Mike's Garden

At the beginning of July, I spent a week with Mike and worked in the Ohio State University Library on my research. In the evenings, I also helped him with house stuff, including some gardening. His garden really is beautiful, and since his parents haven't seen it in full bloom, I thought I would post some photos here.

He even has tomato plants from the previous owner. Here's what they looked like earlier this month. I'm looking forward to hearing how they are now after our vacation.

He has also inherited dillweed, which has definitely been growing in a weed-like fashion. I cut some back and pulled some out completely. He still has quite a bit, and we're hoping that one of his neighbors comes to take some.

His real estate agent dropped off some small flags for the 4th of July.

I planted some flowers in the already existing flower boxes. Mike helped pick them out.

Earlier in the season, Mike had some grass planted in the back yard, making it a bit greener than that of the fall and winter.

Kitchen

Now the kitchen is painted. We kept it close to the same color green that was there before, and I had painted the terra cotta color when I first moved in (to cover some marks on the wall from the attached table that the previous owners had). I had a new fan put in, and I bought new sheers to brighten up the kitchen. It's difficult to tell from this photo, but the kitchen is so bright now. I really like it, and it will be nice and bright in the winter.

I think when I go to sell the house, I'll have plenty of photos to give the realtor to post. :-)

This is where the exhaust fan used to be. This is by the kitchen nook.

Yet Another Update

The upper part of the back side of the house now looks so nice! And I got the flat roof over part of the kitchen, the downstairs bathroom, and the den re-done as well. It turns out that it wasn't done very well to begin with, which explains some of the leakage in the den.

Moroccan sky garage doors! Chris also replaced the wood framing the doors (and the sides) and painted that the trim color. Now we just gotta get that pretty green up there so we can see better how the three colors will look together. For now, use your imagination. :-)

Chris has his work cut out for him on the back and sides of the garage. The bottom and side boards are rotten, so he'll replace them with treated wood. I had a company dig out and dispose of some of the soil here, as it was pretty high, and we couldn't see where the grade of the garage was.

Here you can see where it's particularly bad. It's going to look so much better when it's all finished!

Latest Update of Front of House

So, this is what the house looks like now. Chris (the painter) is still working on the front porch, as he's had to replace a number of boards, such as the small horizontal boards connecting the pillars. Tomorrow, I think he'll continue with the second coat on the front next to the porch and then the contrast color, "Moroccan sky," which will replace the reddish colors here. The porch concrete will also be painted the Moroccan sky color, as will the front door and the garage doors, to give the green and creme trim a bit of interesting contrast.

I ordered new sheers for the kitchen, so once I get those, I'll post pictures of my bright and newly painted kitchen. We had a bit of an ordeal with the ceiling fan, requiring the work of an electrician. Apparently, this is not surprising, given the fact that this is an 80-year old house.

Oi! What's Behind the Garage?!!

It's kind of interesting and even creepy to find about what previous owners have done to your house. When I began this house painting project (that is, when I started looking for painters), the fact that the back wall of the garage had not been painted in years, leaving it a different color from the rest of the house and garage, was pointed out to me. Well, there's a fence back there, and I had had no occasion to take a look, which, believe you me, I definitely will in future houses! Anyway, I thought I should trim some of the trees back there to help the painter out. In doing so, I discovered that one of the previous owners had taken out carpeting only to discard it behind the garage. With great effort, I dug it out, cut parts of the individual rugs, bound them, and took them to the street to be picked up by the city trash removal service (with a fee of $7.50 per bundle, and there were three bundles). It was a messy job, and I cursed several times at the fact that I was removing things from this house that should have been taken care of years ago. Now I'm going to try to level out the soil behind the garage, so that the painter can paint the bottom boards. I hope I don't discover anything else back there!

Old yucky kitchen exhaust fan

My house is almost 85 years old, and it still has some of its old features, such as the old exhaust fan in the kitchen. Chris was trying to figure out what to do about it, and thought that taking it out completely and covering that space up would be best in terms of winter drafts in the kitchen and making sure that old wiring wasn't a fire hazard. It was an interesting job, I thought. Here's what it looked like from the inside (with the door flap open on the outside.)

