That’s how to describe this quick home update. Our light switch in our office was looking a little drab. Off to Home Depot and $1.45 later we were the proud owners of a new white light switch and plate cover. Our wiring is pretty old so we followed the directions here to make sure we were connecting the wires correctly.
Here we have the old light switch-ugly and scary looking.
Step 1: Turn OFF the power. This is important.
Step 2: Remove the old light switch plate
Step 3: Remove the screws holding the actual light switch into the wall
Step 4: Carefully unscrew the old wires from the light switch. Make sure you either mark or remember where each wire goes on the light switch.
Step 5: Screw the wires to the new switch and then re-attach the switch to the wall.
Step 6: Attach new wall plate. Stomp your feet when you realize your new wall plate is a teensy bit smaller than the old one. Dig out old paint and touch up the paint.
Step 7: Re-attach wall switch after you’ve let the paint dry. Enjoy your beautification!
Tags: changing a light switch·easy projects·home improvement
Yesterday I got an email from the nest.com editors that they had decided to feature our house on their Real Couples Home Tours. We’re both super excited! It seems like we’ve been shouting it from the rooftops but in case you haven’t heard our shrieks of glee yet-here’s the link to our house tour on the nest.com! Whee!
Tags: feature·home tour·the nest.com
After selling some humungo speakers on Craig’s List we found the wall where they had previously resided, well, a little empty. We didn’t want to spend too much on a replacement piece so we headed down to our local Goodwill.
We came home with a maroon wine bottle/wet bar thing. Matt and I were so excited. Blame it on watching too many episodes of Mad Men but hurrah, we now were proud owners of a wet bar!
Fancy huh? I broke out the hand sander that Matt bought me while I was refinishing our pew. That puppy sanded off those grape vines in about 4 seconds. I then used the primer and paint that we had left over from painting our front door (score for free!).
I added a $4 new handle and she is looking pretty spiffy. Stop on over for a cocktail sometime!
Tags: goodwill finds·wine bar
While we’re not technically newlyweds anymore (I think its a state of mind anyhow!) we thought it would be fun to share some fun facts about us with the 2 or so readers that aren’t our family.
So without further ado-
1. I was born in California and at 12, we packed up and moved to a little bitty teeny town in Iowa. I wouldn’t consider myself a farm girl but our family duck won first prize at the county fair 2 years in a row!
2. Matt made it all the way to an Eagle Scout. I give him a hard time about it but at least I know we’ll be safe if we’re ever lost in the woods!
3. Crafting and DIY are definitely in my genes. My Mom is always salvaging something or rearranging the furniture. Her motto: “Don’t clean the wall, let’s just repaint.” Seriously.
4. As we all know, Matt loves numbers and investments. Even I was shocked at this one-he bought his first stock at 13.
5. I LOVE to read. I probably love it more than home improvement. My friends said it was a little weird when I moved to town. I would always have a stack of books under my chair in case we were done with our assignments early. What can I say? Laura Ingalls Wilder writes a mean book.
6. Matt studied architecture for a year at Iowa State. He switched later to a double major in accounting and finance. Judging by #4, that was probably a wise decision.
7. We met when we were sophomores in college. I was 19 and he was 20. Looking back at pictures, we look so young!
8. Matt speaks German. He even studied abroad one summer.
9. We dated long distance for 3 years. I went to the University of Iowa (Go Hawks!) and he went to Iowa State University (boo! hiss!). We put a lot of miles on I-80!
10. We got Lulu for my 22nd birthday from my Mom. We got Lily about a year and half ago. They are chi-weenies. And they are awesome. And for the record, they enjoy their outfits.
Anything surprising? Are you dying to know anything else about us?
Tags: about us·meet the newlyweds·random facts
Let’s revisit the backyard overhaul project. You remember, when it wasn’t covered in 5 feet of snow and ice. When we used to work outside and not believe that our fate was surely hypothermia. Remember those days, when the temperature got above 12?
Well, let’s get on with the project….
I think we all remember how this project got rolling. Rip off the old deck and add a new, structurally sound one. Well, I left the house for 2 hours and came back to a jackhammered patio and a complete tear down in our backyard. Here’s how we built it back up.
Step 1: Make sure your wife is out of town before you give the jackhammer the green light.
The rubble
Step 2: You will have to even out the entire area where the patio is going to be. We had to deal with hundred year old tree roots and buried bricks. It’s really important that it’s level so your pavers don’t get all weird.
Step 3: You’re going to need pea size gravel. A lot. We used a ton (seriously, 1 ton of gravel). It is relatively inexpensive. It’s the delivery fee that gets you. I think the cost of the rock was $25 but the delivery was $75. You need to spread a thin even layer of the gravel in your leveled patio area. We rented an electric compactor from Home Depot to make sure everything was level and even. This was one of the hardest parts of the work. Moving wheel barrow after wheel barrow full of the rock was hard work!
Step 4: Laying the pavers. You will need sand and your choice of paver. We chose EX Cobble pavers from Menards. They have handy kiosks available where you type in your patio dimensions and it prints out exactly the amount of pavers and sand you’ll need. It saved us a ton of trips back and forth! After laying all of your pavers you will add the sand and then use the electric compactor to really get the sand locked into place. After that round you wet it down, add more sand, repeat. We considered adding the cement locking sand but for some reason or another never really got around to it. We haven’t had a problem with our pavers moving at all.
Step 6: Enjoy! I couldn’t find an after picture of just the patio. Who knows what I did with it. Unfortunately, I can’t go snap one since it’s under about 7 inches of snow. Here’s a backyard photo. Hopefully that helps you get an idea of your end result.
