patio made-over

remember Sergio? the guy who did such a fantastic job on our garage, well once he had finished the garage, the idea was for him to move inside the house and help us finish the bedrooms. but he was faster than the guys doing the electrical, so we asked him about our sad looking patio.

when we first moved in, it looked like a jungle of poorly cared for plants, so we cleaned it up to make it look more tidy, with the intention to renovate it at some point.
we weren't sure if we should tear it down or just spruce it up, so we did nothing more on it. the aged green plastic on the roof leaked and really blocked so much light from coming into the house, so we knew that had to go, but weren't sure what to replace it with.

I came home from work the first day to a house flooded with light - you could actually see the sky now.

these two agreed it was an improvement as they lay in the sunshine from the comfort of the back of the couch...I didn't realise how quickly it would transform, and kicked myself for not taking a before shot that morning
the next evening it looked like thisand then it was all done!

we decided to go with Suntuf polycarbonate roofing in grey, to give it a little shade but still let in the light. It even blocks UV rays :) but I love how you can still see the sky.from this angle it looks like we have a new house... amazing the difference some small changes make!eventually that window on the right will be replaced with a 9 foot long bi-fold door that will open up onto a deck at the same height as the interior floor. This will then be where we put our dining table as we currently don't have a dining room, only an eat in kitchen.

Then you'll step down onto another level of deck at ground level to give it the illusion that it is an extension of the house into the garden. (we do live in California, so figure we should make the most of our outdoor spaces!)

but that's a few projects away from happening yet. in the mean time, we'll make do with our new entertaining area as is - just in time for summer!

garage transformation

we've been renovating our garage slowly over the last year or so... we figured it was a good place to start - for us to practice on.

first we started with the back potting shed, which although was very handy was rotting away and basically a rat hotel...

then it was time for a new door

which inspired a colour schemebut before we painted we needed to tackle the inside and make some space

in August we decided it was time to start stripping the outside and started with a heat gun - which turned out to be a very slow process... and if there was lead in the paint, not very safe

we found this great tool thanks to Lauren and Kyle over at Chezerby called a paint shaver pro which literally takes about 4 layers of paint off in one swoop.
you just hook it up to the vacuum cleaner and shave away

at first we thought it wasn't that great - they'd made it look so easy on their website

and then he got the hang of the tool (we were dragging the tool in the wrong direction at first) - and the paint came off so easy!

but we only got as far as this wall before we had to call it a day...

renovating is so glam...

a couple of weeks later, with the offer of a helper we set to work on the cracked up driveway

it took us a while, but by September we finally got rid of all that concrete. we used some of it in our berm, and the rest by piling it outside the fence and listing it for free fill on craigslist

then we kind of got side tracked on other projects, and work, holidays and getting pregnant... and before you know it it's April...

so with the pressure of the baby coming soon and so many unfinished projects hanging over our heads we decided to get some help and last week we hired Sergio! we introduced him to the paint shaver pro

and the real transformation began.as I snapped a few last photos for posterity

I went out to discover our neighbours were finally getting rid of the mess of trees that have been pushing over our fence

I'm usually not a fan of killing trees, but these things would drop sticky stuff into our yardand replacing our very old worn out fence would have just been a waste with them still thereso I was happy to see that everyone had caught the spring cleaning bug.

I left Coop to supervise Sergio and headed off to work

and came home to so much progress

by the weekend the garage had been fully stripped, patched, rotted pieces replaced, sanded and primed all ready for the gutters and paintall the tough work was done so we were excited to help
you'll note that my overalls don't quite fit like they used to... but Coop doesn't seem to mind. :)

yesterday I came home to this

and we wondered why we didn't just hire someone sooner...

let the renovations begin!

last week we officially started renovating 2 of the 3 bedrooms and the hallway in our house. after living here for almost 2 years, and talking about it, planning and designing and talking some more, it finally came time to break into the walls...

bryce decided I should be the one to swing the first hammer. so I reluctantly tried hitting the wall as hard as I could - but it just left a scuff...

harder they said - so I tried again, with 2 hands...
here's Bryce showing me how it's done...
then Hannah wanted in on the action too

Bryce powered through this wall in the first night
and the next day finished off this onethe renos we are doing to the 2 bedrooms are mostly cosmetic. but we had to upgrade the electrical in the house and since we were opening up the walls, and had guessed that these exterior walls were probably not insulated we decided to rip them back to the studs.

on Monday our contractor put a new header in above this existing window

to make way for our new french doors! (which he installed the wrong way round...) they are outswing doors so as not to eat up into the space in the room, but he installed them as inswings, so they're coming back out again tomorrow and reinstalled.

but even in the wrong way, we're really happy with the bright and airy feeling it has given the room already!

we're getting there

this weekend we finally got rid of the rest of the broken driveway. we hired a couple of labourers to help us get it done and finished in about 4 hours.

it's so nice to be able to look at before and after photos to get that feeling of achievement which sometimes is overshadowed by all the other unfinished things we need to do...

next we're going to work on leveling this out and filling it in with some of the dirt we got delivered last week, and then we're going to prep the area for this driveable grass. it's a paver that allows grass to grow through, yet still tough enough to drive on.

we piled up the used concrete outside our side fence and put an ad on craigslist - hopefully someone can take our free fill :)