We've been living in our home for a little over a year now! We've owned it for about 4 months longer than that, as we did some major renovations we didn't want to live through. So glad we financially planned for that! The memory of having to bathe in a stripped to the studs bathroom with a bowl of lukewarm water, was enough to wait the extra few months to know we could carry two homes for awhile if necessary. And turns out it wasn't necessary. We learned so much in home renovation in our old home and are continuing to learn a lot in our new home. We learned what is worth our time to do and what is worth hiring someone to do. Projects have been ongoing and ongoing and are still ongoing. The biggest lesson I've learned and mantra I have to keep repeating is, "a home is always evolving and a work in progress." We really love this place and thought I would devote a few posts to our progress in this past year. I love looking at other people's home/ projects for ideas. If you don't, you can stop reading! Our most important goal with our home this year has been functionality and creating a space that is what WE love and that reflects us as a family.
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| BEFORE |
The exterior of our home when we bought it was fine. It needed a paint job soon and the driveway is bad! I hate blacktop over cement, it's a quick fix that never looks good or works. We looked straight past it and the cost to replace it, check the driveway when you are home shopping! We also never anticipated buying a home that has the extent of landscaping this sucker does. We have a nice large lot (1/2 acre) and tons of trees (13 in fact), which turns out costs a lot to maintain. Already did $500 in tree trimming this year and that was only three trees. Granted they were large trees. We have a creek running through our backyard and ultimately the trees give us so much privacy and woodsiness in the center of Omaha. In the end, the yard actually ended up selling us a bit on the house.
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| AFTER |
We hired someone to paint the exterior a nice shade of army green. The windows/ shutters/ garage went to a nice cream. We also knew we needed new windows in the next few years when we bought the house. We had the painters paint the ugly, metal storm windows on the outside of the house. It looks unbelieveably better, in fact good enough we can hold out on windows a bit longer possibly.
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| BEFORE |
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| AFTER |
We removed the tree that was completely blocking the front of the house. This gave us the opportunity to buy a chainsaw. Which makes you feel powerful when you use it. I'm still looking for things to chainsaw. The house still lacks a bit of
architectural detail on it, which was a little disappointing about this house, but we have some plans to remedy that next summer hopefully. Freshly painted door and spray painted chairs for the front porch that we already had.
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| BEFORE- creepy Adam on the deck |
We did put on a new deck. You might be saying, hey that old deck looks kind of cool and unique with the all-around bench on it. Well, turns out there used to be a pond underneath which did a number on the support beams in terms of rotting them, unstable stairs, and not so safe to have a bench kids can climb and fall over onto the concrete patio. So we had to replace it.
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| AFTER |
We went with composite material for most of the deck for maintenance reasons. We still have the outside frame to stain, since it was not made from cedar. You have to wait awhile before they recommend doing this, so likely early spring we will so it matches. We love the deck. It's significantly bigger than the last one. Our basement is a walkout, which we were sticklers on when home shopping. I'm a fan of natural light in a basement and a way to easily escape fire. We did not paint the storm windows in the back to save on cost, you can see they don't look nearly as nice.
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| BEFORE |
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| AFTER |
The exterior is probably the most surprising for us in terms of what we ended up buying. It's a bit more traditional than we planned. The yard is pretty much unfenceable (we wanted a fence) and much more interesting that we originally were looking for. In the end the challenges of this yard/exterior are going to make it better than we thought we could afford. We have many projects planned for the outside in spring/summer! And for sure a new driveway as soon as it's above freezing. I think it's a good thing we bought a nice chainsaw!
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