Category: Exterior

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While we were Away

I haven’t posted in awhile, but it’s not because nothing has been happening. We have been so busy over the past 3 months that I’ve hardly had a spare minute to document all the things we’ve been up to. I’m better at giving regular, real-time updates on instagram in my posts and stories. So go check us out there if you want to stay updated with what we’ve got going on daily! Otherwise, keep reading for the quick summary of what we’ve been up to and the sneak peeks on all the upcoming blog posts. 

Since my last blog post:

  • We finished our deck build (including the second story balcony off our master bedroom)

  • We installed hardwood floors downstairs (that washable rug is Lorena Canals) 

  • We remodeled this adorable (and free) outdoor playhouse for our girls that was given to us by our neighbors

  • We moved our office space into an office nook (I.e. in a corner in the playroom)

  • We uncovered a massive leak in our sports room which subsequently led to us ripping out about 2 full sheets worth of plywood to uncover what was causing the leak- stopped the leak, but still need to repair the damage from the leak and close the wall up.

  • We weathered hurricane Irma, and lost a couple trees, storage shed and some fencing

  • We removed all the debris and shed

  • We DIY painted/sealed the lower deck and started on the stairs and upper deck

  • We replaced our entire fence with the help of Fence Hut

  • We turned our office into a guest bedroom (after the office nook space was created)

  • We installed lots and lots of shelves during a massive home reorganization

  • We hung lights in our backyard

  • And we saved 15% on car insurance by switching to geico

Okay… I’m kidding on that last one. We actually just dropped geico because progressive had better rates… and there was that one time I dressed up as Flo for Halloween…

Also since my last post, we’ve had some big things happening in our family:

  • Our sweet second niece, Charlie was born

  • We were the tackiest tourists ever on our first Disney cruise

  • Our littlest babe turned a year old

  • I ran my first half marathon

  • And we went on our first ever family camping trip- with our 1 and 2 year old… and had a BLAST!

So the bad news is that while I’ve been neglecting my blog, you guys have missed a few things. The good news is, I have a very long list of blog post topics to share with you guys and I’m fully planning on dishing out all of the ins and outs, good and bad of basically everything in that list up there.

I also have a HUGE secret (No, I’m NOT pregnant). I don’t want to say too much and jinx a possible opportunity, but we are working on some really big things that are all around good for our family, life goals and really good blog content. The blog content part wasn’t our biggest motivator, but it is without a doubt a nice perk! So stay tuned, sit back and enjoy the good stuff ahead. Thanks for following along friends!

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When You’re Good to Paint Pressure Treated Wood- Lessons from a Painting Professional

If you’ve been following along with our backyard renovations and deck rebuild, then you may know that we have switched our plans around quite a bit throughout these renovations. I had a vision of the look I wanted, but after consulting with professional arborists, contractors and our painter, we have changed a few things around. Originally, when we planned to redo our backyard deck, we wanted to put concrete down in place of the old deck that we had. I liked the idea of the smooth light gray and planned to accent it with natural cedar. When all was said and done, we decided concrete wouldn’t work for us and we decided to do a new deck instead. We still plan to accent with cedar although we’re not building our entire deck out of cedar. And because mixed wood tones is a huge pet peeve of mine, I want to paint our deck.

In the midst of our renovations, I stayed in touch with our painter since he was giving us a discount on the exterior painting of our house if we did it after the back deck was removed (and before the new one was built). As I was explaining our plans to him, he gave me some helpful advice that I would have otherwise not known.

You shouldn’t paint fresh pressure treated wood
When we decided to go with wood decking over composite (mainly because of the price) we knew we were committing to keeping our deck well maintained and protected from the elements. I immediately started looking for wood sealers and options for protecting the wood. I knew I didn’t want a stain. I wanted an opaque light gray finish so that the cedar beams would stand out, but according to our painter: You can stain wood right away with an oil based stain, but you shouldn’t paint or seal new pressure treated wood right away because it needs time to cure and dry out before you seal it up. If you paint it without letting it dry, the paint will not last.


Photo Credit: The Feathered Tumblr

Our painter explained that a sealer locks the chemicals and moisture inside and eventually those same chemicals and moisture will eat through the fresh paint and it will begin to chip and peel and bubble. The green-ish hues in the new pressure treated wood are an indication that it has a higher moisture content.

