Baseball Teams in Our Backyard

I'm having way too much fun with my new camera. Especially the 12x zoom lens. You can't tell from the pictures but these birds were about 100 feet from our house on the trees by our back fence. Steve brought home a few bird feeders and we put them in our backyard and we are attracting so many neat birds! We have a resident Cardinal and Blue Jay, all we need is an Oriole and we will have a baseball team trifecta!

Welcome to Our Pot-tay

We've been doing some 'mini face lifts' around the house where needed. One of those spots was the downstairs guest bathroom. While the bathroom itself was fine, it just wasn't exactly our taste. We tend to gravitate towards the more modern look of darker wood, grays & khakis, etc. While there was nothing falling apart or in bad shape in this bathroom the 1980's laminate oak doors just aren't our thang. So in true Berlin Wall fashion we chose a fresh coat of paint on the walls, new paint and hardware on the vanity and a few new accessories. (Actually the accessories were not new, just recycled from another area of the house) So without further ado...

BEFORE:

















Please excuse the blue painters tape. I always forget to take a true before picture. By this point I had already removed the existing towel bar and started taping.

AFTER:

















And yes, if you are one of those people who pays attention to detail I am wearing the same pajamas in both the before and after pic. What can I say, they are really comfy!

Close up of the vanity and hardware

Better shot of the wall color. A custom mix of Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter.

Powder Room Blues

When we first moved into our house we knew what the first project we had to tackle was....our Master Bathroom. You can see the before pic above. From the looks of this picture it doesn't look so bad. However, on closer inspection you would notice how disgusting the bathroom vanity cabinets were! Now if I showed you the before and after picture you wouldn't think we did much to them. So I will show you the blood, sweat, tears, (cursing, crying and wining) that went into this project! The previous owners decided to paint the standard builder grade oak cabinets white. But what they neglected to do was do it the right way. The cabinets were peeling and sticky from not using the right paint to stand up to bathroom humidity. Plus they were not painted evenly at all. I don't think they even primed them before they had their blind son do the painting! :)

We looked into replacing the vanity but came to find out that it is a custom piece, not something standard you can buy at Home Depot or Lowes. So instead we decided to re-paint them (the correct way). First we (Steve) had to strip all the paint off which took foreva people!!!

Next we (Steve) sanded them. We don't have an electric sander so we (Steve) had to do it all by hand....ouch!

Then we (Steve) had to prime them...twice! These little suckers would just eat up the primer the second we put it on. Hungry little devils! Next we (Steve) had to paint them. Since we don't have a paint sprayer we had to do it all by hand and it took a long time. We decided to paint them a nice, crisp, clean, neutral white. This is why we couldn't just show you the before and after photos. It would look like we didn't do anything. Once all the paint dried we (Steve) replaced the hinges and re-installed the doors. We (Me, finally) bought new hardware and installed them to the doors.

AFTER:

The project ended up being more labor intensive then we originally thought but in the end we are very pleased with how it turned out. Especially because a new vanity is a few hundred dollars and we spent about $50 on paint, primer and new hardware. You can't beat that! Next we are going to replace the floor with ceramic tile or slate and we may change the paint color as well.

Discalimer: No husband was abused, harmed or neglected while completing this project. I had to add this disclamer because it sounds like I'm a slave driver making Steve do all the hard work. But you have to know that Steve is a perfectionist and when he starts a project he thinks that he is the "only one" that can do it the right way. Yeesh!!! So he basically boots me out of the project. At first I was offended. Especially because this project was all my idea. But after my 2nd glass of wine, relaxing on the couch, eating bon-bons, catching up on my soaps...just kidding, I don't watch soap operas. LOL No seriously, I got over being offended and let him do his thing. All his hard work came out amazing and I'm sooooo lucky to have such a HANDY husband! (That last sentence was 100% for Steve). Love you babe!

Show and Tell (By Force)

We have tried (desperately) to wait until our house was more finished or decorated to our taste before posting photos of the house. We really wanted to do a before and after post to show off all our blood, sweat and tears. However, all of our family and friends have gotten quite restless with the waiting. Seriously, some family members have resorted to threats of violence if we don't post some photos soon! So instead of waiting until all our work is done, because frankly, I don't think it will ever be totally done, here are some MLS photos of the house from before we moved in. All of the furniture and wall colors are the previous owners. Stay tuned for our before and after post. We have been quite busy making lots of changes. Some big, some small. Oh and don't forget to leave your comments!!!! ENJOY!

