I seem better at finishing projects than posting about them. I now have several projects to post about and so will do my best to get caught up on all of those in short order. First off – wrapping up the kitchen. In a previous post, I had shown our before and mostly after of our kitchen. The last I showed we had not painted the room, didn’t have a backsplash, and didn’t even have a dishwasher or cooktop. For this quick post I want to show some more updated pictures of our kitchen. Our kitchen is by no means large and there are items I would do differently if I was redoing it now, but overall I am very proud of it. I chose a very light (basically white) gray – White Wisp. Our ceilings are only 8ft so it was important to me to make everything as light and bright as possible. I do love this color, but with time I have found it shows dirt and whatnot more than I would like so maybe a little darker would have been better. To not have everything be shades of gray I picked out a sea blue backsplash. The last picture looks like we did a terrible job of measuring tile, but this is behind the fridge so it is totally fine. We planned to go a little past the counter so the sheetrock wouldn’t show from behind the fridge. I now realize I never took a great after photo for once the grout was finished and all the residue cleaned up. I will have to get one and get it posted at some point. It is definitely a long ways from the yellow kitchen with terra cotta floors and 1970s cabinets!

Until next time…
– Leslie

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The view from the bottom of the driveway and porch.

A couple months ago I posted this picture (below) of my husband cleaning the ceiling in our lake house. Besides my close friends and family only a few knew about the purchase of this house. I feel I should have posted this several months ago but with life I am just now sitting down to type it out. My husband and I had been looking for a small family lake house for over a year. We knew that like all places that we looked at, we wanted to find something that needed to have some updates that other people may not be interested in taking on. Nothing too major because we live two hours away, but some minor things that we were comfortable taking on. My agent, Brandy, laughed when we walked in because the listing agent told her several things needed to be done to bring the property back to its former glory. Brandy knew we were up for the challenge. You also may be wondering why I didn’t use Leslie, we are best friends after all. In this case, I needed an agent that was also licensed in Mississippi as several properties we looked at were located there just across the state line. That being said, Brandy has been a good friend for many years and knew all about my fixer-upper tendencies. She knew when we walked around and started taking notes on what needed to be done that this cabin was a very real possibility.

As with any house, with every item we remove from the “to do” list, the list of things needing to get done seems to constantly get longer. We closed on the property a few months ago and quickly got to work during the off season on a few of the projects that needed to be quickly dealt with. The first one was the mold on the ceiling. I would assume that this is just one of the big reasons this house didn’t sell quickly.

At first glance mold is a big scary issue. Usually this is the part when you watch those shows about rehabbing houses where the main characters freak out and starts spouting off about how dangerous it is. Although true, by taking a second look, we can see that it is only on the surface and needed to be wiped off. Easy enough right? It was clear that there was lots of surface mold from that lack of circulation. The house has had very limited occupation over the last several years because the previous owner moved out west and was in no way able to visit as much as he liked. It was simply a case of “out of sight, out of mind” and during that time the house sat empty and stagnant.

So my husband then went on to do what he alway does with any new project – research, research, and YouTube the entire time while we waited to close on the house. We went up the first weekend after closing (President’s Day weekend) and went to work. After researching we found that a peroxide mix would kill the surface mold. Sounds simple but the ceilings in that house are over twenty feet high so we knew we would need to get the entire way up to spray and wash the mold off. You can rent scaffolding for a reasonable price so we picked it up and headed to Pickwick. Within the first few hours, we had the scaffolding up and the first round of hydrogen peroxide on the ceiling. We simply sprayed it on thick and let it soak over night, while this will kill the mold it doesn’t remove the mold or keep from coming back. Day two my husband sprayed again and scrubbed the ceiling. I was amazed at how easily it came off. After scrubbing my husband did a quick wipe down to be sure the mold was completely gone and moved on to the next area. We finished our weekend off with replacing both ceiling fans. The fans that were in the house we too small and easily turned off and forgotten about. We replaced the fans with a bigger newer fan and then had them set up with a smart switch. The fans are set up with a smart switch that now runs them for several hours a day circulating the air and this will help prevent the mold from growing again.