How long do I have to wait before I can paint my wood deck?
After the wood has had a chance to dry. In Florida, this would typically take 1 or 2 seasons. Since we are finishing our deck in late Spring, we will likely paint our deck sometime mid to late Fall. In other extremely dry parts of the world, wood can dry out and be ready for paint in as little as just 2 weeks.

if I can’t paint or seal the wood right away, what do I do to protect my new deck from the elements in the interim?
Nothing. Your wood is pressure treated, and that will keep your wood from rotting while you give it some time to dry a bit. If you wait too long to seal the wood, it will eventually start to go bad, but just a season or 2 won’t hurt it.

How do I know my wood is ready for paint?
You can determine if your deck is ready to be painted by sprinkling some water on your deck. If water beads up then the boards are still too moist to paint or seal. If the water soaks right in, then your deck is dry enough for paint.

Photo: Today’s Homeowner with Danny Lipford

Thanks to our amazing painter, Sam Rios for always doing quality work at great prices and for sharing your experience and wisdom with a couple young, newbie home-renovators. If you’re local and looking for a painter, we know a guy!

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Our Front Landscaping Project- Part 1

We started our landscaping last weekend. When I envisioned what we would accomplish, I had originally planned to start and finish our landscaping last weekend, but I seriously underestimated the time it takes to dig holes and plant plants. Also, home improvement with 2 kids under 3 usually means spending 3 times as long on each task. Luckily the bulk of our work happened on Saturday and the grandparents took the oldest little to Disney for the day. So JP and I knocked out quite a bit with the littlest strapped to me in our Tula (shown below- just so you know that it really happened).

Here’s what the front landscape looked like before.

It was already pretty bare because we purged a TON of overgrown bushes shortly after we moved in with plans to re-landscape everything eventually.

We ripped most of the existing plants out- which ended up being just 4 bushes and a whole bunch of weeds. We left our palm trees and some other small plants around the corner. Then we laid down some weed barrier and tacked it down with metal stakes. (Note: we decided NOT to rake out all the flower beds before laying down the weed barrier. So instead of having clean and fresh dirt, we left the old weed barriers and some leaves down underneath. With the mindset that it would be even more help to keep weeds from growing. If it does in fact keep the weeds out better, then it will be worth it, but it did make it significantly harder to dig holes and plant the new plants.) Here;s a shot of the freshly laid weed barrier.

It took 3 (Kia Sorento) cars full of plants from Lowe’s to stock this landscape, but I planned ahead and picked up a few plants at a time earlier in the week on my lunch breaks. We really just made multiple trips out of sheer practicality and the fact that our car could only hold so much. In hindsight, it was really good to take multiple trips throughout the week because it allowed me to place the plants where I thought I wanted them and get a rough idea of how many more of each thing we needed. I was also able to better gauge the balance of large/medium/small plants and make sure the landscape was well balanced. By Saturday, I just needed a few more fluffy cattails and some smaller ground covering.

Once we had all the plants, I arranged them the way I wanted them. Originally I had envisioned rows and straight lines and once I got them all laid out, I switched it up to clusters. I arranged a lot of the medium/larger plants in triangle clusters. I still used a few lines, with the smaller plants like the spider plants around the oak tree pictured below.

I also used straight lines for the small Mexican Hair Grass and the concrete planters holding the Queen’s Mum African Lillies both shown below. Because the planters are so boxy, it was imperative that they were evenly spaced and level. We actually pulled some of the white landscape border stones (shown in the picture above) and used them underneath the planters to give them a hard surface to rest on and also to raise them up a bit. We actually measured their location with a tape measure and then made sure each one was level before pouring the dirt in.


I found those concrete planters at Target, and I can’t link them for you because they are so gone. I drove to 4 different targets just to find those 3, none of them showed up online as being available (not even in the store) and none of them were able to be shipped so we completely lucked out getting these 3. I loved them so much I got a pair of smaller ones to frame the front door (shown below).

After all the plants were placed in their final resting places, we started planting- well JP started planting. I watched and held the baby and then once he got far enough over I started shoveling the rocks in.

We’ve still got a long way to go before we’re finished, but were just doing a little at a time in the evenings between work and diaper changes and making dinner

Here’s a shot closer to sunset once the spot lights had turned on.


The lights make a big difference, and we’ve got a few more to place before we’re finished. We got these Threshold solar powered spotlights from Target. They’re 15 lumens and work so great. Right now, they’re selling for $10 a piece in store, but you can go to this link and get them for $8.50 online.

My goal for our landscape was to get super low-maintenance plants that are hardy enough to not need to be watered all the time. I didn’t want any bushes that would have to be trimmed. I also didn’t want any weeds (I mean who does?) Are you noticing a pattern here? In case you missed it, we don’t like yard work. So in our search of a nice yard without the work, I settled on a drought resistant, midwest modern landscape vibe.

