Category: Renovations

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We Bought A Bus

We have some big news!

Today, we bought a bus.

This beauty (ignore the love bugs- ’tis the season) was delivered to our driveway this evening. For all you people who know things about buses, she’s a 40 foot Bluebird tour bus made in 2001 with a Cummings ISC 6 Engine and an Allison Transmission with only 59,000 miles!

I have always dreamed of a day when we could buy a school bus and convert it to an RV to travel with our family. I would Pinterest ideas and hope that maybe one day we would make this dream a reality. I finally got JP hooked on the idea and once he saw some of the RV and Bus Conversion Families that I follow on Instagram, he couldn’t let it go! With my vision and JP’s laser focus, we found this bus for sale last weekend, Friday to be exact. We checked with some diesel mechanics and they confirmed that it was too good to pass up. We negotiated and ended up on a steal of a price and the owner drove it down from Tallahassee and delivered it to us! It all happened SO fast, I’m still in shock.

It fits perfectly in our long driveway with plenty of room to spare!

We’ve got big plans to gut the inside and create our own custom Skoolie, but for now, we’ve got 53 extra car seats

I know it’s not technically a school bus, but after some more research, we learned that most school bus ceiling heights are shorter than us (I’m 6’1″ and JP is 6’3″) so we settled our search on city or tour buses with higher ceilings.

We will be working with Skoolie Homes, a company based in Tennessee who specializes in Skoolie renovations. They are working with us on our custom floorpan, finishes and they have helped us so far every step of the way as we searched for the perfect bus. Follow along on our instagram for updates on our home renovations: the one on rock and the one on wheels!

@PhillipsFlips

And if you’re interested in the RV/Skoolie lifestyle, check out these snapshots! These are some of the families that I follow on instagram that helped me convince JP what a good idea this was. They are all living the dream, living small and spending time focusing extra hard on their sweet families! These people are so inspirational you guys.

@Arrowsandbow
This adorable quirky family of 5 is currently living in their self-renovated RV while building their dream home- they’ve been RV living for over a year now!

@Trebventure

This sweet family of 5 is living full-time and traveling in their self-renovated 1999 Bluebird Skoolie.

 

@TheMayesTeam

This cool family of 6 is living full-time in their modern makeover Skoolie, made by the same company who is going to be working on ours- Skoolie Homes.

It’s a funny coincidence that I had been following The Mayes Team on Instagram dreaming up all the creative and design things about our future Skoolie, while JP was researching away on how to find someone else to do it for us. He came across Skoolie Homes and then we realized that Skoolie Homes had renovated the Mayes Team Skoolie and felt like it was just too good to be true! This sweet family posted a photo a couple days back with a quote that resonated with me hard in this season of change:

“Be willing to go all out in pursuit of your dream. You are more powerful than you think.”

We are chasing babies and chasing dreams and soon, we’ll be chasing highways in our Skoolie!

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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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Our DIY Walk-through Closet

When we first moved to this house, we struggled to decide which bedroom we wanted to make ours. Moving into a house built in the 1940’s with an entire wing and second story that was added in the early 2000’s meant that we somehow lucked out with 3 master bedrooms (as in 3 of our 5 bedrooms are extremely large and have master bathrooms connected to them).

We ended up picking the upstairs master as our bedroom.

The logistics just all worked out best this way, plus, by picking the upstairs bedroom, we had our own private outdoor balcony off the bedroom – which we are currently in the process of screening in. YAY for finally being able to enjoy the outdoors without the mosquitos!


While the room we picked was marvelously huge, the closets inside weren’t. The hallway leading into the room has 2 very shallow and narrow closets that couldn’t hold my clothes, let alone the clothes for 2 people.


Once  we got everything arranged in the room, I just felt so inefficient having so much unused floor space in the middle of the room. I literally could have hosted yoga classes in our bedroom y’all! I toyed with the idea of incorporating a sitting area with a sectional couch, an office, a library nook, a mini-fridge/bar or even extending our bathroom to make room in there for a tub (since we only have a shower in our master bath). After finally getting everything unpacked and out of the moving boxes, it was clear that the best use of all of this unused space was to figure out how to increase the closet and storage space up here.