It took almost the entire weekend between set up and break down. To be honest, I had very little to do with this, just watching him freaked me out so I stayed out of the room most of the time. I actually spent the entire weekend cleaning every single other surface in that place. By there time we left, we legit had sanitized every single surface, I can honestly say this is the first time during a house clean I “bleached” the ceiling.

As I am certain I have mentioned in other posts, we did not move into our current home immediately after buying it. I wanted to have a somewhat functional kitchen before moving in which had us living with my in-laws while the kitchen was redone. However, there were times that one of us had to be here while work was being done. This was true for when the kitchen cabinets were being installed. They wanted us here in case there were any questions and I wanted to be here as much as possible since I was beyond excited to see the kitchen being put back together. Since we had moved our boxes that were not immediate needs (clothes and the like) into the home in piles as far away from the kitchen as we could get them and there was also construction dust everywhere, the home was feeling anything but homey. We also didn’t have internet set up. So while hanging out here while the cabinets were installed there really wasn’t much to do. I discovered a loose piece of wallpaper in the foyer/stairwell and decided what better time then now to remove the wallpaper. At first it came off very easily and I quickly took a good portion down. After a while things did get harder and I had to work to get the remaining pieces off. There was some wall repair needed afterwards, but nothing too terrible. Overall, I think it was a great use of my time. Also as I point out in captions below, sometime between me starting to remove the wallpaper and the after photos Chris smoothed the ceilings. I am a huge believer in smoothing ceilings. It really lightens and brightens up a space!

Until next time – Leslie

I love a good fireplace. I feel like it anchors a home in a way many things can not. Let’s be real though – this is the south, and it doesn’t get used all that often. My husband and I use any opportunity we have to use our fireplace and who doesn’t love all the beautiful decorations this time of year.

I love decorating my fireplace and bringing the season into my home even if the temperature outside doesn’t agree that it is December. Last year I had several projects going on including redoing our sunroom to make it a useful office for my husband who was working from home. Most of these projects were left unfinished until this year. Once the Christmas tree goes up I stop all house projects, finished or not, because I will not have all that dust all over my tree limbs and decorations. I gave myself grace last year and even though the OCD in me wants it all finished, grace was what I and my house needed. We spent this past year finishing up projects we’d started. We didn’t get through them all, but that’s okay because when you live in the house your are remodeling there is always something that can be done. We also started a few more, and one of these was giving a new look to the fireplace.

Been there and done this before. At my last house it was truly one of my favorite places to decorate once I got it covered in stone. I was constantly changing the decorations to fit the season. My husband and I agreed that this house needed the fireplace stone to be done this year. Knowing I wanted it done before my seasonal decorations went up, summer was the right time to start. We spent the beginning of this project looking at all the “looks” we wanted this fireplace to have. Knowing we had a great experience with Memphis Stone and Stucco last time, we knew that whatever “look” we chose we would still need to find that look there. My husband and I have very similar taste so agreeing on a look was fairly simple, and after deciding off to the store we went. After speaking with our sales rep, they came and did the measuring and ordering. The worst part was the wait for it to come in and be installed. In the meantime, I also reached out to Wade Burris, owner of Architectural Timber Works, who also did our last fireplace mantle. We truly love his work and knew we would use him again this time around as well. We got him out to measure and fit our two fireplaces with two giant new mantles. If you got a chance to head to the mid south home show you saw some of his work with the beams he put in. Since our last house, everyone that I know who has put in a new mantle has used Wade and loved his work. Last step was for my favorite local business man to put the stove in. Shout out to Desoto chimney owner Bill Beasely, who came and got me all set for what we in the south call cold weather

It changes the entire feel of these two rooms and this house is starting to feel more like me and less like the people before me. I am over here dreaming of all my decorations going up and a man in a red suit going down the chimney

None of the businesses mentioned in this post paid me, gave me any discount, or even knew I was giving them a social media shoutout. I truly love all three of these establishments and if you’re in need of any of the things done here I highly suggest giving them a call.

