The Best Upgrades are Free!

The house has taken over life! (In a good way.) I thought I’d make a laundry list of some of the little things we have been tackling around the house!

My parents were here a few weekends ago and helped us with some housework. The Engineer and my dad hung 8 sets of blinds (I think). They made such a big difference! There were a lot of windows with little fabric panels on them or a see through covering which is not cool at night when you are in display. The new blinds look wonderful and still let all the light in when we want it.

My mom helped me clean, prime, and paint this wall.

Can you tell I forgot to take a before picture?!

We didn't really like the look of the wood finish, but I knew if we just painted it white it would look like brand new bead board. And it does! This was a free upgrade too because the previous owners left us a bunch of paint in the shed. Some of it was completely dried up, but it is great to have some of the matching paint for the house for free! I actually really like this wall now! We have the same stuff on the entire back wall of the sun room and I CANNOT WAIT to get my brush on it!

I also recently got that blue wood box to use as a shoe basket. It isn't the typical shoe basket, which I love, and it’s not huge or deep encouraging the pile up of shoes.

After I painted the little wood accent wall I found the interface between that and the adjacent trim to be dismal at best, so I carried the white paint on the trim a little farther :)

Sooooo much better!

Another free upgrade was the removal of some odd items in the backyard.

On trash day I included the old ‘protected by Brinks’ sign (which why it was on the inside of the fence I’m not too sure haha), that wonderful massive saw blade, a padlock which was locked with no key in sight, a metal Mexico dish, and a one-eyed metal frog (not pictured). Some of these things are kinda cool on their own, but all together I didn't like the look it all gave off. I also took down a hand painted sign from the shop (and by hand painted I mean finger painted) that said something along the lines of defending your right to protect yourself. Not fancy. The trash can loved it though!

Now all we have is our knight in shining…errr…rusted armor. I like him though. I think he needs a name.

There has also been a lot of cleaning going on. There was A LOT of dog hair left in the house for us, so I've been looking for every nook and cranny trying to get rid of all of it! Cleaning things makes me smile after the fact even if I am a grump through the process. I don’t like dust and old dog hair.

I’ll save some of the little additions to the house for another time. My current project is working on an upgrade to our closet doors. I’m pretty excited for this one because I am not the biggest fan of old sliding closet doors.