After brainstorming and researching all kinds of closet layouts/configurations and trying to determine the best spot for one in our bedroom, we decided to install a single wall to anchor our bed and use the space behind it to house our closet. With roughly $60 worth of 2X4’s, a saw, level, stud-finder and some screws, my dad and I built this:


We measured the length we wanted for the wall, keeping in mind the fact that the wood would be framed in drywall afterward. We cut the top and bottom 2X4s first and then cut all the interior supports to run between them.  We built the framing while it was laid flat on the floor. Once the entire wall was framed and the supports were screwed together, we hoisted it upright and attached it to the floor and ceiling studs. When we installed it, our original floor was still down. We just used a circular saw to cut the vinyl planks where the bottom 2X4 would sit so that the wall would be anchored to the sub floor and through to the floor joists underneath. Luckily I knew we would be redoing the floors with hardwood floors shortly thereafter, so the cuts didn’t have to be perfect.

Before wrapping it in drywall, we had an electrician run an outlet on either side of where our bed would sit for phone chargers/lamps etc. and we also had them install 3 can lights in the closet with a 2-way switch just inside the closet on either side of the wall so that we could reach in and turn the light on or off from either entryway. The electrician also helped us relocate our bedroom lights. Originally the upstairs master had 2 ceiling fans which had been demolished by the previous owners (when you buy a house that was previously foreclosed, demolished fans, graffiti on bedroom walls, missing doors/mirrors/lights/appliances are all standard expectations). We wanted just 1 accent light in the middle of the room and we decided on this brass/gold starburst light from Dot & Bo.


After the electrician, drywall and texture, we we’re about $500 all in for our DIY closet. However, I will say that pre-fab shelving closet units with drawers/shelves etc. (even from IKEA) are NOT cheap. After going in store and building our “dream” closet in their interactive 3D design shop, we ended up changing all kinds of things around because $3,000 for a closet was just not in the budget. We saved significant money by opting for no doors on the closets, choosing shelves and clothes hanger rods instead of drawers, configuring the widths and depths in such a way so that we didn’t have to pay extra for 2 corner units, and leaving off all the very cool, but mostly unneeded accessories (I.e. Pull out tie hanger, shoe holder, jewelry/accessory drawers, ironing board attachment, fancy pants hanger attachments etc.)

The wardrobes/closets from IKEA with the shelves, rods, drawers and delivery charges were roughly $1,000 by the time we had cut things back as much as we reasonably could although you could save on this expense considerably if you decided to tackle some DIY shelving and clothing rods made from metal piping.

When we put this wall up, we knew we wanted to maximize the space behind it and run the closets the full width of the room. One thing I wasn’t sure about is whether or not I would like being able to look into my closets (without being able to shut them off with a door on either side) but I also wasn’t a fan of any of the door options I came across. The pricing of doors and door frames kept creeping the cost of this renovation even higher and frankly, we are total amateurs when it comes to this stuff, so it was a bit intimidating to start thinking about DIY-ing a couple doors. Surprisingly though, since we opted for the black closets, when the closet light is off, you can hardly see into the closets. Here’s a shot of the room with the closet light on.


And here’s a shot with the light off.


With the closet light off, everything just fades into the darkness, and I love the clean modern lines sans doors almost as much as I loved not having to pay for and attempt the install of said doors.

Here are some shots from the inside of our closet. You can see how we saved money by organizing our shoes on shallow wardrobes on the sides with lots of shelves instead of purchasing the expensive shoe attachments. I used the extra wall space for my jewelry and some hooks for a scarf organizer and we incorporated a couple of our original dressers to have a few more drawers. We splurged on 3 drawers built into the wardrobe and used black boxes from IKEA on shelves for other things like socks and underwear. I also organized my fold-able shirts and jeans on open shelving instead of in drawers and it’s actually my preference to store them that way because it’s easier to see all of the folded items as opposed to only the top if they were stuck inside a drawer.


