Updates to the house

When Dave and I bought our house, we decided that we were going to save money and not have the builders paint the walls. So we have a house of white walls. We've always planned on painting the walls, so our house can look nice... like those model homes we walk through all the time.

About a month ago, we were inspired. So we went out and bought some cans of paint and decided to start small. We'll paint the downstairs bathroom. We decided that our first floor would have a theme with majority of the walls being a tan/taupe color and with splashes of red in the rooms (such as curtains of dark red or burgundy). We also decided on painting the bathroom on the first floor dark red because it would look cool....

Painting that small room was not as easy and quick as we expected. We had to prime the walls with dark grey primer first (well, after taping everything which took forEVER). And then we put on two coats of red paint which took a while to dry....

And here are some pictures of our endeavors.

Tiles on the sink look really nice in contrast to the red

Needless to say, we got a bit tired of the painting, so we're taking a break from painting more of the house. Ha ha. Hence, right now, the whole house is WHITE, except for a little bathroom....

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Our latest project has been to get our backyard done. When we bought the house it came with an non-landscaped backyard. It was just a pile of dirt with big weeds growing. Gross.... Anyways, there has been a flurry of work being done in the community as everyone wants their yards done to enjoy some summer BBQ'ing. We got caught up in the hoopla and decided to get ours done as well. Also, there has been a contractor that has done 3 of our neighbors homes, and I got him to give us a pretty good deal. This is still a work in progress, but here are some pictures from the past week:

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Since our backyard is very small, Dave and I decided to build a small wall so guests can sit on it, like a bench... We're planning on putting fruit trees/shrubs/vines behind it!

We left a big space open just left of the wall because we want to put a nice BBQ there eventually.
We also needed a walkway between our backyard to the front. Our garbage and recycling bins are quite large and need to be stored in the backyard. I need a nice walkway to roll them down for collection days. Check out the equipment
Small little curb to separate concrete from the plants!
Yeah, it's a small yard...
View from the second floor. Wall is almost done, they are going to cover the top with slivers of slate, so it will look like it was made of stone. Can't wait to see it done! Ground is prepared for concrete!

All that work was done in the span of 4-5 days (or less?) and done primarily by 2 guys. I'm pretty impressed. What you don't see are the piping that they put underground for drainage and a sprinkler/bubbler system that will go in the plant areas. Pretty cool.

This past Saturday morning, a slew of people showed up with a big ol' concrete truck. They poured the concrete, and then worked on evening it out and stamping it. We decided to get stamped concrete to make it look a tad bit fancier than the boring concrete you see in sidewalks. Hopefully when it's done, it'll resemble stone... a bit.

Guys working hard at stamping the concrete. They first stamped a texture pattern, and then they went over that with a stone pattern.

Textured 3'x3' blocks in the front.
Post-stamping pics
The lines (joints) are important because they help minimize potential cracking in the future.


Cool, huh?

So the wall still needs to be finished as well as the piping. Our contractor is also throwing in some free soil for us to plant our plants in. After 10 days, the concrete will be sealed to give it a shine. That should look really nice.

So strange to think that it was a big ol' nasty pile of weedy dirt just a week ago!