Goodbye Summer, It's Been Swell

So summer's officially ending. I'm a little bit sad. We spent the whole thing working on the outside of the house.. the painting, the deck, the pool. I feel like we barely got to sit down and enjoy any of that hard work. Auh well, I can't complain because the outside is looking fan-freaking-tastic and we all made some memories we won't soon forget. Seriously though, next summer all we have to do is paint the garage and landscape.. lots and lots of landscaping.. but the house, it's done! Man, does that feel nice. Now it's on to lots of messy drywall finishing. I for-see a solid 6 months of cleaning white powder off of every visible surface in my home. After that comes the floor refinishing. It should be exciting figuring out how to move every piece of furniture in the house off of the floors for a week. I think I'll go on vacation during that particular renovation. Psh, I wish.

Alright, alright on to the good stuff.. I know all anyone really wants to see is PICTURES! So here they are.

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After

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Aaron always puts his own touch on things <3.

Aaron, me and my Dad headed out to dinner after a long day

of working on the deck. Thanks for your help Dad! 

Coming Full Circle- One Year

One year ago my husband and I set out on what is sure to be the biggest feat of our lives. We have slaved over this house and spent countless hours and long weekends doing nothing but tedious labor. While most people our age work their asses off all week long and relax on the weekend, we crave said weekends so that we may have uninterrupted days to get things done. We beat ourselves up if those two days pass by and we don't feel like we've accomplished enough.

Are we where I thought we'd be as far as progress a year from the day we bought this house? No, and I am totally fine with that. I have learned more in this last year than I have in many years combined and above all of the lessons I've been taught, patience has been the most valuable. I have learned to slow down in this life. I have learned to love and appreciate the here and now, something I have struggled with for a long time.

We spent the last two weekends really in awe of the beauty of this house and the beauty of our lives. Two weekends ago, all of my loved one's gathered at my house on my birthday to help paint. It was more fun than I could have imagined and incredibly touching. We laughed and drank and took pictures and even did a little painting. I felt so loved that day, I will never forget it. Last weekend, we celebrated our two year wedding anniversary and coincidentally, the one year anniversary of the purchasing of this house. Two memories I hold near and dear. Aaron woke me up Monday morning to let me know that he had just put the finishing touches on the front porch and that the house was finally ready to be photographed. We waited till that evening and had a mini photo shoot to celebrate both anniversaries at once.



Bright eyed and bushy tailed cause we had no idea what the eff we were in for!

Two years of crazy marriage :).

Before ^

After ^



I've Got a Vision

This is pretty much what my house looks like today (minus the ridiculously long grass)

It's a beautiful house really. We have thirty plus windows, a handful of interesting butt-outs, a sunroom, awesome deck and screened in porch. All great aesthetically. By no means a rambler. The house's great qualities, are however, all too hard to notice next to the sun faded, blue exterior, rotting trim, and overflowing gutters. It is no doubt, she needs some TLC.

My dad has been talking about coming down for a visit and helping us paint the whole thing come spring. He finally told me a few weeks ago that he'd officially be coming the weekend before memorial day. My birthday weekend! So then my little brain started coming up with ways to spend time with dad, paint my house and also have a fantastic birthday. That's when I came up with this ultra fabulous plan, PAINT PARTY! I sent out my mass text yesterday so it is official. May twenty-first, this pig is getting more than just a little lipstick.

Now on to the fun stuff. What color to paint it? I am so not good with paint choices. The only room that's been painted is our bathroom and it's on our to-do list to be repainted. The grayish purple turned lavender was not what I had in mind. So, I'm kind of  sort of freaking out about picking a color for the entire house.

I love yellow, I love it so, so, so much! It makes me happy. I'm automatically drawn to anything yellow, yellow flats, yellow sundresses, yellow bags, yellow, yellow, yellow. My wedding color? You guessed it, yellow. Oh, what's that you say? You want to see a picture of my gorgeous yellow wedding?? Okay.

Those are my sister in laws, beautiful huh? Anyways.

I AM GOING TO PAINT MY HOUSE YELLOW! I think, with some moral support and after I change my mind 12743985 times.

This is my vision. Buttery yellow siding, very similar to my bridesmaids dresses, not quite white, more cream than white trim, black front door, black shutters (which we'll have to buy, currently the house has none), light gray stain for the porch floor and the front concrete stairs, that same cream for the railings and a black farm style fence with an arbor framing each side of the house. Can you see it? Are you with me?

Here are some photo's I've found to help us all keep said vision:

I like both of these yellows a lot and how cute is the one below with all

the window boxes and overflowing flowers everywhere? Le sigh.

And a fence, similar to this:

with one of these on each side of the house.. all covered in roses. Le sigh again.

Long Time, No Update

Well, it's been about 7 months since my last renovation update. Everyday someone asks me "So are you finished with your house yet?", to which I normally respond by laughing out loud and then bursting into tears. So let me address this question here, once and for all. WE WILL NEVER FINISH THIS DAMN HOUSE! Eh, so maybe I'm exaggerating but seriously, we are nowhere near done. I feel like we've barely started.

We have, however, completed 2 major projects since my last blog post. We gutted the entire basement. This project alone took us from August until October. We did all of the labor ourselves mostly, with the occasional help from friends and family (which we so appreciated). We also ran all new electrical in the entire house. I say we, but my only involvement was the occasional getting up off of the couch to help Aaron pull a wire through a tricky spot. So we have eliminated two deadly threats in this house. The crazy wiring that threatened to combust at any moment and burn the entire house to the ground (there were times I wished it would) and the potentially toxic mold and asbestos in the basement (although I'm sure to have several types of cancer after breathing in that shit for as long as I did).

See the pretty pictures!! (I know, not so exciting.)

Some of the scariness that was our basement. 

 About two-thirds of the way done gutting it all.

The trash bags I mostly carried all by myself. They're filled with moldy drywall.

The finished product. This is exactly what it looks like today.

This disturbing picture shows what was powering our house.

And now look, glorious!