And now we have more than enough closet space to hold our clothes for every season! What creative closet solutions have worked for you? Comment below 👇 I’d love to hear your stories too!

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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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A Budget Friendly Kitchen Makover for Under $250

When you walk into our house, after walking through our small entryway, you enter the large open concept floor plan that is our downstairs living space and find yourself smack dab in the middle of our very open kitchen. Despite the fact that I’m no chef nor do I aspire to be one, our kitchen is quite literally the heart of our home- not because we are foodies, but because our house seems to expand out from the kitchen that is situated in the center. From the kitchen, you can see every room in the house that isn’t a bedroom or a bathroom- although with doors open you can see a couple bedrooms and bathrooms from the kitchen too. Conversely, this means that every room in the house can see the kitchen as well. We learned quickly with this super open concept that there are also cons to having such an open living space including the fact that you can see our dirty dishes from just about anywhere. There’s no hiding them. Also, when we moved in, our kitchen was so outdated and drab, it really brought the rest of the house down with it. I’m always so bad about taking good “before” photos, but here’s the beginning of our kitchen makeover (featuring my lovely husband and our then 20-month-old toddler):


This is a shot of what our kitchen looked like “before”. Although, this shot was after we had taken off a few of the original metal handles and we did paint the top wall (above the cabinets) white. It was previously painted a dark grey color which you can see in the shot below. Knowing that we planned to go with black cabinets, we decided that we needed lots of white to contrast the dark cabinets.


I’ll preface the rest of this kitchen reveal by saying that we did start this process out considering the option of replacing and redoing our entire kitchen. Although we like the layout for the most part, our cabinets were not only outdated on the outside (covered with some fake wood-finish Formica or plastic material) but they are pretty old on the inside too. There’s a good amount of lime green and pink flowery wallpaper lining our cabinets and drawers that looks like something you might find in a hippy bus from the 70’s (not that there’s anything wrong with that) but it’s also pretty worn and dirty in a way that can’t be cleaned or removed easily.

Friends, meet the retro inside of our silverware drawer:


The drawers are also just narrow enough to be too narrow to hold any sort of drawer organizers. So all of our utensils jingle around like the disorganized mess of silver that they are and we have to keep the sharp knives in their own spot so no one looses a finger digging around for their soup spoon.

After getting a couple quotes for an entirely new kitchen in price ranges upwards of $35,000, we decided not to spend the next 3-4 years trying to pay for a kitchen. So we set out to find some ways to update our kitchen in a budget-friendly, DIY fashion.

I knew I wanted black cabinets. I love white cabinets also and we toyed with the idea of going white, mainly because it seemed like a nice safe bet, but I convinced JP that we should go dark and if we wanted to change we could always paint over the cabinets later. We found this Valspar cabinet paint from Lowe’s Home Improvement.


We picked Valspar’s Dark Kettle Black color with a semi-gloss finish. And we needed just a little over 2 gallons to paint ALL of our cabinets. This pint (pictured above) was the last bit that I needed to finish the final coat on a couple of the drawers and its still got about 2/3 of the paint left in it for touch-ups later.

We bought these drawer and cabinet pulls from All Modern in a stainless steel finish.

We  scrubbed down the kitchen cabinets and prepped the cabinets for paint. I took all of the cabinet doors off and cut in the edges and corners by hand with a paint brush. Then I used a roller to roll the paint on everywhere else.


Our drawers were a little tricky because the drawers that we have don’t come out all of the way (or if they do, we couldn’t figure out how to get them out all the way) so I just carefully painted around them when they were open, then let the paint dry completely before closing them.


Once the cabinet bases were painted and dried (left to sit overnight), I screwed the doors back on and painted them while they were attached to the bases. Note: this isn’t my first time painting kitchen cabinets. I have painted 2 other kitchens prior to this and previously I laid the doors on a giant tarp to be painted which is actually more difficult and more trouble in our case than just screwing the cabinets on and painting them while they’re attached. When you paint doors that are laying on a tarp, you either need a very large garage or outdoor covered space or a large indoor space that will not be disturbed by pets or babies. Since we don’t have either of those, I decided the safest bet would be to keep the cabinets attached while we painted them and just attempt to keep everyone out of the kitchen for a day while they dried. Also it was quicker to paint them this way because I was able to paint both sides of the cabinet and leave them open to dry as opposed to painting one side at a time while they lie on a tarp.


