2015 Already?!

I can't believe the last blog post for the Manor was in December. The Master bathroom refresh is complete and the rough-edge shelves are awesome. We are enjoying the clutter-free arrangement and lighter color in the small space! There's nothing like freshly painted bathroom baseboards!

I have been thinking about our home-renovation philosophy and always having a project going. We have a master plan that involves a porch conversion, and a few more large scale landscaping projects that I'm chomping at the bit to get done. House/garden projects are my favorite creative outlet, but lately I've felt a the need to dial back the big $$$ projects. There are two reasons: the first is that it's probably foolish to spend all one's money on home improvements, and more importantly: it's also unwise to invest so much into an asset that isn't really appreciating. Comparable houses in the neighborhood are selling for way less than we bought our house.

I'm fine with being a little upside down or flat in value. We didn't buy the house as an investment really, but rather a place to live. But it seems silly to pour every spare dollar into a house that has flat (at best!) value 7 years after purchase.

Part of launching the blog was to keep track of the improvements to the property, to see how far we've come, and to loosely keep track of the time and money we've put in. And it's been a lot. The roof, kitchen, fence, front landscaping, front door, patio, insulation, security system, exterior paint - we're talking thousands of dollars over the years (not to mention the blood sweat & tears!)

Most years, we have a plan for what projects we're saving up for. For 2015, we're switching gears. We're maintaining everything, doing a little garden work, but not spending the moolah. We can continue with the upgrades that don't cost anything and keep them more in line with what the neighborhood and markets will support.

Ongoing posts will consist of less hammer and nail kind of stuff, and more posts of things like: flower arrangements (yes, I'm a sucker for those!), garden edibles, plants that I dug up from one part of the yard and replanted in another (a favorite free hobby), and hopefully clutter clearing projects.

Mini Rain Garden

We have a downspout that collects more water than the others. We've had the gutters looked at by a pro and cleaned, so maybe this gutter is just more popular. Or the house is old and a little leansy (more likely).

One year at Thanksgiving (when we were getting ready to have a bunch of people over!) it rained cats & dogs and the area by the downspout pooled and flooded pretty badly. So I scooted down to Ace Hardware (which was open for at least part of the day - thanks Ace!) and got one of those plastic tube extensions that you can attach to the downspout and move the water away from the house.

This worked great - now the water all goes into a landscaped area away from the foundation and soaks in. But we decided to up the ante and make a little rain garden/dry creekbed to collect and distribute the water, and also look pretty!

So far, with the second real rain of the year it's working great. I can't wait for those little ferns and whatever those succulents are to get a little bigger and create more of a landscape feature.

House Painting Complete

This has been done for a couple of months, but I've been spending every spare moment of good weather out walking the dog or fussing in the yard, (not blogging in front of the computer!). But here is the good news: the exterior paint is complete and we are so happy with it!

Our painters did a great job. We also had the bonus experience of liking having them around, which is great when you have a bunch of dudes hanging around the house for a few weeks working on a project. They did a nice job matching the gutters to the color behind them, and they were very thorough and made sure that we had a thorough inspection and sign off.

We thought about eventually painting the front door, but the contrast of the exposed wood grain and the off-gray looks great. I don't think we'll be making any changes to the door finish! (We just saved ourselves some work there!)

We also added this little maple:

Front yard landscaping complete!

We installed the back row of boxwoods (which puts us at about 150, phew!) and can say that we're done with the front yard landscaping project! The plants are still looking a little dinky, BUT the boxwoods are starting to spread out a little - hopefully to create a nice leafy border and dimension to the front slope.

So far, maintenance has been low key. We opted to go without weed tarp (thinking it would cause mulch slippage, plus - I kind of hate the stuff) and so far, so good. there are some sneaky fireweeds (my nemesis!!) and clover, but a quick sweep about once a week has knocked them out so far. It's so much better to drive up to the Manor and see happy looking grasses & herbs, instead of the dreaded dead grass eyesore that got me in trouble!

Master plan completed!

After working with my architect buddy Julian off & on for the last few months, we've developed master plans for remodeling the existing house as well as a landscape plan for the sprawling backyard. The house plan is broken out into phases so we can do a little at a time (as time and $$$ permit).

The architectural plan involves several small additions. Phase 1 fills in the side porch to create a dining room and add some square footage to the master bathroom (btw: the current master bathroom is tiny, funky, potentially moldy, and despite bordering an outside wall, has no windows). Phase 2 is a small change that increases the size of the living room to accommodate Madam Strubgrass's grand piano. Phase 3 adds storage and a carport to the backyard off the alley, and Phase 4 adds bedroom 3 onto the back of the house. Phase 4 (adding a bedroom) might be the first project we complete for a couple of reasons. First of all, where are we going to put the babies (once we find out how to get them, of course) and also - resale value (for the house, not the babies).

We have no concrete dates for starting any remodel construction, but now that the plan is done we can move forward with landscaping (since we now know what areas of the house are going to expand, we can plan on not getting attached to anything we plant there.)

The master landscape plan really has me excited, especially because now we can get started on removing the lumps of dead grass that make up the frontyard. Plus - we can start to give shape to the huge rectangle of weedy grass in the backyard.