One Year In Our Fixer Upper

This year has truly flown by. Sometimes it feels like we've only been in this home for a couple months, and sometimes it feels like we've been here 10 years already (mostly when I'm annoyed a renovation is taking too long). We have officially hit one year in our wonderful fixer upper, which has truly become home for us.

We were blessed to have been able to accomplish so much in our first year -- way more than we expected to. I think we surprised ourselves with how much appetite we actually have for home renovation and DIY. We *hoped* this would be the case, but we truly love it. Our home has become our shared hobby; a shared canvas that we get the work on together to make our own. It's been something that's brought us closer together, and makes us so proud. Sometimes we stand in the driveway and look at it, all shiny and blue, and say "Can you believe we did this? Look how good it looks now!"

We have really enjoyed focusing on one project at a time, giving it all our energy and focus, and then moving on to the next. We are so excited for the things we have planned in Year 2, and are so grateful you're coming along for the ride!

I thought it would be fun to see before and afters of every single project we've undertaken in this home over the last 365 days of owning it, so here's our Year 1 Review of what we've accomplished!


Year One Project Roundup 

1. Installed hardwood floors

2. Installed our pantry

3. Painted our staircase 

4. Added entry storage

5. Made-over the dining room 

6. Made-over the fireplace with sticker tiles. Next year, we hope to re-do the fireplace and add built-in shelving on each side. 

7. Patched a wall to fill in the "baby jail." It really brought our house out of the 80s!

8. Painted the exterior & installed new gutters

9. Removed shrubs and re-landscaped

10.  Installed new carpet, fans, and made over the master bedroom 

11. Installed new carpet, fans, and made over the guest room

12. Remodeled the powder room 

13. Painted tile floor. It's holding up SO well! I am planning to repeat this upstairs because it looks so great in this room. 

14. Removed and re-installed a slate patio DIY (Never. Again.) Post coming soon! 

This year has truly been a labor of love for us in so many ways. We've poured all of our extra time, money, and energy into making this house *our* home, and bringing it up to it's full potential. We absolutely love this neighborhood, love our neighbors, love the location, and love this home. We see ourselves here for a good long while, and are loving making this home "ours" early on, so that we can enjoy it for many years to come. We've had more time than we had hoped to give this home our undivided attention before have kiddos, so we are taking advantage of that and just plowing through our to do list one thing at a time!

At the end of the day we are so thankful to have been able to do as much to this home as we were, and are excited for the projects we have remaining. I'll be sharing our Year 2 "hope to" list as soon as we are able to get our priorities in line, and of course keep you posted along the way. As always, thank you for reading! 

Our Annual Home Maintenance Check List

Wow, are we *really* rounding the corner to the end of 2019 already? This has been a big year for us, home-wise. We bought our new house, tackled dozens of renovations and age-related improvements, and now we are trying squeak out a couple more "small" renovations before the end of the year. (Might be another bathroom...spoiler!)

But, while our big makeover plans are taking a small break for now, we are switching gears towards annual home maintenance items we've put off. As a Realtor, I'm pretty meticulous about regular home maintenance. It's my philosophy you should keep your house in good enough shape that you could sell it at any time. We have no plans to do that, but it helps me feel motivated to keep up regular maintenance.

So, I thought it might be helpful to pull together a list of home maintenance musts for you to have. You can use this list to finish off the 2019 check list and make a plan to start fresh in 2020!

- Inspect your attic for roof leaks. Summer is our rainy season in North Carolina, so I always like to go up into the attic every few months when it's rainy and check the plywood for dark stains. Sometimes staining means a leak has been fixed, so it's a good idea to check it when it's actually raining. You should be able to reach and feel for yourself if it feels damp. If so, repair asap!

- Check for pests in the attic. Wasps, birds, and other critters get active in the summer. Make sure they're not getting active in your home! Check your attic, under your deck, etc for evidence of pests.

- Fix your window screens. Have a rip in a screen? Now is a great time to make that repair since your doors will likely be open.

- Schedule a power wash. Did you know mildew build up can increase siding rot? Powerwashing your house once a year helps keep the house looking fresh, and prevent fungal growth from causing more damage. In our area, some neighborhood teens were powerwashing houses for cheap. They did a great job!

- Keep up with landscaping. Have an area in your yard that gets out of control? We definitely do. Summer is a good time to get on a maintenance plan with your yard -- whether you DIY or hire it out to a landscaper. It's always less work to maintain something than it is to do a big overhaul so it's better to stay on top of it.