At the same time the kitchen was being gutted and redone we also had the crew create a space for Chris’s office. Even pre-covid, Chris had to have an office. At the time I worked each weekday afternoon 3:30-8 and Chris would come home for that time and finish his work day at home. In our previous home he had had a bedroom that he used as an office. When we bought our current home there was not a great place he could go and close the door and work. But there were 3 closets that backed up to each other. One was in what would be Gray’s room (Gray’s room pictured far left, his would-be closet pictured middle) one in what would be the playroom/4th bedroom (pictured right), and one in the hallway (don’t seem to have a picture of this). This part is a little hard to explain in words, but I will try and hopefully, the pictures will help even more.

The closets were combined to make basically an 8×8 room that would be Chris’s office. It isn’t huge, but it works. Since part of it was the closet in Gray’s room we had to create another closet for him. So we went into Clara’s room and redid her closet. Before the remodel she had had a long, skinny closet that sat in somewhat of a bump out. We took the bump out away and made it a deeper closet and then took the length and cut it in half, giving the other half to Gray. The closet in the hallway was just completely lost, which stinks since that was a big linen closet and storage was definitely lacking in the home once we got rid of it. In the playroom/4^th bedroom we created a new closet that bumped out into the room instead of the recessed one that had been there.
The moving around of all of these walls created huge problems for our flooring which meant we were going to have to change out flooring soon, but at least the walls were in the right places.

The first 2 pictures below show the doors to Clara’s old closet. The 2nd one shows what I mean by the bump out. The 3rd picture shows what would be the entrance to the new closet in Gray’s room. The 4th-7th pictures show how the ceiling for Chris’s office looked once the closets were combined. We did have the light centered. The 8th picture shows the new closet in the playroom.

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Until next time – Leslie

Welcome to the holiday season, 2020 style. I sit this beautiful thanksgiving afternoon I am reflecting on this past year and the time spent in this house. One year since moving in. One year since a major project was finished in our home, One year where I feel like the momentum was lost moving forward on the projects my husband and I planned. I have to remind my self that even with projects undone, I love this house, I love this land, and even though our projects have been slow this year we have moved forward.

As many of my friends know my husband and I love remodeling our house. It is what we searched for the first time we bought a house as well as the second time we purchased a home. What many don’t know is that we refuse to go into huge debt while doing so. We usually stick to the Dave Ramsey style and pay as we go which means longer time between larger projects. I know that Leslie, one of my best friends and co blogger also does the same. It is the harder route to follow and for many years throughout my first house left me sad during this time of the year. I was unable to decorate or even entertain as I would like to with an incomplete house. Once I finished with the big overhaul of my last house I did lots of entertaining and the house was decked out in as much Christmas as I could fit into the home. It is a running joke within a group of my friends how many total tree will I have in my house. In case you’re wondering I currently have two nine foot trees, two seven foot trees and once six foot tree as well as a dozen or so smaller trees almost all lit and decorated. It takes about a week or so to get it all set and I start decorating November 1st each year. I love having all the lights and decorations out during Thanksgiving as well as enjoying the month of December with my family and not having to worry about getting the house ready. I get it, not everyones opinion but it works for my family and I.

This fixer upper time around I am doing things differently, instead of waiting for the house to be finished I am decorating it full out and enjoying the magic Christmas offers with an open mind. The pictures will not be as beautiful since there are rooms with projects clearly undone but I will look back at these pics and smile. These projects my family under takes make this home ours, each room will have our mark, memories made together, and I will cherish them for many years to come. 2020 may not look like our normal but it has still had blessings and this will be a year many of us will remember better than others. Happy holidays to you and your family.

