Tag: concrete

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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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How to Choose a Style and Color Scheme for your Home

When it comes to home decorating, most people have a style that they gravitate towards and most people decorate individual rooms with similar color schemes, but should you have a house-wide color scheme and style?

Maybe you should.

While there may be some legitimate reasons to have a room with a different color scheme or style (for example: kids rooms and nurseries or specialty rooms like a theater room or kid’s play room may have some different style/color needs that exclude them from following your house-wide color scheme), for the most part you should stick to a cohesive look. Having significant variations in decor/color/finishes can make your home seem choppy and feel smaller than it really is. Especially with the open-floor plan trending high on most priority lists, a house-wide color scheme and style is even more noticeable and needed.

When you’re looking into buying your decor/textiles/paint colors or considering bigger more permanent renovation projects like changing the floors, cabinets, light fixtures or other major renovations, having a color scheme and style in mind is key to making sure that the decisions you make for your home now will be good decisions for future buyers as well as your future self.

Coming up with an idea board and color scheme for your home is a great place to start.

First, consider your house. Does your house have a style already? Maybe you’ve settled into a 1920’s Victorian. Your mid-century modern pieces probably won’t be welcome there. Victorian houses typically look best with darker wood tones and rich colors like maroon, navy, and maybe some green with off-white accents. The fixtures usually have an antique style with black iron or brassy finishes. They are usually chock full of character and intricate woodworking details. Vintage rugs always pair nice with this style- although I may be a bit biased because I’m convinced that vintage rugs will go with any style.

Some houses may not have a distinct style in which case they are more of a shell to infuse with your own style. The good thing about those houses is you’ve got a clean slate to work with. The bad news (sometimes) is that the more generic houses that are flexible enough to work with any style usually lack the unique character that most people love, but you can always add character pieces in! Other houses may have a subtle style that can be changed by changing colors, finishes or fixtures.

Whether you’re looking to flip or just lovingly inhabit, you’ve got to have a style in mind. Once you’ve determined your style, start pulling together some ideas for an idea board. This is a great time to incorporate Pinterest. You can search on your specific style and/or colors that you’d like to incorporate and get a feel for the vibe you want in your own home. Here’s an idea board example of a modern beachy style perfect for houses near the coast- or landlocked ocean lovers. Someone with this idea board would be looking for most all neutrals (tans, grays, beige, greige – yes! that’s a thing). They would accent with lighter wood tones or vintage or weathered wood pieces, anything white (or white-washed), woven textiles, linen fabrics, and lighter blue tones or anything that pairs well with those. You could accent with a little bit of navy or coral or even bright red if you wanted a more bold look- but not all three.

Consider the more permanent/semi-permanent features of your home. Do your floors and cabinets go with the theme you’ve picked? If not, consider if you plan to change those or if you may need to change some of your ideas around to fit with your current fixtures.

Here’s a mid-century themed board. Mid-century houses are usually accented with medium wood tones, gold or brass fixtures, tapered legs and always the starburst lighting. This is usually a style relegated to houses built in the “mid-century”- think 1940’s to 1970’s occasionally the 1980’s and while this is a pretty distinct style, you can usually infuse this style into a more generic home with mid-century decor and maybe a few added character touch-ups. Commonly used mid-century colors include mustard yellow, dark orange and olive among others. A common trend these days is the mid-century modern style which combines the mid-century board (below) with more modern elements.

Once you’ve got your idea board, pull out some specific things to help define a template for your home theme. What type of wood tones will you have? What temperature will your neutrals be? For example, do you like the warmer tans, beige and cream colored or off-white neutrals like the farmhouse idea board below?

Or would you prefer cooler toned neutrals like pure white and shades of gray? Make a list of your top neutral colors as well as the accent colors or brighter colors you plan to have in your home (if you’re planning for any). And then use your idea board as a guide when you’re picking out new decor or paint colors. This bright bohemian board is almost enough to convert my style. I just love the fun and bright eclectic patterns mixed with the crocheted hammocks and Pom Pom decor. And of course bohemian style isn’t complete without house plants.