- Check your crawl space if you have one. Does it feel cool or moist down there? Do you see black spots growing on any of the wood? It could be fungal growth, which increases in the hot humid months. That can cause major damage so best to treat it asap. But you won't be able to treat it if you don't know it's there. We have some crawl space to do items we've been putting on. My goal is to have them finished by September!

-Clean out the garage. The cars may have been parked outside all summer long, and the garage has now collected full of cra-- OH, just me? Yours isn't? Liar :) End of summer is the perfect time to take everything out, have a yard sale, and put everything back nice and organized!

Fall is the *best* home maintenance month, in my opinion. This is my "do all the things" month. Check Groupon for discount codes on some of the items below:

- HVAC service. Coming off a hot summer with lots of AC use and prepping for winter where you're blasting the heat, fall is the best time to get your HVAC serviced and make sure it's in good order. Pro tip -- local companies are almost always going to be more reputable and less expensive than big chain companies! If you want an HVAC specialist recommendation, reach out to your Realtor in your area. I'm sure they have one!

- Seed for grass. Fall is the best time of year to seed for next year's summer grass. Lots of companies offer this, but you can also DIY if you have the right tools.

- Clear off leaves/debris from wood surfaces. Once the leaves have fallen, don't let them sit. If those leaves collect moisture and rot under piles of snow all winter, they will cause major damage come spring. Make sure your surfaces are clean before the end of the season!

-Seal driveway and pavement cracks with concrete caulk or mortar. Did you know water can get between driveway cracks, freeze, expand, and make the crack 10x worse come spring? Make sure you inspect your walkways for big cracks and fill them up before the first big freeze.

- Get your chimney cleaned. This is another important annual home maintenance item. Critters, dust, birds, and debris love to hide in chimneys, so it's important to make sure it's cleared out before you use it. But, did you also know chimneys get exposed to water and can crack, exposing you to smoke in your home? Make sure your chimney is safe to use before you use it. (This is almost certainly something you can find a code for on Groupon!)

Winter typically isn't the best time of year to have contractors coming to the house for work. Weather can be weird, projects can be weather/temperature dependent... so I tend to focus on inside things during this season. I like to use this season to get caught up on my "honey-do" list. You know, that list of projects that you've been putting off and saying you'll get to later? Later is now. Go through your mental checklist of what needs to be done and just do it. You'll be happy to have it off your mental load! For us, that's painting the upstairs hallway ceiling and installing our second smoke detector. Yikes! Need to get on that.

- Plan and book spring maintenance items. Sometimes, Groupon will have coupons for things like roof repair, grass seeding, power washing, etc. You can save money by booking these things during the slow season and schedule them for when weather improves.

-Clean out your dryer vent. Did you know clogged dryer vents are the leading cause of house fires? Yikes! Your local fire company probably offers a service or can make a recommendation for someone to come clean yours out. This is important to do every year!

Hopefully you've been doing this all year, but if not, change your air filters! It's important to do this quarterly to have healthy air and good air flow for your HVAC. At the very least, do it once a year!

-Inspect the exterior of your home. Do you see wood crot, cracking, or caulking that needs to be done? Now is a great time to have exterior work done. It's not too hot, and it's early enough in the season that prices may still be reasonable.

- Check your gutters. This April we felt like we were drowning is rain. And so did our gutters. We noticed quickly that our gutters were in bad shape and leaking all over the place. We ended up getting them replaced, but paying attention helped us realize it was time! It's always a good idea to get your gutters cleaned this time of year, too!

- Seed grass again/landscape. After the final freeze, but just before summer, is a great time to plant seeds for your flower beds, veggie garden, and grassy front yard. There's a reason Lowe's gets busy in spring... it's time to get busy outside! (wait... don't do that).


Hopefully this is a helpful list of things to remind you to stay on top of your regular home maintenance. It's important, but doing these regular things can save you thousands of dollars in the long run! To help you remember, I created a little PDF guide with seasonal check list items. You can download that list here!

Boosting Your Curb Appeal

As a Realtor, I am constantly helping people prepare their homes to sell. One of the biggest things we talk about is "boosting curb appeal." I know it sounds like trendy TV fodder, but it really does make a huge impact.