Tags: Brick Pavio Pavers·how to·Menards supplies
Our backyard was our biggest project that we took on but it was definitely a labor of love. I’ll break down our projects into a few posts since it’s a little overwhelming. So, let’s jump in!
We originally started the project wanting to replace the raised deck and add a privacy fence. Well, we added a new paver patio, a deck, a new retaining wall, terraces, a privacy fence and a fireplace pit. What a project!
Let’s start at the beginning. The deck. Here’s what we started with.
The deck was crumbly and totally unsafe. We planned to rip it off and replace it with a 16×18 deck and move the stairs around so they ended walking out to the yard.
It took about 4 seconds to pull the deck down. Just for the record, I did not authorize attaching a chain to a truck to pull the last of the concrete out. This was a men only decision.
What a mess! This was the remnants of the 2 concrete slabs. The bottom one was filled with bricks and stones. It was a long tedious process!
After clearing out all of the rubble (we rented a 12 yard dumpster). We went back to work putting everything back together.
Our beautiful new retaining wall. We pushed it back by 3 feet so our new patio would be nice a big! Stay tuned for the patio install.
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Tags: backyard overhaul·knocking down the deck
The bathroom is done. Done I tell you. We picked out the trim to match our existing molding. Matt used his trusty miter box and we were trim cutting fools. We just measured, marked the boards and cut away. John from Young House Love has a great tutorial that we referenced a lot. We were both surprised how great the miter box worked. We thought it was going to be a huge pain without the miter saw. With a little elbow grease it was easy peasy.
It helps if you have a good helper.
Unfortunately, our crooked walls won again. We had intended to only trim around the tub. Since there was a noticeable gap from the tile to trim we added a cap piece.
Same as before, measure, mark, cut trim, glue and nail down. It was relatively painless. A little country white paint and this place is looking pretty spiffy.
So here’s the big reveal:
Before:
After:
You remember how I said the room was done right? Well, that may have been a teensy lie fib. We’re not replacing the bathtub fixture just yet. If you haven’t checked the listings lately, they run $200-300. We’ll put that on our wish list and hopefully get it added in the coming months. I can deal with it for now.
Check out the rest of the project here:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
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Tags: cutting trim·finishing projects·master bathroom
Remember how I received the bestgiftever this Christmas? The labeler? Besides labeling the dog kennels, I’ve really put this baby to work. As you know, we got our new fandangled desk recently. We had to move all of our files and electronics stuff to our new desk. What better reason to de-crapify and streamline our files. The latest issue of Real Simple made my heart flutter with all of their office organization tips. I whipped out our trusty P-Touch with clear labeling and went to work.
I first emptied the drawers of our old cabinet. It was ugly. Almost as ugly as the pantry…
I went to Office Max in search of the perfect hanging file folders. The standard issue green wasn’t doing it for me. I found these pretty blue ones with coordinating files. Behold.
I labeled all of the files accordingly and sorted all of the junk. It is fabulous. My favorite part? Everything is easy to find! I love how the electronic cords are all wrapped and labeled. No more fishing around for the camera cord.
What have you organized? Any tips we should know?
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Tags: labeling·office·Organizing
I have been after the Pottery Barn Bedford Desk since I was like 10. Well, maybe not that long but I had my eye on it forever. Its perfect-functional, not too gender specific and there are so many options. I was in love. But not with the price. Enter JCPenny Home Store to the rescue. They have a fantastic alternative. With our Christmas money burning a hole in our pocket, we took the leap and ordered the desk. I LOVE it! It’s hard not to love it based on what we started with.
A countertop anchored to the wall. It worked, sort of.
The night we brought it home I had to open it and set it up right away. Unfortunately, in my laziness excitement to paint our office the last time I didn’t paint behind the old countertop. We were dealing with a 6 inch strip of wall in blue. A minor detour.
Well, it’s all painted and in it’s place. The storage in this is amazing. I’ll be on the hunt for cute accessories to cute it up.
Can you tell I love it? So hold on to your hats folks, here’s how much we saved going with our inexpensive JCP version:
Pottery Barn Bedford:
Desktop, 2 drawer file cabinet, 3 drawer file cabinet: $649.00
JCPenny Version:
Desktop, 2 drawer file cabinet, 3 drawer file cabinet: $298.94
Total saved: $350.06-and that’s how it’s done my friends.
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Tags: JCPenny v. Pottery Barn·new desk·office
Alrighty now, if you’ve been following along you know we’ve added the tile to the bathtub surround. I had planned on grouting the tile on our next free weekend but and unexpected snow-day had me grouting early.
Matt went to work so I was on my own. I felt fairly confident taking care of the task solo since I had plenty of past experience with the kitchen and bathroom floors.
I bought a ten pound bag of grout and was ready to mix. The only problem-I didn’t have the mixer attachment for our drill. My step dad had brought that along last time. I didn’t think hand mixing was going to work. What’s a girl to do? Use the kitchen hand mixer. This baby worked like a charm. Adapt and overcome. In case you’re wondering-this is now strictly the “grout mixing mixer.”
It was fairly simple from then on. Just plop on the grout with your grout float. Make sure to get it into all of the cracks. Bower Power has a great tutorial on grouting right now-check it out.
From there it was just wipe away the excess (see how it looks dirty in the above pic?) and let it dry. We will be adding trim and touching up all of the paint where I got a little out of hand with the grout.
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Tags: Bathroom·projects·tile grouting
Step 3: Remove the screws holding the actual light switch into the wall
Step 4: Carefully unscrew the old wires from the light switch. Make sure you either mark or remember where each wire goes on the light switch.
Step 5: Screw the wires to the new switch and then re-attach the switch to the wall.
Step 6: Attach new wall plate. Stomp your feet when you realize your new wall plate is a teensy bit smaller than the old one. Dig out old paint and touch up the paint.