For our house theme, we’ve got a industrial modern meets mid-century modern vibe going on and I’m gravitating towards black and white and cool grey neutrals. We’ve got a giant camel colored leather sectional from Restoration Hardware that lives in our family room which is really the heart of our house so the camel color is part of our home decor board. In addition to our cool neutrals, we’ve accented with navy and an occasional pop of yellow- because yellow is just the best color ever! We have a mix of finishes from black industrial-style metal finishes to stainless steel finishes in our kitchen and then a handful of the more mid-century gold accents as well. We’ve installed some light hickory hardwood floors with lots of variation from light to medium tones and we plan to install more downstairs eventually. We also want to add in some polished grey concrete floors in our family room and some fun cement tile accents- probably black and white. So I use this idea board as a base for our home decor purchases and any new finishes. That doesn’t mean we don’t ever go outside of the box. For example, my daughter’s bedroom is a fun cotton-candy pink with grey and white accents. And since our sports/theater room houses our old dark brown and tan sofa and chairs, that room has more warm tones to coordinate with the furniture. Also, the sports room has actual football field turf on the floor which isn’t really part of our idea board, but it makes for a fun (and super cheap) floor covering for the (mostly) football-themed room. Remember when I mentioned those exceptions above? There will always be some. But for the most part, our open-spaced living downstairs, follows the rules for our intended style and color scheme.

Here’s our home idea board complete with pictures of our actual home and decor as well as a few “dream” items.


You’d be surprised at how much an idea board like this helps when you’re browsing the throw pillows at Target and trying to decide if they will go well with your decor or not.

How do you keep a cohesive look in your home?

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Our Backyard Renovation Plans

I’m finally putting pen to paper on our plans for our backyard, and man is it getting real! We have been saving up for this project since we finished buying our Christmas gifts last year (around mid-December) and we have been planning and getting inspiration for our backyard renovation since June 2015 – when we moved into this house. We’re planning to share all the details of the entire process right here for you to follow along, but for starters, we wanted you to see the “before” photos and share a little bit about our future and upcoming plans for this space.

Welcome to our backyard:

As you can see, the backyard is full of decking- literally. With the exception of our side-yard, a few flower beds and our long concrete driveway, our backyard is almost entirely solid wood. There was a “pool” when we moved in. And by pool, I mean that technically we had an above ground pool that was built into our raised deck, but it could be more accurately described as a broken-down plastic hole used for frog and mosquito breeding. So this was one of the very first things to go. We ripped this all out piece by piece which left us with a giant hole on one side of our yard that can be seen below:

It’s a really unappealing look – not to mention very unsafe for little kids. We’ve been living with this hole over here for almost 2 years now and we are finally ready to tackle this backyard renovation project.

First, we are demoing EVERYTHING! Literally every non-living structure in our backyard is getting ripped out, with the exception of this completely unfinished mother-in-law apartment- which we also have big plans for, but that’s another post for another day.

We recently decided to do the demo of our backyard ourselves instead of paying someone to do it for us. It’s proving to be a slow and arduous process that’s taking even longer than normal because we are having to fit the time in somewhere between our day jobs and parenting 2 little ones under the age of 3, but we are looking forward to getting the most bang for our buck! You can read more about the beginning of our DIY backyard deck demo here.

As of last night, this is how far we had come.

Like I said, it’s a slow process, but even a little progress is still progress, and I’m okay with that.

Once we finish the demo, we plan on rebuilding this second story deck in the same dimensions that it is currently.

The things we are doing differently with the rebuild include ensuring that the posts holding it up will be in the right spots. You can see in this picture below that the second story hangs past the posts that are holding it up and there are no additional supports to the part of the deck that’s hanging over. So those posts will be moved to the corners of the deck to support the entire second story properly.

We will be eliminating a few of the posts holding up the deck as well. Right now we have 4 posts going across the main part of our deck. We will be eliminating 2 of the 4 posts so that the only remaining posts will be the ones on the corners of the upper deck and around the edges where the roof needs to be supported. In the photo below, you would only see the post on the far left of the picture (but it would be moved out to the corner of the deck instead of in the middle).