We decided to get rid of the cabinet and vent hood above our range to help with the sight lines and making the space seem more open. We learned through this process that our vent hood wasn’t even vented out and instead was actually just a glorified fan which would blow the smoke around inside but not actually suck any smoke out of the room.


And we love the way it looks without a cabinet there. We have yet to refinish the part of the ceiling that the cabinet and vent hood were attached to, but it’s on our list of to-do’s.

The total cost of our entire kitchen makeover breaks down like this:

Drawer/Cabinet Pulls (40 count at $2.60 a piece): $104
Cabinet Paint (2 gallons and 1 pint): $116
Removal of upper cabinet and vent hood (DIY with the help of my dad): $0
Total cost: $220

And the finished product:

We finished this kitchen makeover in early September of 2016. These “after” pictures were taken today (May 17th, 2017), a little over 8 months later and we are so happy with how our painted cabinets turned out and how well they have held up. We’ve noticed very little wear and they are extremely easy to clean. The only spot that we have seen wear is the spot right behind our trash and recycling bins. Because of the constant scraping when we open and close the bins, the paint is wearing off a bit. It’s barely noticeable when the bins are pushed flush up against the cabinet, but when you pull them out, you can see the original cabinet finish underneath.


Overall, we think it may be the best $220 we’ve ever spent.

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Our Dream Home- The Best Flip we will (hopefully) Never Make

We have come along way since June 2015 when we purchased our 3rd home.

Our house stats when we purchased it were:
3,534 sqft
5 bedrooms
4 bathrooms
Purchase price: $160,000
Appraisal value at purchase: $180,000

When we bought this house, we knew it would require a good amount of work. We spent $40,000 in improvements just in the first year, and the majority of that went toward mandatory or practical improvements (not the fun cosmetic stuff), but after a year of work, we can finally rest easy knowing that we made a good investment.

When we moved in to this house, we had insane house bills for the entire first year. Not only were we paying to fix things that needed fixing, but we had added insurance costs because our home had previously been a foreclosure. We also paid a much higher rate for very little insurance coverage due to the fact that we had cloth wiring and extremely old galvanized plumbing. Our electric bill was sky high in the hot months (which in Florida is about 360 days per year) because of old single-pane windows and very little insulation. Additionally the PMI (private mortgage insurance) we had to pay for not being able to put down a 20% down-payment tacked on almost $200 per month.

So we were on a mission to lower those costs in every way possible. We focused on material updates that would increase our home’s value (to help us get rid of our PMI), and also anything to help us lower our insurance costs or save on utilities. The updates we did in the first year included:

  • Replacing all the windows- $5,000
  • Replacing one of the A/C units- $1,000
  • Purchasing and installing all kitchen appliances (there were NONE originally)- $5,000
  • Paid handymen to remove above ground pool built into part of the deck and the deck that surrounded it- $1,200
  • Replacing all galvanized plumbing- $5,000
  • Replacing and updating electrical (removing cloth wires)- $2,500
  • Drywall repair after redoing plumbing and electrical- $3,000
  • Installing a home security system complete with smart-home thermostats and smoke detectors- $100
  • Redoing the hall bathroom (the sub-floor under the tile was moldy from a small leak that was never fixed and when you walked on the tile floor it moved similar to that of a trampoline under your feet)- $2,000
  • Purchasing and installing doors (multiple rooms didn’t have any doors- thus the beauty of buying a foreclosure)- $600
  • Fixing leak in sports room ceiling/reworking lighting/drywall repair- $1,500
  • Replacing lights in kitchen with recessed can lighting- $500
  • DIY wall install in master bedroom to make a walk through closet- $300
  • Built in IKEA closets- $1,900
  • Reworking lighting in upstairs master bedroom and relocating some wall outlets in the nursery- $1,000
  • Drywall repair and painting for upstairs- $1,000
  • Replacing upstairs floors (including 2 bedrooms and stair landing) and stairs with hardwood floors- $5,200
  • Adding foam insulation in walls and attic throughout the house- $800
  • DIY painting interior walls, purchasing and installing light fixtures (where there were none) and other minor DIY fixes- $2,400
    Total first year costs: $40,000

After a year, we were hopeful that our updates combined with the housing market’s natural climb would get us an appraisal  of at least $200k to allow us to cancel our PMI payments. (In order to cancel PMI manually, you have to purchase and order an appraisal on your home and it has to come back at least 20% above your original home loan price).

