Archive for the ‘before’ Category

Trim

Friday, August 13th, 2010

Our neighbors were going to get slapped with a pretty hefty fine from the city if they didn’t trim the two overgrown trees in their front yard. When I say overgrown, I mean 10 or more years of growth totally engulfing their house; just a completely solid mass of tree. I kind of loved it since it functioned like a privacy shrub, totally obscuring their house from view.

Being a nice guy The Boy offered to trim the tree and haul it all away for our older / kooky / hot rodding / cat hoarding neighbor for a $100. It is so much tree. SO MUCH. This makes day three of the big bush trim and The Boy uncovered some lovely graffiti poetry. (BTW, I hear Steven Cruz is dreamy).

I’m psyched that this lovelorn teenage tagger decided to sign her name for all the world to know of her “like”. I would have been dying to know whose feelings these were if she hadn’t, but luckily I know who to fight with for Steve’s affections.

Here is a bit of context. I’m so glad we get to see this from our front yard from now on. Magical.

Maybe we should have just let Mr. Neighbor get slapped with the fine. It’s not like he is volunteering to fix this next hot neglected mess. I know – because we asked. He said he didn’t have the cash, but hey look at my awesome yellow $500 paint job on my hot rod. Grind Grind Grind. Cats Cats Cats.

In the meantime we are preparing the side yard for the pool and landscaping, but first thing first, we need to fix the shared fence. Damn you cat man.

This is how we fix it every few days. A board falls down, we tack it up. Perfect. Well except for the steel pole holding the fence up from collapsing.

Looks like about five of the support posts have rotted out and need replacing. Shouldn’t cost very much and we can salvage most of the wood, but it appears that we have to shoulder the cost and do all the labor.

One day you will be free Iggy, free to enjoy a landscaped side yard. Eventually. Hopefully free of cats.

Did I tell you the story about this neighbors cat that jumped out of our closet in the middle of the night? No? Well that’s about it. Big cat. Middle of the night. TERROR ensues.

FILED UNDER: before, exterior, fence, hemet, landscape

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Color Fail

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

I have all these big plans for the master bedroom redo (version 5.0) but things are going a bit awry. What a sad bed. Enjoy these fascinating mid point shots of progress despair.

I had convinced myself that I wanted a dark navy blue wall in the master bedroom with a warm caramel colored leather headboard and some fabulous light gray linens. Well I tested out “Deep Space” from Behr which seemed promising “in theory” but turned out a little too peacocky and dark for my taste. I know, right! I was the one who totally wanted a dark navy pretty desperately. Unfortunately, now that it’s on the wall for real it feels way too dark and not at all what I had hoped for. It also might be a tad too matchy matchy with the black wall in the guest bedroom.

Oh well. No big deal.

Luckily it was easily painted over with my new tester of “Ash”. Which, BTW, I just finished putting up and is looking very promising. Hopefully it stays looking like the shit when the sun is out.

So, bedroom plans are changing. I’m having a couple of fantasies about building some things. Furniture type things…

FILED UNDER: bedroom, before

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Garage Doors

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

Hey look! Remember when our garage doors were awful? Yeah, I sure do.

Original to the house, they haven’t been taken care of at all over the years. Peeling paint, giant holes, ghetto closures, warped wood…pretty much every horrible thing possible. They were in rough shape.

Now that most of the exterior painting is almost complete it was time to address the garage doors. We can’t afford new garage doors right now, but we could afford about $50 worth of materials to patch them up and paint them black. Behr Ultra Pure Black for the curious (in a semi-gloss).

First thing first. The Boy removed all the hardware, extra nails and broken bits of rotted wood. He sanded down the paint and patched all the damaged nooks and crannies. Seems like sixty years can fuck a door up.

All that white. That’s the exterior wood filler. Each door needed a couple of coats of patching and some major sanding work.

He got the first coat of black on the right door to see how it looked and then it was time to patch up all the wood edging (which was equally as damaged).

Here it is about halfway through. One door done, the other ready for paint. The trim was also getting patched up.

BEFORE

AFTER

The doors are painted and the trim is patched and ready for more of the white paint we’ve used on the entire house. Six five gallon buckets of it so far.

Bam! Sort of done. Almost.

There is still a bit of touch-up and a couple of spots that need paint. The Boy sort of gave up after he stepped in the five gallon bucket of paint while climbing down the ladder.

Yeah.

Seriously.

Like up to his calf in white paint.

Ruined his flip flop and everything.

Gotta say the painted doors are much better than the before though. All that boring prep work was really vital to get the shiny black looking killer. Now I’m thinking we don’t need to replace the doors after all. You know what I can’t wait for? I can’t wait till we are done with exterior projects and all the ugly tools and buckets and STUFF that accumulates can go away forever. I can’t remember a time when the exterior was clean and truly free of clutter or weeds or ugly crap just scattered everywhere. One day. I hope. Before this house kills us.

FILED UNDER: after, before, exterior, garage

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