The floor joists supporting the deck will also be built closer together- they are currently 24 inches apart which is not considered “to code” for the 2 X 4’s they are supporting. We’re going to install modern industrial railings around the upper deck and stairs.

I love the simple black iron railings here from Jordan Iverson Signature Homes

I also love the mixed metal and wood in these railings from Atlantis Rail Systems.

As part of our re-build of the second story, we will be gutting this outhouse- yes we have an outhouse and yes, it is plumbed and officially counts as a 1/2 bath for our home.

It also moonlights as a nice nesting ground for the local squirrels, opossums and small rodents.  So we will be removing it and replacing this spot with a very nicely sealed and (hopefully) waterproof custom storage area that will extend all the way under the stairs.

We originally wanted to do a composite decking solution for our stairs and deck, but after researching and weighing the pros and cons, we ultimately decided that we would rather save the money by doing a wood deck and painting and sealing it. We also made the decision to commit to the yearly maintenance of re-sealing that’s required to keep a wood deck in good condition. We’re planning to use standard pine for the deck and paint it a medium grey color similar to this deck featured on Atlantis Rail Systems website.

But we plan to use cedar posts for all of the supports that we’re going to seal with a clear sealer so we can see the natural wood accents like in this photo from 2Modern.

We are also planning to re-structure and slightly extend the aluminum roof above our deck area. Right now we have 2 different roof lines: one over the second story and another that begins at the top of the railing for the second story and angles down to the end of our deck. You can see what I mean in the photo below:

We are planning to move the bottom roof to meet up with the upper roof-line and also extend it out to go the full length of the upper roof. We are also going to extend the roof across the side of the house a bit to cover the stairs and help keep them from being hit directly by all the elements- which, in Florida, really just includes sunshine and rain. You can see below how the stairs are uncovered right now.

We’re also going to screen in the upstairs balcony and add a door for access to the stairs and another door on the other side for easy roof access in place of the gate we have right now.

Once all of the building/painting/roofing/screening is finished, we will have our concrete guy install some simple polished concrete that will span the entire bottom level for the area that’s under the roof.

We like a medium grey but with natural variations and something with the natural shine of polished concrete (not high gloss). We like something similar to the floors in this updated farmhouse by Archizer.

Or the concrete in the photo below featured in this article by Homedit.

Finally, once we finish everything above, we will frame everything with some minimalist, low-maintenance landscaping and some grass for our dogs.

Phase 2 of the project will include outdoor kitchen plans, a bar, a mounted TV and furniture- but we’re just wrapping our minds (and our budget) around phase 1 for now.

Still left on our to-do list after we finish the demo:

  1. Finalize our drawings and get the architect to sign-off on the final building plans for our second story balcony and stairs.
  2. Pull the permits for the entire project – we will save money by doing this ourselves rather than having multiple contractors pull permits for their own pieces of the work.
  3. Finish collecting quotes for the rebuild of our second story deck, the pouring of our first floor concrete, the rebuild/restructure of our aluminum roof covering and screened in second story balcony.
  4. Bring in dirt to level out our backyard and fill in the holes
  5. Have our aluminum guy demo the current aluminum roof (We’re attempting to reuse anything we can from our current roof since it’s in good condition- so we’re letting the expert handle this part of the demo)
  6. Build the 2nd story balcony and stairs
  7. Rebuild the new aluminum roof
  8. Paint and seal the wood decking on the balcony and stairs
  9. Pick out, order and install some modern iron railings for the second story and stairs
  10. Screen in the second story balcony
  11. Pour and finish the concrete on the first floor
  12. Re-work the backyard landscaping and lay down some sod

We’ll be checking these off our list one by one and keeping you updated as we make our way through it. We hope you enjoy following us throughout this process. You can subscribe to receive email notifications of our updates on our home page.

Update: For more on the plans and status of our backyard renovation, check this post out.

