Curb Appeal

When we bought our house 4 years ago, it had nice, mature landscaping so I've always thought our house has pretty good curb appeal. That is, everything except the front porch! (well really it's a front stoop I guess because it's smaller than a porch) Anyway, when we moved in, and for about 3 years, our little front stoop was covered in green outdoor carpet. You know, that looks like turf. Yeah, I can definitely say it was not my favorite! You can barely see it in this photo but it was covering the stoop and both steps.

 

Well, this past fall I decided I had had enough of the green stuff. Plus, it was getting some tears in it because Dodger, my baby, could be a little rough on it when we're playing fetch. I couldn't possibly get mad at this face though :)

 

So back to my project- I thought I'd just rip up the old carpet, maybe sand the surface a little, and then paint the concrete, all in an afternoon's work. Negative. I did rip it off in just a few minutes but was left with all of the adhesive and chipping paint from when it used to be a rose/ red-ish color?! I quickly discovered this would not be a 1 afternoon job!

I had heard that fabric softener is good at removing adhesive so I tried this first. It worked ok, but there were several places that the adhesive just wasn't coming off. So of to Home Depot I went! I got some chemical remover that's for adhesive and a scraper. I think I worked on this for about 3 days, scraping the porch every morning before I went to work. I never thought I would finish! 

Once I got all of the adhesive and chipped paint off and had a smooth surface, I rolled on a primer made just for concrete. Then I painted it black with Behr porch/ floor paint from HD. Sorry for the lack of in-progress picture but here is the after.

It looks SOOO much better than the green carpet, don't ya think?! 

Well fast forward several months to this past weekend. I finally got Matthew to replace the outdoor light. Here is the old, dirty one that had probably been here since the house was built in the 50s.

 

Yeah, it was pretty gross! Here's the new one, that we bought here, after Matthew wired/ hung it.

So I thought this was a definite improvement for the little stoop! Here are some other accessories we've added: 

A little front door bling

Now complete with flowers, flag, and fern. Wow, say that 5 times fast!

Now the only problem is that I've had this fern hanging for less than a week and already found this:

Every time I hang a fern or flowers out here, some little bird decides it's the perfect place for it's nest! So I'm waiting on these little guys to hatch and fly away and am hoping the fern doesn't die in the meantime...

For Sale!

Yep, you guessed it, our house is for sale! We put it on the market about 2 weeks ago so if you know of anyone looking for a house in Tuscaloosa, please let them know about ours.

We have it listed For Sale By Owner so you can't find it on mls but here's a copy of our flyer:

Upcyled Thrifted Picture

I was browsing a local thrift store yesterday and saw this for only $6:

It's large frame size made me think about the vintage map I picked up on my trip to Savannah and realize that I still haven't framed it! Remember, this one:

I really had no use for the floral "February" print that was currently in this frame so I was excited to get it home and find that my vintage map fit perfectly! Fail. Yeah, my map was 2-3 inches too small so I was bummed for about 2 seconds. Then I remembered I recently pinned this on Pinterest:

I pinned this for the bottom frame- using ribbon and pins to display photos. Since my new frame didn't work out for what I had originally planned, I thought this might be a good one to try this. So I removed the backing and was left with this:

After taking it out to the garage, I sprayed 2 coats of red on the frame. You might be wondering, why did I choose red? Because I already owned it and didn't have to go to the store, haha!

After I painted it, I shopped around Hancock Fabrics for some fabric to use for the background. Another option would be to use scrapbook paper, wrapping paper, really anything with a design that you like. I went with this print:

The reason I chose this fabric is the white background and muted turquoise color print. I didn't want to use anything too busy because, after all, this is to display photos- I'm not wanting to display the fabric. Luckily, the fabric was on sale and I got a yard for less than $7! Next stop was HD for some jute. Got this roll for less than $3 and I know I will use it again!

