More house renovation

In terms of what we had to do to our house after we moved in...we've gotten pretty lucky. Sure we painted almost every room...and Scott has now changed almost every light fixture in the entire house...but that was because we wanted it to be our style.

Other than adding a deck (coming very soon) landscaping/killing weeds (in progress) and replacing carpet (this will have to wait), there wasn't a whole lot that HAD to be done. We got VERY lucky!

After Christmas and a housewarming party, we were fortunate enough to have gift cards to use at Lowes & Home Depot. We chose to add hardware to our cabinets in the kitchen (somewhat out of necesity, we kept stubbing our fingers) and then we decided that since the flooring in the master bathroom and the full bath in the hall upstairs wasn't that great, that we would replace them with new peel and stick tile. Easy right? Maybe...

Here's what we started with:

Honestly not THAT bad...we could have lived with it for awhile. See the red arrow? That was the first clue that it needed replaced. It was a sheet of vinyl and apparently when this house was built 8 years ago, they didn't put it in correctly because it had started to bubble up and peel away from the corners.

So one afternoon I peeled the floor up...hoping to find a subfloor completely in place. It was! Score 1 for us.

I was left with a pile of vinyl. Then I added some primer, which was this milk-ish substance that smelled terrible. Whatever. I guess it helps the tile stick better so there you go. After that was dry, I started on the tile...and my lovely husband was able to finish it for me. (apparently I have a problem cutting straight lines. Weird. You'd think a scrapbooker like myself wouldn't have issues like that)

Here's the finished product! I think it looks great.

Yes we took the door off, but only so it would be a little easier to work.

Now on to project number 2...the master bathroom!

I've already got the old floor up, and the primer is next.

Landscaping that has kept us busy

Holy landscaping batman! It's not like we really have done that much, but we've had to go through 8 years of the previous owner basically not doing anything to the outside of the house. We continue to have a lot more weeds in the yard than we do grass...but hey...you can't kill those things off in one day.

This past weekend we decided to tackle the front yard. Scott had already done the edging, dug the hole for the mini pond and we had already planted hostas that his parents didn't want any more. BUT there was so much more to do! We first had to weed out the entire bed. It's funny because we had grass where we didn't want it to grow, and we couldn't get it to grow where we needed it. Typical!

Check out the weeds we pulled from under some of the bushes:

We went to Lowes and bought 10 bags of mulch, and boy did we underestimate how much we needed! It only took us about halfway around the front landscaping. Scott has already purchased 10 more bags for us to finish the mulching, plus some topsoil to put down first since there's a lack of enough dirt :-) We ended up planting some grasses instead of flowers, only because I turn into a two year old with a tantrum problem when there are bee's around.

I keep reminding myself that we have only lived in this house for a few months, and we can't expect to get everything done in one year!