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5 Reasons we are NOT Using a General Contractor

When this process started, I thought that a “general contractor” was just the fancy term for a person who was licensed to build things with permits and stuff. That just goes to show how much we actually knew about construction! We originally planned to have someone do our entire backyard transformation for us, and of course we first went to some general contractors to get quotes. It didn’t take long for me to realize that a “general contractor” is actually someone who charges you to get quotes and juggle all the people that have to come together to build something. The “official” definition of a general contractor is,

“[Someone who] is responsible for the day-to-day oversight of a construction site, management of vendors and trades, and the communication of information to all involved parties throughout the course of a building project.”

Don’t get me wrong, I am certainly not undermining the value of this position and I can only imagine how important it would be to have a general contractor for any major build. However, for a backyard deck demo and rebuild, it seems a bit excessive and after our first quote of $50,000, downright crazy.

Here’s why we chose not to use a general contractor on our backyard transformation.

1. Steep Price Tag – We are just literally not able to spend $50K on a backyard makeover. So we have already started cutting and shaving items off our “dream list” and one of the first things to go was the general contractor.

One thing that we will not be cutting from our “dream list” is how we plan to incorporate one of our backyard live oaks into the deck plans! 1. I can’t bear the thought of taking down the tree with all the little bird nests nestled up there. And 2. Live trees worked into the architectural design of outdoor spaces are seriously one of my top 5 favorite things. How can you not love this?


– And this beauty designed by Dana Pacific Landscape in California. Hats off to you Dana.


2. No Time Crunch – I can see the value in having a project manager overseeing the building, scheduling the workers and making sure that each piece of the puzzle fits in right where it belongs. I know the process would be quicker and more efficient if we had a general contractor running the show, but frankly we aren’t in a time crunch. We don’t have deadlines, we’re not rushing to get our backyard ready, and I would rather take my time and live in a construction zone for a little bit longer if it means saving big bucks on this transformation.

3. I Know a Guy – I get that one of the benefits of having a general contractor is being able to use their connections to get the best prices/quality work, but we already know a guy- we know a handyman who’s offered to help us with some of the big demo pieces for a steal of a price. We know the best concrete guy in the city shout out to No Boring Concrete in Lakeland, FL. We have a couple builder friends, and when all else fails, social media is the best avenue for getting some solid recommendations for local businesses. So even though it might take us a little longer to weed through the quotes/reviews/options, we’re already halfway there and willing to put in the work.

Check out some inspiration from our concrete guy’s previous projects!

Aren’t these concrete countertops dreamy? Check out the built in herb planters – makes me wish we had a wall of windows in our kitchen!


And just try not to drool over this modern wood accent on these concrete counter tops! No Boring Concrete did these for one of Lakeland’s new coffee shops (Concord Coffee).


4. I Know What I Want – The more I talk to contractors/architects/pool guys/handymen/painters etc. about my vision for our home, the more I realize that what I like and what I want is not the “norm” around here. I don’t know if it’s the modern, mid-century vibe that throws people or if they just don’t understand implementing something with clean straight lines and a minimalist approach, but I just can’t rely on a GC to be able to get quotes and carry out my vision on this whole project. I know what I want, but no one else seems to! And let’s be real, some things are bound to get lost in translation right? It will feel good to know that I can control who does what and I can take each person step by step to see my vision and make sure expectations are clear (plus possibly save money by doing some things ourselves!)

Speaking of DIY, we’re thinking about DIY-ing our own privacy fence once we get things cleared out. Check out this chalkboard privacy fence some friends of ours found at The Bearded Pig in Jacksonville, FL! I love the clean, modern style plus the bonus of a lifetime of family chalk drawings. It could also double as a handy scoreboard for outdoor games, seasonal murals, birthday decorations, practicing ABC’s… the possibilities are endless!


5. We Learn More – We are admittedly not experienced in construction work, building things, cutting things or any other number of home projects. I’ve learned a few things from watching my dad over the years and JP knows even less than I do. So we’re really learning as we go. Not having a GC will require us to be involved in every aspect of our backyard transformation, and we are bound to learn a few things. We will be more hands-on and by default able to take some notes and get some good tips for more DIY projects in the future – which will all be thoroughly documented right here of course!