We have a corner lot so our driveway isn't actually on 'our street'  so even after 62 years this is the first path to the front door from the mailbox!!

This is one of the projects we totally thought was going to happen in the first six months at the house... now 3 years later we're done with it!

We debated what we wanted to do, our dream was brick pravers but that was going to be cost prohibitive, so then we considered pea gravel but that's too messy for mowing, then one day at Lowes we spotted aggregate 2' x 2' pavers that match our driveway.

We used 12 bigger pavers and 3 smaller pavers to go across our little 'bridge'

Using stakes and rope we laid out the pavers in a straight line. Then we spaced the pavers to match our walking strides, this turned out to be the trickiest part. In the end we had about a 6" gap between the pavers which is a little to much for my stride but any less grass than that didn't look that great.  Before we recessed the pavers we left them on top of the grass for a while to test out the stride and to kill the grass to make digging a little easier.

To recess the pavers Andrew dug out a few i inches added, tamped it down, added some base and some sand. Since we knew they would continue to settle we left them a little above ground level perfect for easy mowing.

Budget wise we spent about $200 on pavers plus a few bags of base and sand! What a huge difference in our curb appeal, guess I need to finally plant some flowers in those pots!

Summer 2014’s (yeah I’m a little behind…) big expensive project was redoing all the beds around the house. We purchased the home from an estate, and the father had been ill for quite sometime, so the yard had been minimally maintained for several years.
There was virtually no mulch left anywhere and the timbers were pretty rotted, other than the big bushes we could never manage to pull out we were starting from scratch.

It took us a weekend to just pull out all of the junk we hadn’t yet, then we did the timbers, landscape fabric and rock the following 3 day weekend.
Instead of landscape timbers we chose 4x4 ground pressure treated wood, which we stained with some reddish Thompsons Water Seal we already had. The stain helped reduce the icky pressure treated greeness. We’re hoping that by going pressure treated these will last a long time.

We went with the lava rock, based on cost and weight. Moving “light lava rock” was hard work, I can’t imagine us moving one of the heavier rocks. It’s also helps that it’s one of the cheapest since the front of our house is 70 feet long, we needed 1.5 tons of rock! It also goes well with the color of our brick.
We also decided to go with rock because we have very deep eves, so all along the house we just have dry dusty dirt.

Two years later our rock and timbers still look great, the weed block is doing a a pretty good job too considering we had a ton of annoying invasive vines.

 

The vanity in our master bathroom when we moved in was short, oak, and featured a floral frosted glass door. See my full first budget bathroom update here.

I knew I wanted to replace it with something taller but with 2 drawers still, since this bathroom is tiny I couldn’t upgrade from a 24” wide to a 28” wide vanity. I quickly learned the 24” wide options were slim and all the options were white laminate. We had white laminate cabinets in our townhouse and had issues with the thermoplast panels pulling off the backer, no thank you. So I measured the vanity in our guest suite, 24” wide, two drawers, and GASP actual wood!

Once we completed our Guest Suite bathroom update we started on ‘upcycling’ that  vanity for our master bath.

First we removed the sink top, since it was marbled and covered in paint droplets, we replaced it.

Then I sanded the whole vanity down, including the laminate over plywood sides.

Two coats of Zissner Stain Blocker Oil Based Primer

3 coats of the Behr satin off white paint we used on our kitchen cabinets.

Then we raised the vanity up 5” to be counter height. To do this we added 6” wide boards, ripped down to 5” to the bottom of the vanity using corner brackets and straps, like so. We also Liquid Nailed everything as well. The key to doing it this way is to find a board the same width as the bottom of the vanity, in our case this was 1/2 inch.

Then cut a hole in the bottom of the vanity since our shut off valves in this bathroom sit on the floor.

For the vanity top I originally wanted to do marble to go with our ‘'marble floor” but the $300 price point vs. the $54 white top just wasn’t justifiable. It looks great! 

Then we placed the vanity in the bathroom, installed our new Pfister Selia faucet in the vanity top, got the plumbing in place and quickly learned that the “Glacier Bay Newport Vanity Top” doesn’t have a overflow which caused our push and seal drain from Pfister not to work. One $20 overflow less drain later, our $54 sink top was saved.

With the plumbing figured out we focused on the trim.

We cut bead board to fit the new taller kick plate and side of the vanity. The vanity front extends past the side so the breadboard edge was not visible. For the seam with the wall we added left over cap molding from our wainscoting project.

 

On the other side we added pvc outside corner molding to fill the gap against the wall, we also used this for the corner of the kick plate. This worked out great since our corner wasn’t a perfect cut.