Finding a new home would likely be harder than selling our previous home. Due to the location of both of our jobs we knew what side of town we wanted to live on. Also we wanted an area that had a lot of kiddos. My biggest complaint with the home we were selling had always been there were not tons of kids around. Looking at those factors we settled on moving to Germantown. The problem with that plan is Chris had no desire to pay the prices of the homes in Germantown. We looked at several homes and had given the okay for a project house, but nothing seemed to be falling into place. Then on a Saturday I was scrolling through Facebook. I noticed on a page for real estate in the area someone had posted looking for a home that fit the description of exactly what we were looking for. So, of course, I read the comments. One particular comment stood out to me. A home owner who had been renting his house out said the house was now vacant, but he hadn’t had time to get it ready to list. He was willing to show it to people the next day if they were okay with buying it as it was. I excitedly tagged my agent in the post. She reached out to her team leads and it turns out they knew him and we were able to go see the house that afternoon before anyone else was able to since the owner trusted the agents to show it to us instead of him having to. The home was definitely a nice home. The bones were great! It got bonus points for being on the same street as Christina’s home. However, it was built in the 1970s and the kitchen was still from that era. Also there wasn’t a fantastic place for Chris to have an office and we NEEDED him to have an office. We knew kitchens can be remodeled and came up with an idea for that. For the office, our agent helped us think of a great plan to move a few walls and create one. So the 2 biggest negatives with the home were both fixable. We made an offer that day and we soon had a contract on it.

Everything happened pretty quickly. We closed on our previous house on a Tuesday. We closed on our new house on that Wednesday. The demolition crew came to start removing our kitchen and moving walls for us on that Thursday. And by that Friday afternoon we had to be completely out of our previous home. We did not want to live in a home with no kitchen and tons of construction dust so we moved our furniture and whatnot into our new home as far away from the construction as possible and we went and stayed with my in-laws. The previous owner of our home was amazing. He had let us come in before closing and get measurements and whatnot. So we had everything ready on go. In 2.5 weeks we were sleeping in our new home. Our cooktop had been delayed in shipping so we didn’t have one of those at the time, but we were so excited to be in our new home that we moved in anyway.

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Chris and I often wish we had done more of the work for the kitchen remodel. Our biggest push at the time was we wanted it done quickly so we could get moved in. In hindsight, that was not the best way to plan a kitchen remodel. There are things we would have done differently and things we would have done ourselves had we not been in such a rush. Chris and I did paint and put the backsplash in since those were not crucial for us moving in. Also we replaced the light fixtures. Overall I am happy with the finished project, but have learned things to do differently in the future. The pictures with this post will show from beginning to end of the 2.5 weeks where we had a crew working on our kitchen. Starting this blog almost 4 years after buying this home has really allowed me to look a little like HGTV. It may appear that things are done quickly, but let me guarantee you that nothing in the world of remodel is ever quick. Even the 2.5 week kitchen remodel was not really 2.5 weeks. There was a month before that that was planning and getting prepared and then there was time after we moved in where we were still working on projects in the kitchen. To be perfectly honest I am not sure we are done with the kitchen still. I mean we are basically done since almost every surface has been touched, but there are still small things we need to do. Like curtains and décor. And I dream of replacing all the windows in our home at some point, but who knows if that will ever happen. Overall, I am happy with our kitchen. It isn’t the world’s largest kitchen by any means, but it is completely functional and I like the colors we used in there; which is a good thing, since the colors we used in there have dictated the colors in the rest of our downstairs and somewhat our upstairs as well.

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For now, the kitchen is done and so that is where I will end this post. Until next time…

-Leslie

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I feel it is often the case that beginnings go unnoticed. One won’t even realize they are experiencing a beginning at the time. My remodeling story starts much that way. Even now looking back I have had somewhat of an internal argument with myself when deciding where this story starts.  I think the most likely place it started was in our previous home. When we bought it the kids were 2 and 4. It was a 4 bedroom home and we planned to use one of those rooms as Chris’s office. That meant that if we had guests we would need to put them in one of the kids’ rooms. One of the non-master bedrooms was obviously the better choice. It was bigger and so could handle a bigger bed easier. Gray being the oldest was offered this room. Gray, being Gray, reasoned that if his room would be the guest room when people were in town meant he would have to give up his room sometimes. He was not on board with that and so said give the room to Clara. So Clara went from a crib to a queen sized bed with that move. A brand new bed meant brand new bedding. And brand new bedding did not go with the wall color in the room at all. So that led to us needing to paint her room. And needing to paint her room caused us to look closely at the ceiling. The ceiling had popcorn (as in the texture not the food) that was fairly large. The popcorn hung down low enough that I thought it would likely get in the way when trying to pain the top edge of the walls. Then Chris decided to shine! He looked up online how to remove popcorn from ceilings and then did it. Like seriously just learned watching a video and then did an amazing job. He did such an amazing job that before we knew it he was going room by room removing all the popcorn. As a side note popcorn removal is super, super dusty. I highly advise anyone who things about this to consider how much dust their family can handle in their homes. After each room our house would be ridiculously dusty for several weeks, even though Chris put up plastic to try to contain the dust. We did pay for someone to smooth the ceilings and paint in our living room/foyer/stairwell. That area was 2 stories tall and we didn’t think us paying to rent the scaffolding was worth it.