Our current home stats are:
3,534 sqft
5 bedrooms
4 bathrooms
Purchase price: $160,000
Appraisal value at purchase: $180,000
Appraisal value 1 year later: $275,000

After a year of hard work, staying focused on our budget and gritting our teeth while putting our hard earned money into many practical things that will possibly never be seen (i.e. plumbing and electrical), we are proud to say that our home appraised $115,000 more than we purchased it for and with an overall investment of $200,000 ($160,000 purchase price + $40,000 renovations), that gives us a net equity value of $75,000! Also, after cancelling our PMI and making the necessary updates per our insurance requirements, we were able to get solid home insurance coverage and reduce our monthly payments by almost $400.

We are in our dream house and we don’t have plans to flip this house anytime soon, but it’s comforting to know that we wouldn’t be underwater if we had to sell.  In the meantime, stick around, follow along as we work our way through our home updates and renovations. Now that we’re through the worst of the mandatory fixes, we can finally focus on the fun stuff.

Next up: Backyard makeover!

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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!

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Our First House (Flip)

In honor of our recent closing day anniversary, I thought it would be fitting to share the before and after photos from our first ever house which later became our first house flip! Technically speaking, I guess we bought and flipped our second house, then bought our 3rd house and flipped our first house. It was a crazy 3 years! More on our Phillips Flips (home flipping stories) here.

On March 21, 2013 we bought our very first house. It was dreamy… and I mean “dreamy” in the sense that you had to dream about what it would look like one day and not what it looked like right when we bought it.

Here’s what it looked like when we bought it:

And the inside:

Check out those floors! The floors on the right of the picture above are linoleum tiles. There was 2 full layers of ceramic tile where you see the tile up there at the top and the carpet to the left was dark green. And about 8 feet inside the front door was a nice little 3-way junction where all 3 of the mixed floors met up for no real reason.

All the bedrooms had that same dark green carpet.

The kitchen was pretty small and awkwardly closed off to the rest of the house. So the first thing we did was grab a sledge-hammer and bust through some walls:

We removed the wall shown above which opened the kitchen to the entryway and a little more to the dining room over to the left.

We removed the upper cabinets that were hanging above the island which opened the headroom up a bit and made the kitchen completely open to the family/TV room.

We ripped up all of the floors to make way for light-colored hardwoods.

And then we got to work! We painted the kitchen cabinets white!

It was much more open with the overhead cabinets out of the way.

We painted the front door this fun minty color and I DIY Frosted the front windows with a little hand cut monogram in the center.

I replaced the fan in the dining room with this Maskros Pendant Lamp from IKEA and we painted the fun accent stripe wall on the side wall over there. That was SO “in” back in 2013!

We gave all the other walls a fresh coat of paint (either white or light gray).

And replaced the dark green carpet with a neutral “greige” color that we found on crazy sale at one of our local carpet/flooring warehouse places. We found just enough carpet to put in our sunken den area and all 3 of our bedrooms. It was meant to be!

I didn’t get a ton of great shots of it, but originally we had vaulted ceilings that were covered in dark wood paneling. We painted over that with white paint and it looked kind of like vaulted shiplap covered ceilings!

With the wall knocked out, the upper cabinets gone and the white paint, the kitchen looked much more open and bright!

And finally, we got around to painting the outside of the house and redoing the roof with light metal panels.

