A New Record

For filthiness. Yesterday Jeff and I spent 10 hours in the yard trying to get the whole "curb appeal" thing rolling for our now on-the-market house. I've done a fairly good job of keeping up the yard over the past three years, but there are things I've let slip since we started working on the porch - thus the 10 year marathon to get everything back in order. After an early morning dump run to clean out the garage, I spent the remainder of the day weeding beds, trimming hedges, strategically placing 16 bags of pine nuggets and 7 bales of pine straw, planting flowers, helping Jeff and mowing. Jeff secured the landscaping timbers for me, braced the porch, finished and stained the rest of the lattice and power washed the walkway. Now most of you know, if you spend any amount of time working in the yard you are going to get sweaty and nasty, which we did. But the real filth yesterday came from having to crawl UNDER the porch, amongst all of the spider webs, muddobbers and clay, and shimmy up the hill under the porch on our backs installing 6x10 braces underneath the deck. Jeff I know you get frustrated working with me sometimes, but I daresay you'd find many wives willing to roll around in the clay with you like that. Not to mention work for 10 hours in the yard, then another 2 inside after that. I am my father's daughter when it comes to my work ethic - that's for sure.

Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure, and they really don't do justice to the full extent of our filthiness yesterday.

That brown tint did not come from the sun, mind you.

My trusty tevas - age 15 this summer. I've had them since 7th grade.

But here are the fruits of our labor. Totally worth it if you ask me. Wouldn't you want to buy this place?

As an aside - remember all the rain we had last week? Thankfully it only takes about an hour for the water to retreat after the rain stops. But this is the highest it has gotten since we moved in. Swimming anyone?






Most of you know we've been doing some work on the inside of the house as well, and here are a few pictures of that too. I had Stanley Steamer come out and clean the carpets last week. A little pricey, but completely worth it. I had good advice from a friend that it's worth it to have the professionals do it, because once you pay to rent the machine and buy all of the solution, you really don't save that much. Plus you never get it as clean as they do.

I really think cleaning the carpets, along with polyurethaning our front entryway, has made a huge difference in the look and smell of our home. The carpet in our living room was probably as old as the house, and really needed some freshening up. Couple the new clean with some awesome reed diffusers from Pier One (Citrus Cilantro, for anyone interested) our house smells amazing, fresh and clean. I love it!!




We've also been updating our master bath, although unfortunately I don't have any before pics - I've got to remember to do that next time. Anyway this used to be a gold shower, but we decided to spray paint is instead of paying $500+ for a new one. And was it worth it, you ask? Well I think it looks great, but considering the time and energy it took to disassemble, clean, sand, prime, color, clear coat and put back together - I'd say not so much. It took me well over a month to finish - next time I'll gladly just spend the money, although I'm certainly not complaining that we saved $450 this go around.




I got these great faucets online from home depot for $50 each. That's a steal for oil rubbed bronze - and they're good quality too. We're very happy with them. I did spray paint the light fixture - it was easy update and not a lot of work. I also sprayed the towel rack and TP holder. On everything but a shower, I love spray paint. It's a cheap and easy way to dramatically change the way something looks. And for the most part it holds up pretty well.








All in all we've spent about a thousand dollars sprucing things up around the house, but if it helps us get our asking price it will be well worth it. I know I'm a bit partial, but our house seems much nicer than the others in our neighborhood that are the same model. There are some people that say houses have a certain feeling to them, and I think that can definitely be said of ours. We've had many people share how comfortable, at home and loved they feel the minute they walk through our door. It's no credit to us, however, I truly believe it is because Jeff and I committed our home to the Lord some time ago, and have made it our focus to provide a warm, welcoming and loving environment to anyone at anytime. He has in turn filled our home with His love - and that's what people feel. We're just glad we've had a chance to be a part of it all.