Our First House: Deck/Patio Redo

I'm going to start by showing the AFTER photo of our deck/patio renovation from our first house...

because if I showed you the BEFORE picture first, 

you might be so horrified that you wouldn't even want to read the rest of this post!

I'm not exaggerating. It was that bad.

Are you ready for it??

 Yes, that is astro-turf around the hot tub.

And a beautiful plastic lattice wall for privacy.

The patio was super uneven and cracked all over,

surrounded by weeds,

and just plain hideous.

We ripped out the astro-turf deck-type thing as soon as we moved in.

It just grossed me out.
I refused to step on that thing with bare feet when getting in and out of the hot tub.

We weren't quite sure what to do with the patio.

I wanted a new, smooth, level patio.

Jacob said that would entail ripping up the existing patio first.

Not something we wanted to tackle. WAY too much labor.

So eventually we agreed to build a new, large deck right over the top of the old patio.

It took a lot of hours, a lot of wood, and a lot of teamwork.

There was also a lot of improvising.

In hindsight, we should have planned it out better.

We had a plan (sort of) and a rough sketch, but nothing too detailed,

which created a lot of frustration.

We should have had a solid design drawn out, complete with measurements and dimensions,

but we sure learned a lot just flying by the seat of our pants!

 

That hard-working man sure is handsome :)

The doggies thoroughly enjoyed the new deck. They spent many a hours sunbathing on it.

After we were finished building the deck, we stained it with a stain/water sealer in one.

Since it was mid-summer when we did this, 

we had to wait until late in the evening to put the stain on so it didn't dry too fast (hence the dark photo).

While the stain looked good for a few months, it did not withstand the fall and winter elements of the Pacific Northwest (and the dogs running on it) and unfortunately it looked like absolute crap by the time spring rolled around.

So after pressure washing and cleaning it up, 

we decided to go with a brown deck paint that was supposed to be more durable.

We put on two coats and again it looked good for a few months, 

then fall and winter came and did their thang.

We ended up having to repaint every spring.

Uuuugggghhhh.

But during the summers it sure looked good and 

we spent lots of time outside enjoying our beautiful deck.

 

And now in our current house, we have another deck redo on the horizon.

Our deck is one of those cheap, tiny decks that builders slap in when they build a new house.

 

The kids and I spend a lot of time outside on our tiny deck, so please excuse their water play table.

And just pretend you don't see all of the weeds below...

It's definitely going to need an expansion.

But this time, we're going to thoroughly plan it out first and 

hopefully use Trex decking so we don't' have to worry about staining or painting it every single summer.

I wouldn't mind a pergola on top either!

I'll let you know how it goes!

Our First House: Kitchen Remodel

My favorite project that we did in our first house was the kitchen, hands down.

It was the biggest transformation.

But it was also the most difficult project.

And the most expensive one too.

But oh, what a difference in made in the whole look of the house!

Here it was in all of its hideousness before we bought it.

I cringe just looking at those pictures.
That was one UGLY kitchen!

We started out by painting the walls a sage-ish green,
removing the ceiling fan (who puts a ceiling fan in the middle of a tiny kitchen!?) and
replaced the door to the garage with a solid-core white one.

Then we tore out the heinous pink and cream linoleum and the taupe carpet

and replaced it with real hardwood that we found in the clearance section at Lowe's.

That made a huge difference!

But it also made the cabinets look even uglier.

In hindsight, we should have torn out the kitchen cabinets first, then replaced the flooring because the new cabinets didn't exactly line up with where the old ones had been on the floor. We ended up having a gap on the floor between the the cabinets and the hardwood flooring.
OR
We should have saved some of the flooring to put in the gap after we replaced the cabinets.
Luckily, it was nothing a little molding couldn't cover up.

After adding in recessed lights to brighten up the kitchen,

the real work began.

If anyone ever tells you it is easy to demo and replace kitchen cabinets,

they're out of their mind!

And be prepared to live in absolute disarray until you can get it all put back together again.

We had already replaced the dishwasher and were planning to replace the fridge too, 

but the stove was brand new when we bought the house. 

However, while we were removing the upper cabinets, 

we dropped one onto our glass-top stove and put a big ol' crack in it.

Don't you just hate when that happens!?

We found out that replacing the glass top would cost us almost as much as it would to just buy a new stove.

I would have preferred stainless steel appliances over white, 

but since the white stove had been new, we had already purchased a new white dishwasher. UUUUGGGHHHH!

So we were stuck with the white.

But I guess the white made the tiny kitchen seem a bit bigger.

The HARDEST part was hanging the upper cabinets.

I had to hold the humongous things up (and keep them level) 

with my scrawny arms while Jacob screwed them in.

We had a very hard time locating the studs to screw them into, 

so our new cabinets ended up with a few more screw holes than needed.

Thank goodness for wood putty!

Then we learned that you can cut out a strip of the drywall and attach a long board to the studs so that you can screw your cabinets into the board instead of trying to drill into the studs through the cabinets.
It will all get hidden once you hang

the cabinets anyways.

That made things MUCH easier!

The base cabinets were much easier to install. 

We didn't have to hold them up in place and 

we finally got the hang of what we were doing.

We ended up going with a laminate for the counters.

We figured it wasn't cost-effective for us to do granite because 

we probably wouldn't see a return on our investment if we spent that much.

We got a nice stone-looking laminate with beveled edges.

It looked really good.

It fooled a lot of people; most thought it was corian.

However, (there's always a however, isn't there?) 

it turned out our walls were not straight,

so the new laminate backsplash had a big gap between it and the wall.

I'm talking big here. 

So big I could stick my whole hand down behind it.

 We never did figure out how to fix that.

It wasn't too noticeable if you put some accessories in front of it :).

I loved that big sink. 

You could wash a (small) dog in it,

a whole cookie sheet,

a baby,

 or a big baking dish.

We're definitely going to have to put one of those in our new house.

I miss that sink.

And here are the after pictures...

 

See that big, new fridge?

It was much bigger than the old, crappy one that we inherited with the house.

So much bigger it blocked the door to the garage (yes we measured first!), 

but once we got it home it just didn't work.

So Jacob and his dad had to cut an alcove into the wall behind the fridge to make it fit.

And that required rewiring and replumbing.

And putting up new drywall.

What a headache!

But it turned out very nicely!

It was A LOT of hard work and 

it took A LOT of time,

but we were SO pleased with the results!

Here's the transformation one more time...

 

Our First House

This was our first house.

All 1,080 square feet of it.

 We lived in that tiny house for 5 years and remodeled every square inch of it,

from the roof all the way down to the flooring. And we did everything ourselves. 

Yes, even the roof.

This is what it looked like when we bought it in 2004.

 Wasn't it hideous!?

I remember the first night we slept in it. I remember thinking  

We just spent a whole bunch of money on a total piece of crap.

Well five years later, after a whole LOT of DIY work 

and a ton of lessons learned (mostly what NOT to do),

we sold our first little house.

Due to all of our hard work, 

it sold after only 5 days on the market (in a terrible economy)!!

Thanks to our first little house, we were able to buy a much, much bigger home

to house our family of five. A home that I LOVE.

 Don't get me wrong. I loved our first little house too, 

but only after we put lots and lots of work into it.

Since we sold the house as soon as we finished all of the remodeling, 

I never got to show off what we did.

So anyways, I thought I'd share some of the improvements 

we made to our first house every now and then, 

along with the lessons we learned along the way.

Stay tuned...