Maybe The Dingo Ate Your Baby

Remember our brand new landscaping job? All new plants and fresh, new hostas? Remember all the sweat and tears that went into removing the gravel, replanting and mulching? So imagine our horror when we woke up this morning to find our brand new hosta EATEN! Yes, you read that correctly, it was eaten. By a rabbit!

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Apparently, the cute little bunny rabbits that we have seen all over our neighborhood and back yard are notorious for eating everything plant and grass related in its path. Now being that this girl grew up in South Florida and the only rabbits I have had experience with are either in pet stores or at the fair, how would I know to be wary about this? I quickly scoured the Internet for rabbit ridding secrets. I read everything from planting garlic or cucumbers to repel rabbits to scattering your dogs hair or peeing (yes, peeing!) on your bushes to keep rabbits away. Since I assume our neighbors might not adjust so well to us urinating all over our front lawn I figured there must be a better solution. With one quick phone call to our landscaping guru friend who lives in Richmond, he immediately said, "run, don't walk to your nearest Lowes to pick up, Liquid Fence." He said that the little bugger and his hosta eating riff raff rabbit friends would be back tonight to finish off the job if we didn't act fast. So that's exactly what we did!

Never did I think I would live somewhere where I would have to buy Deer and Rabbit Repellent to spray on my front lawn!

Speaking of deer, the other night I came home to find 5 deer on our lawn eating away at our grass. How crazy is that? A soon as I turned in they galloped away into the neighboring forest. Guess this little puppy will get a lot of use at our new house!

Does anyone know if our little hosta will recover from its brutal devouring?

Our new home!

It's been almost 2 weeks since we moved into our new home and we LOVE IT! Oh yea, totally bold worthy love here! Our home was built about 12 years ago and though certain things are modern and up to date other things were either neglected or left back in the 90's along with acid wash jeans and feathered bangs. A few people have asked me if we need to do any work to the place? My answer is this: Yes and No. Helpful right? Here's the break down. Yes, there is a ton of work that we 'would love' to do to our new home. Woods floors, granite counters, extend the back deck, new kitchen appliances, paint the outside of the house a different color. The list goes on and on. Then there is a shorter list of smaller (less costly) things that we would like to do to the house as soon as possible. Changing things that are not our style or things that need updating. Luckily the house is in great condition and nothing is broken or not working. Everything is minor, cosmetic details to get the house to where we would like it. One of the 'cosmetic' things on the list was the very first thing we tackeled about 6 hours after we moved in. The front lawn. Our front lawn used to look like a cemetery to me. Two layers of white concrete stone, white concrete lions, white rock/stone in all the plant beds instead of mulch and totally dead plants. A total cemetery, sterile feel, in my opinion. So Steve and I, err, and by 'Steve and I, I mean I had the vision and Steve had the muscles, decided to rip out the whole prison/cemetery theme they had going on in the front yard and just replace a few plants and mulch it to warm it up. We didn't want to go crazy since winter is just a few short months away (sigh) and we figured that next spring we will finish. So without further adieu here is the MLS picture of the house before:










I wish we had a better picture of the detail of the front yard. However, we literally moved in and the very next day starting ripping the yard up. I didn't even think to take a good "before" photo until it was too late. This photo was from the MLS listing. You can see the bench, sort of make out the 2 lions, the dead plants and of course the piled high stone trim the previous owners loved so much.

and here is the after:



































Hopefully by next spring our new baby plants will have grown some and will be the same height as the other more mature plants. This will make it look much more manicured and nice.





Totally warmer right? We were so amazed how a few plants and fresh mulch could totally transform the look of the front of the house. We removed the top (second) layer of stone around the beds, removed all the rock/gravel that was in the beds, removed the stone lions and stone bench from the front yard as well. We dug up all the dead plants and tried to salvage a few of the plants that were still semi-alive. Hopefully, we can bring them back to life and make them look good. And the best part? All the rock/gravel that took Steve 2 days to remove was picked up the very next day by the lucky winner of a craigslist auction. We offered free landscaping rock/gravel in return for coming to pick it up and take it away asap. Free labor folks! Does it get any better?


Stay tuned for more house updates. We still have a few more things we would like to do to the front lawn before winter and we have also started to tackle a new project in our master bathroom! Ah, the joys of home ownership!

THE BIG NEWS

We're officially Virginia Beach homeowners!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!











We are soooo excited! We have been moving, unpacking boxes and settling in, but I promise to post pictures really soon!!!