Little Upgrades Giving a Big Difference

This summer I took the opportunity to give our house a little upgrade in the front. Below is how it looked before - the stain on the wood was faded, if not completely weathered off, and the poles looked like they may begin to rot soon.

I stripped off all the old stain - and that was no small task. One day project the products said, humph! Took me almost a week of sanding after work.  The screen door was the hardest part, with all the little nook and crevices. 

I thought about going back to the original 'cedar' stained colour. But I wanted a change - if you're going through all the effort, why not give it a new look? This dark brown semi-translucent stain has a slight touch of grey to it. Love the greyed browns! I painted the numbers white so that they stood out a lot more than before - make us a little easier to find :)

I think it worked out well, and now our house looks a little more like ours. Next: painting the front door and garage door a nice, neutral blue. :)

Our Home - Before and After Our Painting Extravaganza

It has been a winter wonderland at our house this past week - we have gotten  a lot of snow. Which is good - soon it is snowboarding season!! So excited!! Even more exciting is that we are now all done the painting in our house, finally! Below are all the after pics, enjoy :)

Master Bathroom After: We painted is a lovely  grey-purple. The blinds were already there.
A few future upgrades will be a nice mirror, and maybe the blinds.

Master Bedroom After: a nice, deep turquoise. It goes wonderfully with our brown
linens, and painting the trim / doors white made a world of difference! 

Our hallway After

Upstairs Bathroom After - a nice, light sea foam colour

Living Room After - we kept the green idea, and just picked a bit brighter of a colour.
It's a very empty room, I know :) All our actual living room stuff from our
other house is in the downstairs living space (couches, larger tv, shelves, ect)

The view going into the kitchen.

Kitchen After: It's the same blue as in the bathroom, but with all the light it
looks more vivid blue in this picture than it really is. There is still painting mess all in
this picture on the counter (tools and such)...oh well lol. 

Our kitchen "nook" - just so much natural light, I love it! But it makes it
hard to get a nice picture of it :)

We are so happy that this fairly large project is done, and our house is now more our home. It wasn't just painting walls - we had to paint doors and trim - so it was quite the project. But it's done, and now we get to enjoy our labours :D We didn't paint the downstairs, as it was more recently painted by the owners, and the colours were more suited to use - so that cut an already large project down a little bit. 

You can also tell from the photos, that some of the spaces are quite "bare" - that's what happens when you move from a crazy small space into a huge space - you don't have enough stuff! LOL. But I'm okay with it. I know over time, we will accumulate items, and slowly decorate and build these spaces up. I don't want to rush into it too much, because I want to be sure. Shortly though, we will start hanging stuff on the walls - photos and paintings - and that will make a world of difference in itself :)

Home Renovations: Good-Bye Wallpaper

After night shift yesterday, and a short nap, I went over to the house to meet up with James and some wonderful, wonderful friends. We started cleaning up the house, to make it spotless for when we move all our stuff in - to get a nice fresh and clean start in our new house. One of the smaller projects, which I actually quite enjoyed (especially after spending most the day cleaning out bathrooms), was taking down all the wall paper borders in the house - with the exception of the one in the kitchen, because others were cleaning there and there just wasn't room for me.  

The border in the bedroom was nice, it just peeled right off like a vinyl sticker. No elbow grease required there. The other's were a little more tricky, but not horrible to get off. Here's how I did it:

Removing wallpaper borders:

1. Peel off the design part - the top of the border should come off easily, leaving behind it's underpart which is still stuck to the wall, as you can see in the above photo.
2. Steam it - if you have a steamer. If you don't, a spray bottle with warm to hot water will work just as well. Your arm will just get a work out from spraying it so much. I used a steamer for some, and a spritz bottle for others - both worked equally
3. Make sure the wall paper is good and soaked through - if it's still dry in places, make it wet. Having it all soaked through with water is the key
4. Take a scraper and make a mess! This isn't a "clean" job. Scrape all the wall paper off, and it will come off nice and clean. Just work your way around, making the paper wet and then scraping it off
5. Clean up left over residue with a sponge or towel. 

And that's it...all off! :)