We got a lot of succulents, cattails, aloe plants, snake and spider plants, hardy grasses and kid-friendly cacti (ones without big pointy needles). I also incorporated some pineapple plants I had in pots in our backyard. We went with white rocks to contrast our dark house color and all in we are very happy with how it’s turning out. We are looking forward to the days when we can be done with yard work and enjoy our easy low-maintenance, environmentally friendly landscape.

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Updates on our Backyard Renovation

I’m so excited about the progress we’re making on our Backyard Renovation! So far, we have demolished the entire deck including the second story balcony, stairs and outhouse.  We’ve leveled out the dirt to prepare for the new deck and while everything was torn down, we thought it would be the perfect time to paint our house. So we did that too. And after this poll, we decided to go with the darker color for our house despite the fact that approximately 90+ percent of you guys voted for the lighter color. If you know me well, then you know I am anything but the type to follow the crowd, so it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise.

Right now our backyard is a construction zone. It’s full of dirt and it’s nearly impossible to keep the dogs from tracking all the dirt inside. So don’t expect too many posts about the inside of our house, until we get this backyard renovation completed, because I’m basically constantly cleaning and yet nothing ever seems clean. That’s the life of a full-time working mama in the middle of big home renovations right? We do make time for our kiddos and we love our family time. This past Easter weekend was full of it. Here’s a sweet shot of us at church yesterday after the Easter service.

We spent this weekend out and about, because there’s not too many spots around here to hangout with the construction zone in the back and the front yard off limits because we are trying to grow us some grass. Luckily, we are fortunate to have family with an awesome pool to spend all afternoon Sunday swimming. Meanwhile in our backyard… There is a LOT of dirt and leaves.

We have made some big decisions on the backyard renovation. We decided to do all wood deck (instead of concrete) for the bottom and top story, so that we could keep our live oak. We also decided not to put a roof over the entire deck, just the top balcony (which is off our master bedroom). The top balcony will be covered and screened in. We may add in a roof over the bottom at some point, but for now, our tree gives us plenty of shade and the Tree Lady  says it’s in perfect condition to live on for years to come. You can see the trunk in the picture below.

We have also decided to keep the shell of our backyard shed for now (pictured below).

We have never used this for anything but occasional storage, and had originally planned on tearing it down to make more backyard space for the dogs and kids to play in. However, now that we’re not planning to have a roof put in over the bottom deck, we’re thinking we may take the walls and floors out and keep the supports and the roof to have our own little covered space. Stay tuned to see what we do with it!

I know there is still a lot left to do, but it’s encouraging to see how far we’ve come already when this is where we started.

We can’t wait to share the finished product with you! You can follow us on Instagram (@phillipsflips) to stay in the loop with all of our day to day progress and updates.

 

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Our Exterior House Paint Color

After much thought and a few friendly Facebook and Instagram polls, we decided to go DARK on the outside of our house! Here’s the first coat on the front:

There is still work to be done: some touch ups in the paint, painting the sides and back of the house, cutting in the white trim, painting the front door (for now until we pick out a new one), adding some landscaping and trying to get some grass to grow on our front lawn! But all in, I’m super happy with our color choice.

We went with Sherwin Williams Iron Ore- SW 7069

A few days ago we polled our Facebook and Instagram friends on which of these two colors they liked best:

The response was overwhelmingly in favor of the bottom (and lighter) gray which is Sherwin Williams Peppercorn (SW 7674).

Our original plan was to paint the house black (yes, I said BLACK). These were some of my favorite inspirations for going black.

So with those ideas in mind, you can maybe imagine my slight disappointment that literally everyone I know (with the exception of maybe 5 people) voted to go light on the paint. Anyone who knows me personally likely knows that I am anything but the type of person who follows the crowd. On the contrary, I’m a bit of a skeptic and if everyone else is doing it, I’m probably googling it for more information and asking myself if there’s a better alternative.

Surprisingly, my husband and both agreed on the darker color being our preference and even with all the votes against us, we weren’t wavering on our opinions. So we did what I imagine anyone in this situation would do: we painted bigger swatches on the house!

After we painted this and saw it with the white trim up top, we were set on the dark. And a few of our friends changed their vote too!

Although the whole house isn’t finished being painted, we have at least tackled most of the front and I’m super happy with how it’s turning out!

Stay tuned for more of our home renovation adventures!