On our first ever house flip, we spent about $10K in renovations:
Flooring: $4,000 (purchased whole sale and installed by a friend of a friend)
New roof: $5,000 (we pulled our own permits and had a friend do the work for us)
Paint: $1,000 (we used a lot of leftover paint that we had sitting around in storage and we may have used plain old white primer on some interior walls- you got to save wherever you can!)

We ended up selling this house for $16K more than we paid for it which was a $6K profit on the sale alone. We also rented it out for several months during some of the transition time while we were in between houses and we made a total of $11,700 in rental income. So all-in-all we made $16,700 on our first flip.

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Backyard Renovation Updates: Demolition Progress, Next Steps & Bad News about our Trees

Last week we learned that aluminum costs way more than we thought. We got a price quote for the entire rebuild of our second story deck which includes demo of the current deck and stairs, custom built, water sealed storage under the stairs, a full rebuild of the stairs and second story deck as well as having all of the upright posts wrapped in cedar. The aluminum roof quote which includes demo of the current aluminum roof and installation of new aluminum roof as well as screening in the second story deck was nearly 2 times the cost of the deck quote and about 4 times more than we were expecting. Before we got the quote for the aluminum, we were thinking that we were very close to having the money saved up to cover the whole project. Now, we are certain that we don’t have enough cash at the moment, but we are plugging on. We’re going to take each item one step at a time and if this means that we have dirt as the ground covering for our bottom floor for a few months, while we save up, then so be it. Maybe we will let Piper experience the fun of mud-pies once it starts getting rainy around here.

While we did have a bit of sticker shock from the aluminum roofing quote, we decided to keep the momentum going and continue to move forward with the renovation. Right now we’re simultaneously working on finalizing the drafts and getting architect’s approval on our rebuild while we are DIY demoing the bottom deck.

Anyone need some old wood? We are not quite halfway through the bottom story demo and this is our output. Thinking that perhaps one dumpster won’t be enough to hold everything! 

Speaking of our DIY deck demo, here’s what we’ve done on that so far:


It’s definitely coming along. We still need to demo the main area under roof and then we have to tackle the shed back there.

Here’s another shot of the deck we have left to demo:

(Featuring our newest addition to the indoor house plants! I found this guy at Lowes this weekend and brought him home as our first medium-sized floor plant/tree. Hoping he enjoys our family room as much as we do.)

In other news, The Tree Lady came out this weekend to talk to us about our oak trees. She had amazing insight and I learned a ton in just the 15 minutes she was here. I highly recommend her if you’re looking to trim/remove/save your trees and are located in Winter Haven, FL or surrounding areas! The main reason we brought her out was to talk to her about trimming up the tree in the picture above (not our newest little guy – that big live oak to the left). One of the large branches that’s currently stretching out above our current roof needs to be removed completely in order to make way for our new roof plans. We plan to push the current roof up to the same level as the second story roof so that from the second story you can look down into the main patio area. So we needed to make sure that we could remove the branch without killing the whole tree – because my dream was to leave the tree there and work our patio space/concrete floors/aluminum roof around it. The good news is we can cut the branch with a 60-ish% chance of survival for the tree.

The bad news is, the only  ground cover we can put back down this close to the tree is more deck. The concrete we want would be ruined within a few years because the roots of the live oak would try to surface and push up through the concrete. So after serious thought and discussions about potentially changing our whole deck plans to accommodate this tree, we decided with heavy hearts that we will remove the whole tree instead.

Fun fact: when you look at a tree’s canopy (the large green part at the top), the root system of that tree will be 2.5 times bigger than the canopy.

So that means that this tree right here is already growing big surface-level roots dangerously close to our house’s foundation and while it may not be an issue right now, we can surely expect it to be an issue in 10 or so years. So even though 10 years sounds like a lifetime away, we determined it would be in the long-term best interest of the house/deck/future homeowners, to remove the tree.

As we plug along on our demo, the first official contracted step of the backyard renovation is taking off today! Our aluminum roofing guy is coming out to demo the roof. After he takes the roof down, he will determine how much (if any) of the aluminum panels can be reused and we are hoping that once the demo is finished, we will learn that the majority of pieces can be reused for our new roof which would save us a considerable amount on the roofing quote. More on that next week.