the Master Bedroom. While I like the size of the space, the configuration is somewhat baffling. One wall is dominated by a sliding glass door to the backyard. One wall is dominated by the closet. A third wall is divided by two doors to the hallway and bathroom. Which leaves very little room for furniture.

I covered the sliding glass door with curtains that block out the sun and insulate the room. Those were NOT an amazing deal (unlike the rest of my window coverings) because my Dad’s parents were coming to town and I had to get something up quickly so I bought what I liked, not the ones that were most affordable that I liked. Most days I use a scarf to tie the curtains in the middle so the dogs don’t fray the edges going in and outside.

My queen bed started out on the floor, then my Dad found a frame for me and 2 years later I bought a headboard. Dad installed lights above the bed for reading as part of his ‘buy and install’ Christmas present to me in 2010.

He also installed this shelf which I use to hold piggy banks and whatever I need to keep out of dog range.

On the third wall of this room I have the closet with new pretty closet curtains Mom created from an old duvet I had and a bookshelf.

The bookshelf here came from Ikea’s as is section and I assume it’s missing a few shelves. Oh well. The bottom is just enough for my magazines (nothing like the ton of magazines I used to keep – see here for pics)

The master bath started out pretty ugly – with this less than classy fish border and two toned white and purple walls.

After tearing down the fish border during my summer of 99 things (#82) I followed up by scraping the glue down and painting the walls, again Rice Grain from Sherwin Williams. Dad replaced the light switch and outlet and I replaced the slab mirror with a framed mirror from Target that was on Clearance for $28. Much better impact than the slab mirror that was up before.

There’s still a lot to get done in this small room to replace fixtures but in the meantime try to keep it clear of clutter until I can get to the heavy duty updates like replacing the sink (which has stress fractures in the bowl), new toilet and updating the floors and baseboards.

Finally we’re to the back of the house and therefore the Backyard. It’s definitely the worst space “in” the house, simply because I have destructive dogs who like to play. And when they run and play on sod it gets torn up. So while I’m constantly seeding, fertilizing and mowing, it looks pretty sad.

See dogs play? See grass die.

Thankfully Dad just fixed the wiring and we programmed the sprinklers so they go off every morning at 6am, keeping the grass that has survived this long from shriveling up in the summer heat. Now if I can just keep enough moisture OUT that I don’t get a colony of mushrooms I’d be oh so happy.

Right outside the master bedroom there’s this narrow patch of patio, I’ve considered setting up a small table and chair here, maybe I’ll find one at an end of summer clearance one year. But right now there’s not much to look at.

The roses that surround the yard here are decently healthy, I only have two that don’t produce unless threatened and another that seems to be diseased. If I dig them out it’ll certainly make more room for the dogs to lie in the dirt.

Finally the strip of grass under the guest room window has plants (detailed here) and they are thriving with the now consistent watering! I’m hoping they’ll fill in a bit more over time.

The only other project here was to move the walkway stones out to the border so there is room for plants. That took me awhile to finish last summer because the ground is so uneven.

The Side Yard is divided by a dog gate that Dad installed, it’s been helpful when I’m moving stuff in and out of the yard but since the dogs have to cross the lawn to get to the side it hasn’t helped the grass much.

The side yard is horrible. I have a lot of projects to finish and things to clean up here. You can see the pile of rocks I’m separating so that I can add sod or a bunch of flowers in pots and containers.

I did assemble my new compost barrel from Amazon which was FREE after rebate from my city. So far I’ve been throwing in dirt, leaves and kitchen scraps. The flies are flocking to it which annoys me but oh well. It’s really fun to spin.

I have a dog igloo back here but considering that my dogs never use it will probably donate or offload in a garage sale. And the grill from my Grandparents sits patiently for the day I finally dust off the cobwebs, refill the propane tank and fire ‘er up. Someday…

Last project I’m considering here is to install two trees, seven feet apart, probably white or purple crape myrtles. Not the dwarf shrub like trees, but the ones that grow 20′ tall:

I’m still debating this though and think that it would provide great shade to the east side of the house, add some interest to the side yard, the trees have slim trunks so they won’t knock out the fence and it makes the backyard more colorful.

Only trouble I’m seeing is the watering scenario (no sprinklers on that side yard) and if the soil is good enough. But that’s a project for another day!

Now we’re back through the gate to the front porch! I don’t know about you but I’m tired. That only took me a month to photograph, link, write and post! Sit down, enjoy some passion tea and thanks for visiting!