-Did you know that mature trees can increase your home's value by up to 9%?
-Did you know that updating your exterior and having fresh paint and trim can increase your home's value dollar for dollar of what you spent?
-Did you know that having tidy landscaping and hedges can increase your home's value by up to 4%?

It really does make a big difference. And, more often than not, it's not something my clients have prioritized. My husband has an expression that I've come to love... "The best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago. The second best time is today." 

So, when it came to considering our own curb appeal, clearly we needed some work. While we plan to be in this house for a long time, we also know that landscaping and curb appeal improvements look best with age. So, as a gift to future us when we sell this house down the road, we decided to invest in exterior and landscaping updates right away.

We've already shared the biggest transformation of all -- painting our house. You can see all the before and afters on this post. But, the other huge thing our front lawn (and side and back lawn) needed was some major landscaping overhaul.

The previous owners didn't do much other than keep the tops of their shrubs and plants trimmed. Things were pretty overgrown, and it's been a lot to manage. Did you know plants have a lifespan? Most of ours are around 32 years old, so any work we did to cut them back would likely have killed them. So, we decided to go ahead and start tackling one space at a time, completing an area as we go. Below are some listing photos of what the house looked like when we bought it. See those car sized hedges on the left hand side of the stairs? They came up to my shoulders and leaned into the sidewalk like they were trying to eat you.

 

So, to give the house a little breathing room and start fresh, we decided to completely remove them. We got an electric chain saw and a strong hedge trimmer and Spenser started cutting them back. Once we had all the branches cut down to stumps, and cleaned up all the debris, we (he...) started digging up the stumps. Bless his heart, this was HARD work. Now that I know he can do it by himself we'll see if I chip in next time 😉😇 You'll see in these photos that during this project our house got painted, as well! 

  

Once Spenser had dug up all the roots, we started planning what we wanted to go back in its place. We live in a very traditional neighborhood with a lot of colonial style homes, so we were really drawn to the idea of a Japanese Maple. Plus, having a tree in this space would give us a little privacy from the street, as well! We found a beautiful 8ft maple at our local nursery and had it delivered.

When you're planting a tree, you want to make sure you follow the growth guidelines so you don't plant it too close to the home or other plants. The Japanese Maple needed to be at least 5 feet from the house and have a hole about twice as wide as the root ball. You can find this kind of information online if you are working with specific plants and wondering what the guidelines are. Following that allows them to have the most room to grow over time, without damaging your home or having to  move it later on.

We are novice "landscape designers," but both of us have a pretty good eye for what looks good together. Typically, we like to plant things that are hearty, perennial (meaning they come back year after year), and have a variety of colors. To balance out the blood red of the Japanese Maple, we added some vibrant greens with Abelia shrubs (my favorite, feathery, hearty, fast-growing shrub!) and some small grasses (not sure what they're called... sorry!). We also planted some small geraniums in front but we planted them a bit late so they haven't taken off like we'd hoped.

 You'll see in the photo below we also removed the shrubs along the right side of the walk way (the dirt spots are where we need to plant grass in the fall). And you won't be able to tell in the photo above, but this Crepe Myrtle sprung back to life from a complete stump! It was just a stump when we moved in and it's done all this growth in less than a year. We really love him and plan to keep him pruned so he stays a little pink shrub for years and years.

We definitely have other major landscaping updates as to do, but we are thrilled with how far this area has come. I'll be honest... we often feel overwhelmed by how much landscaping work is left to do. Landscaping is different than typical renovations where once you're done, you're done. They require constant maintenance, trimming, and watering. And if you ignore one area for too long, it can get out of control! But, we're committing to our process and so far it has been working for us. Starting fresh with new landscaping has also made it easier to see what remains to be done and set our priorities. 

As far as return on investment, this has definitely been some labor intensive, back breaking, heavy sweating work. Re-landscaping 30 year old vegetation is NOT easy. But, we know it's going to be worth it, in more ways that one. We recently had our house appraised for a refinance (holla interest rate drop!) and the appraiser gave us a $30,000 increase in property value... 6 months after buying it! I like to think a GOOD chunk of that came from just improving the curb appeal, alone. On top of that, we have had neighbors stop us on the street and actually thank us for what we've done to the house. One neighbor said she loves "looking out her window at our beautiful house now." I can't think of a better return on investment!

Since it's currently eleventybillion degrees in North Carolina, we won't be doing any more landscaping until fall, but I'm sure we'll have more updates then. For now, we're enjoying watching all our hard work take root and are excited for what changes fall will bring!