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Other than the 2 stories area we painted all of the rooms as well. We finished up smoothing ceilings, painting the rooms, and had even painted the front doors and porch swing when a house 2 doors down from us went up for sale. I, being my nosey self, looked the house up online and was shocked by how much it was listed for. Our house was larger and I hadn’t thought we would be able to sell our home for that price. I reached out to a friend of mine who had recently become a realtor. She and a colleague came over to our home and told us what they would list our home for. They also told us what projects they would suggest doing to get the most money possible for our home. And then all of a sudden things were flying. We had our kitchen counters changed out to granite, replaced our original 1980s cooktop and vent hood, and in the master bathroom we had the carpet – yep carpet – removed and replaced with tile, and painted the vanity in there as well. We then quickly put our house on the market and it was under contract in a weekend! Chris and I were on a high. A few projects had really made our home look amazing.  

– Leslie

But now we had to find a new home…

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You now know how my husband and I began our journey to fixer upper status. So lets talk about our current home. Why this one? Because it is the dream, or will be one day. We started searching for a larger home when we had my second child. Not in a hurry, just if the right one happen to be for sale we would purchase it. Fast forward three years, another hundred houses or so and pregnant with my third this house came on the market in our price range. The year before we had walked through this house and it was too expensive. I told my uncle, our agent, when they would take $350,000 ( they wanted $450,000 at the time) to call me because it had potential. A year later (yes, it sat on the market that long) and the magic number was the starting price.

What makes this house so appealing is that it is in Germantown city limits and it is sitting on two acres with everyone around me also having two acres or more. Baby deer play with their parents in the side yard, the red fox runs around the trees out front and at night the owls hoot to let you know they are there. The house is off on a private road that looks like a driveway. You don’t even know it is back here. I get all this and still have a three minute drive to Target. The dream……So, like me, your thinking “wow, beautiful” right? First look, this house is ugly. The floor makes the most stable person feel like they are falling from all the dips in the floor. The kitchen is straight up out of the 80s from the appliances to the U shaped island. At some point the microwave must have caught fire because the inside of it was melted to an unusable state. This house only has two bedrooms and two bathrooms and clearly the owner loved shades of pink. Not a single room in the entire house had been updated since the home was built in 1984. The master bedroom had a pink toilet and a pink tub complete with a duck head faucet that spat water. After I left the home the first time I couldn’t place where the laundry room was, then went back to find it in the second bedroom closet. 3500 square feet, most of which is not used in an efficient way. And did i say ugly? No one wants to touch this house, to most this isn’t a project worth taking on. This is just first look, not even getting into checking into see if you missed anything important. I told a friend about us buying this house, only mentioning a few details to her, before she proceeded to call for her husband to exclaim that we had bought “that house” and he knew exactly which one she was referring to.

Many see a house like this and would run but my husband and I see the tall ceilings, beautiful double wood burning fireplace, and sunroom overlooking this beautiful yard. We see the potential a lot of people overlook and everyday since we have moved into this house, which has lots of improvements still pending, we look at each other and say how much we love this house. We see the potential and we have only fixed the fixed the first 2300square feet. If you can look past the small details and see that potential is there you too may be able to take on a fixer upper, save some money and make your house a home you love to come home too.