And here's what it looked like from the outside, once Chris started taking it out. It was really dirty and gross.

I know it's a bit strange to be documenting this so much, but I was fascinated with what he was doing. So, here's the hole in my kitchen, soon to be covered up and painted over.

Here it is on the inside, covered up and waiting for Chris to paint it tomorrow. As it turns out, he's going to paint my kitchen (after we briefly negotiated on price), as I don't have the exact same green in kitchen paint to cover up this spot. Well, the green parts of the kitchen need it (I added some terra cotta color when I first moved in), and he's going to do the ceiling as well. Tomorrow and Friday will be good days for this since it's going to rain.

Oooooh, our first glimpse of GREEN!

Chris (my painter) got a Behr paint that has primer in it, so we get to see the green already. I'm really liking the color. It's going to rain in the next couple of days, so unfortunately, progress will be slow.

Here's the front porch.

Prepping the House for Painting

Aaaah, home ownership is fun! The exterior paint started peeling last summer and has accelerated since, leaving me with no other choice but to find a painter this spring/summer. I discovered that the most recent paint job was a quickie, probably to sell the house, and they didn't even paint the back of the garage! I didn't even know that and am embarrassed that I didn't. My neighbors behind me, though, probably wondered when I would find out.

So, to document progress, I thought it would be fun to take pictures of the different phases. He we have Chris, the painter, in the first phases of prepping the front and side of the house.

I've always disliked the rug that was on the front porch, so I wanted to take it off and repaint the porch a nice contrast color. It was a bit of a discovery, that's for sure.

There are some cracks that need repair...

And the 80 years of paint that Chris chipped away.

Chris is also fixing little things here and there, like making the door frames more appealing, which he says doesn't take that much work, as he's got lots of smaller pieces of wood lying around. I wish it were that easy for me. :-)

This is just to show you how bad the peeling had gotten. Apparently, this was a sprayjob, with no priming. It lasted a couple of years. At least I get to pick a new color, since I was never really thrilled with this one, anyway.

These are the various colors I tried out. I'm going with the last green one for the body of the house ("moss print"), the orangish one ("Moroccan sun") for the contrast color, and the trim will pretty much be similar to what it already is. I'm glad that I took Mike's advice to get samples, because I saw photos of houses painted the other colors, and well, the colors don't look like the photos, that's for sure.

Stay tuned for future updates! This will be fun, watching my house transformed from drab colors to brighter ones.

Cabinet -- Finally Stained

I bought this cabinet 3 years ago, when I was living in an apartment in Heritage Hill (the historic housing district in Grand Rapids). When I bought it, I thought I would stain or paint it when I moved into my own house. Well, it took two years, but I finally did it!

Dining Room -- After

In the dining room, I added a mirror that Mike had given me. He just had it propped on a dresser, and it used to be white with gold trim. I painted it red, with white and sea green trim to match the valences. And of course, I hung it up, as you can see. I got to use my drill!

Living Room -- After

I'm pretty happy with the results, and hopefully these lively colors will help cheer me up during the long, cold, and dark Michigan winter.

Here's what the living room now looks like and the fireplace.

I painted the walls a light yellow, called "candlelit dinner." I also painted the ceiling (with a student's hired help), as it had previously been the same tan cream color as the walls. It's now a shade of "vanilla ice cream." This led me to tackling the valences, going from a sage green to more of a sea green. I finally took on the fireplace, and to provide a bit of a contrast, selected a color called "hot apple spice."

Summer House Projects -- Before

My friend, Sara, who has a really great blog, suggested that I post photos of my latest project. I really enjoy reading her blog and thought it might be fun to have one of my own. So, here it goes....my first post!

I've spent weeks livening up my living and dining rooms and the upstairs hall. Here are before photos. This is what my living room looked like when I first bought the house and moved in June 2006. I really didn't change much beyond moving plants around and putting photos on the decorative fireplace. The dining room was painted the same color, with the same color in the valences.