To finish the inside of the cabinet, I cut cardboard to fit around the supplies, then I taped it down with some blue tape, then covered the whole bottom with contact paper. In the event we need to turn the water off we’ll quickly tear it out and replace the contact paper. This worked out well since we made the access hole oversize to make it easier, with the ‘cover’ I can still use the entire cabinet.

To finish off the project we tacked our corner round back down and caulked everything with Alex Plus.

It was a lot of work to ‘save’ our ‘free’ vanity but I think it was worth it, especially since there weren’t any out of the box options I loved, and some of the issues we had were tied to our bathroom and couldn’t have been avoided.

Supplies & Cost

• Oil Based Primer & Paint – Used Left Overs
• Bead Board – Surprise delivery from my amazing MIL ($10 divided across two projects)
• New Top - Glacier Bay Newport Vanity Top + Side Splash– $72.97
• New Faucet - Pfister Selia faucet – $79
• Wood & Hardware for height extension – $22.52
  • Stanley-National Hardware 0.875-in x 4-in Flat Brace  x2 $5.74
  • Kiln-Dried Radiata Pine Softwood Board (Common: 6-in x 2-ft;) x 2 $6.86
  • Kiln-Dried Radiata Pine Softwood Board (Common: 6-in x 3-ft;) $4.96
  • Stanley-National Hardware 4-Pack 0.5-in x 2-in Zinc-Plated Flat Braces x 2 $4.96
• New Cabinet Hardware- $10.94
  • Brainerd 3-3/4-in Center-to-Center Vintage Nickel Nolan Bar Cabinet Pull $4.97
  • Brainerd 1-3/8-in Satin Nickel Round Cabinet Knob x 2 $5.94
• Corner PVC Trim – $5.97

Total $191.38

As of last Wednesday it’s a been a whole YEAR since we closed on our home.

We had BIG ideas from the start, and I think we started to tackle them pretty well this first year! I decided we definitely needed to recap our pursuit of sweat equity, so here we go! Pretty much in order…

Lots of these still need posts, coming soon!

 Weekend One – We tackled the tongue and groove tile ceiling in the basement. We are SOO glad we knocked that out right away!

Solved lots of electrical mysteries

Replaced mismatched doorknob with new brushed nickel egg shaped ones.
(That door is now white, hooray!)

Added a shelf above our washer and dryer for cleaning stuff.

We did our budget update on the Master Bath

Got our original tile looking great!

We went wallpaper FREE!

Painted the paneling in the basement as an interim fix. So much brighter now!

Installed our super awesome cast aluminum mailbox sign!

Installed a portable AC in our Master Bedroom, and got an Electric Fireplace for the winter.

We frosted the Garage Windows

Made magnetic garage door hardware so our standard doors look a tad bit more ‘carriage house' (How to coming soon!)

Fixed our 20+ year old Air Conditioner for $7 during the heat wave using pictures and phone diagnosis with our Dad’s

Spent lots of time in the yard (Andrew mostly =) with our new Ryobi tools, backpack blower, electric push mower, and big riding mower…

We fixed our master bath toilet slow leak…

And replaced the whole shower arm in the guest suite…

We replaced our Garage door opener, and added a second one. Adding one was definitely more tricky!

We also reinforced a dent in the garage door and added some weather striping.

We replaced our garage side outdoor light fixtures with some PERFECT $10 Home Depot Clearance ones!

Sewed, Modified, most all of the curtains including making a roman shade.. 2 more to go!

Lots of furniture redos, including painting a laminate dresser, refinishing night stands, and painting a headboard.

Found and purchased patio furniture for both patios, got a cute chiminea, end tables for the living room, a lovely headboard I never see because it’s covered by a sheet because cats love chenille, a Basement TV and a Treadmill (one gets used more than the other…)

Used our new pressure washer…

Added some much needed shelving to the craft room closet, that’s nearly $200 in shelving in order to make it deep! oye!

Lots of work in the dressing room, I was surprised by my wonder Future Mother In Law with the PERFECT desk vanity, I purchased commercial shelving to create a freestanding closet, found a adorable palm beach style chair, and got a deal on my dream jewelry armoire. I painted the bifold closet doors in here as well, and sewed that  roman shade.

Painted doors and wainscoting in the Living Room, painted the closet door in the craft room as well

COMPLETELY Transformed our Kitchen, see the sorta before here. Full recap is coming!

We replaced the faucet, stove, and bought a fridge. Replaced the dishwasher drain hose. Repaired drawers. Replaced a broken ceiling fan with a light. Painted the walls, trim, doors, cabinets, hardware. Replaced the bifold doors for the laundry closet. Added a island, appliance bar, and shelving. Fixed our ancient range hood. Bought a antique dry sink, and pantry door shelves.

Lots more coming up, but still so fun!