small fixes = big improvements

a couple weeks ago, we borrowed my friend's power washer to clean some outside areas.

you might remember i showed you the front porch after it was power washed...

we were so amazed with the improvement it made that b wanted to try doing the driveway.

now, our driveway is quite long.

it's an L shape so there is a whole lot of concrete and if you've ever power washed,

then you know it's not a quick process.

b spent an hour or two on a Sunday afternoon washing the first section of

the drive.

take a look at the difference.

awesome right?

looks almost brand new huh?

the funny thing is, last week, b met with a fence company about putting a gate across our driveway 

(for O and A's safety) and the guy he met with asked if we had just had a new 

driveway pored. 

i think b liked that. :)

so this past weekend, b finished the rest of the driveway.

it's hard to tell just how bad this driveway was since i really don't have many before pictures looking in this direction...but take it from me...HUGE improvement!

this is looking out at the street...

and this was an older picture from this spring. wish i had a better before picture!

oh..take a look at this. here is a picture of the front of our house before we moved in...

and here it is now. 

b trimmed the bushes, cute the grass/weeds, i painted the front door, b sprayed the sidewalk, front stoop and driveway. oh and we bought a flag for the first time since owning a house!

you see the fence in the background? that is going to be replaced this week! 

i'll share pictures next week!

something else b did this weekend...

here is our old mailbox. what we found out after we moved in was that this box is the original one to the house. it's never been replaced so i guess that explains why every time we would get our mail, the items in the mailbox would be wet. ugh!

 this past weekend, b replaced the old mailbox and post.

**notice the difference in the sidewalk...before...and after...crazy right?**

our new mailbox. no more wet mail! :) we still need to stain the post and put numbers on it but it looks so much better then the old one right?

oh and yes..those are weeds that hopefully some day will be replaced with sod or seed and maybe some flowers around the post! :)

wanna see another small fix to the house?

let's go inside.

let's talk about this...you remember this closet?

i've talked about it quite a lot.

we nick named this old hot water heater the "bomb" because it had so many issues

and to top it off it had a gas leak.

yeah...so glad that's gone!

it was ripped out during construction.

pre drywall and baseboard..oh and paint.

and a shell of a closet was left.

well that "shell" of a closet left us with a lot of unusable space.

okay, not quite, we were able to store the cans and Arden's food but pretty much just that.

 we knew we wanted this closet to function as a pantry where

we could continue to store our cans, dog food and also have room for other kitchen supplies

 but without any shelves...

it made it a little hard.

so b and i had a cabinet maker look at all our closets and give us a

 quote on adding shelves and other misc. items to each space.

for just a couple shelves in this pantry, it was going to cost us $350.00.

the guy does amazing work...but b decided he was going to do

the shelves himself and leave the cabinets to the cabinet maker.

i knew b would do a great job because he had already done this type of work in our

previous house. so we discussed heights of shelves and what we wanted to store in the closet and then b picked up the materials he needed from the local hardware store. 

with in an hour, we had shelves.

now they still need to be primed and painted but look at the storage we have.

it's so nice to open this door and see things organized.

he didn't just stop at the pantry. he also tackled the coat closet under the stairs.

i hate that i don't have any before pictures to share with you but picture this..

a really deep closet with a very shallow shelf and an old rusty hanging rod.

got it in your head? okay...

here's the closet today.

so what b did was, he removed the old shelf and hanging bar. then he added a deeper top shelf so that we could store items we use frequently (like Arden's leash and the tool bag) and then he gave us a brand new shiny hanging bar for coats and bags.

 he didn't stop there. oh no.

 you know how i told you it was a deep closet?

oh and you know how i like things organized...well he gave me two more

shelves but in the back of the closet.

see.

it's not as organized as i would like but

 it doesn't help that we still have boxes of kitchen items that will eventually go in the

new breakfast room cabinets.

for now though, they need to stay in their boxes and in here.

at lease in here, they are out of the way. 

the best part, once you move the coats back, you have no idea the storage is back there.

sweet huh?  

so there you have it...small fixes = big improvements.