House project shotgun, part 2.

In a follow up to my last post, here are some other awesome little expressions of my house love. When we moved in last year (14 months ago already?!?!?), we painted all the walls this sort of grey color (Burnished Clay, actually), and did the trim nice and white. I've been adding color in spots as I go. One day when I was at Home Depot, I spotted two cans of paint in really lovely but sort of dark hues. I picked them both up for $10 total and set to scheming about where they would end up. The first one ended up in the master bedroom. B even helped me paint. Which then ended up with her spilling the entire gallon of paint. Luckily there was a paint tarp between the can and my lush white carpets, or this would have been one seriously expensive project. The paint and the frame cost about $25. I made a painting above the bed for now with craft paints I had around(but I have serious plans about what is going to eventually end up there!)

(BEFORE)

(DURING)

(AFTER - taken at night, on an iPhone. Someday I'll buy a real camera again...)

I took the other can of purplish paint and hit the girls' bedroom. That, along with Brynna's sweet Christmas castle, some frames stolen from Alan, letters from eBay, and butterflies from Etsy helped turn this place into a beautiful little bedroom. I think the grand total was about $150 for all this stuff (including the castle), but I acquired it over a few months, so I'm not exactly sure.

(BEFORE)

(AFTER)

Eve's side of the room is also decorated, but that wall is really the focal point. Eve's frame of letters are purple on grey wall. No pictures at the moment, but I have this lofty plan to do video tours of each room at some point. When I have a camera. And a bit more spare time. :P

One of my more recent projects was to spruce up the front yard. It was really depressing...

So the Friday night before Father's Day, we went to Lowe's of course! I bought a ton of plants to tackle one of the 2 sad neglected gardens (the one shown above), and then dug around in the dirt and sun for the rest of the weekend. Of course, our hot water heater then experienced catastrophic failure, so Matt got the short end of the stick and spent Father's Day replacing that instead of getting dirty with me. Garden refresh cost $150. Heat pump hot water heater cost $1000.

Eventually there will be a trellis on the right hand side of the garage (left side of the whole garden picture) so that my yellow bougainvillea can climb it's way up up up!

And last but not least, tonight I started work on my kitchen banquette area. See, we have this random corner that seems like it was made for... something. But it's not big enough to be a serious dining area, and there is another space for that anyway.

I thought it would be great to have a little banquette area where the girls can color while I cook or have snacks. And when people come over to visit, it is a nice place for the adults to sit while the wee ones romp around in the front of the house. So I bought 2 ottomans and a table from the Salvation Army, and eventually that table will be painted some other color, the ottomans will be secured to the wall, and there will be back rests. But for now...

Current total is $250, and I expect to spend about $75 more. In case you haven't noticed, I'm house crazy :) This sounds like an insane amount of work, but the reality is that I usually accomplish about 1 project every month or month and a half. We bought this house because it needed love and I could really get my groove on. It was also at the very low end of our budget (yippee!), so I convinced Matt that I should get a "house budget" for my projects each month. Win win win. Hope you enjoyed the tour of the House of Shea!