To cover the backing of the frame in fabric, I used the same method I used when upholstering the headboard for the guest room (find that here) The only difference is that I didn't use my staple gun- believe me, I tried, and I stapled my cardboard to the floor! Haha. So I just used a regular old stapler. You could also use a spray adhesive.

 And here it is all stapled:

Next I had to attach my jute strings to hold the photos. I just eyeballed where I would want them to hang and stapled the jute on the back. I did leave a little slack in the string because I wanted it to look a little more casual.

Finally, I inserted the backing into the frame, added my photos with clothespins, and voila:

FYI, this is the 3rd bedroom that I posted about yesterday. The wall with the desk is directly behind the fireplace.

 

So that's my craft project for this week! What do ya think? It came a long way from this:

Before

After

Total breakdown for this project:

Framed picture- $6
Red spray paint- already owned
1 yard of fabric- $7
Jute- $3
Clothespins- already owned

Total cost: $16

Check out this post on Shabby Chic Cottage

Lovin' the doors!

So this post is about 2 months late but it's one of those I just forgot about. Probably because it took place about a week before the tornado and just got lost in the shuffle my brain. Our little house was sold to us as a 3 bedroom, but when we tried selling it last year, our realtor said we couldn't list it as that because the 3rd bedroom was just a walk-through room from the hallway to the kitchen. It had no doors or closets. Here it is when we moved in- sorry for the lack of a better picture:

The left side has the doorway to the hall and the right side has the doorway to the kitchen. This room is the bigger of the 3 bedrooms and it has a fireplace, so it definitely is great to work with! First, we painted it a sage color- can't remember the name but it's just very natural and neutral. The previous owners had added a cheap shelving solution on each side of the fireplace which we used in the beginning for books, dvds, a bar, etc... We finally decided to turn those into 2 closets and use floor-to-ceiling length curtains for closet doors. This was a pretty cheap project because we only had to buy 2 short closet rods from HD- I think they cost around $6 each, and 2 96" curtain panels on sale from World Market, and 2 tension rods.

So we had the closets taken care of- now we just needed some doors! I knew exactly what I wanted but had to convince the hubby. I wanted to hang single french doors but he thought there would be a privacy issue. I assured him that we could simply hang shades on the doors to provide privacy for our not-so-frequent guests. I didn't want to hang slab doors because I was afraid it would close off the flow too much.

View from the kitchen to the third room

View from the hallway into the third room

I finally convinced Matthew to go with the glass-paned doors but he doesn't own the necessary tools to hang a door, insert knobs, etc... nor does he have the time right now. I felt that this project was just a little out of my league so enter a friend/ contractor. He and his partner spent pretty much a whole day at the house hanging these doors and working on a few other small projects! Here is what they left us with:

I was so excited to finally have these doors- I have wanted them since we moved in! We went with the oil rubbed bronze hardware and I LOVE it! So I guess that means I need to change out the doorknobs on the other doors, haha!

Thankfully, these doors come with plastic over the glass inserts! This definitely helped the painting process, which was a little too tedious for me, but I got er' done in an afternoon. 2 coats of paint on each side of each door = too much painting, even for me! Here's how they looked with the plastic still on:

And now for the afters! I recruited the hubby to help me take off the plastic wrap from each insert, which saved a little time. Although it was some hard work, and a little more costly since we had someone hang them for us, I am very happy with the results!!

Hopefully I'll be changing those out curtains out soon because we're expecting a new arrival for this room! No, we're not having a baby, but we are getting this soon:

Yep, we're waiting for the arrival of our new Window Daybed from West Elm. It was a gift from my mother-in-law! We actually ordered it in March but it's been on backorder:( It's supposed to be back in stock next Friday. So I'm wanting to change out the decor in this room a little- starting with the curtains. This is the room we plan to use for a nursery when the time comes, so at least we're getting a jump start on it! I haven't really decided on the colors/ decor yet, but I'll let ya know!