One of the great things about working for my company is that for two weeks each year, the company shuts down, and you are guaranteed to have time off. During this time, no one is working, so you can really disconnect and not worry about the amount of email and phone calls you are missing while you are out. The shutdowns occur during July and December.
For the July shutdown this year, we tackled some major home improvement projects. I'll give a sneak peek to some of those now! These projects focused on needed repairs, curb appeal, and adding more functional space and energy efficiency to the house. Some of these projects have been ongoing for a while, but were wrapped up either over shutdown or shortly thereafter.
The projects focusing on curb appeal included upgrading the look of our driveway, replacing the old house numbers, and adding some gravel and flower beds to the very front of the yard. We also painted the entire outside of the house.
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| Jay is filling in cracks in the asphalt. You can see some of the larger patches in the right of the picture. Also behind him is the new wall we installed with azaleas and mulch. It really added balance to the driveway, which had a wall on the other side. |
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| This spot was completely empty when we moved in. We planted bulbs and ornamental grasses, mulched, and covered the curbside with gravel to hide the empty dirt. |
The next big project was replacing the damaged fascia and drip rail. With the help of our new handyman, we pulled down and replaced every dry rotted piece, primed and painted it, and installed the replacement drip rail. After that, it was time to paint the entire house. We debated on colors for a while...
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| Color choices painted on the side of the house. |
but in the end decided to go with Riverstone by Behr. Since our home is stucco, we used a masonry paint. We first powerwashed the entire house, then repaired any cracks or holes in the stucco. After that, the fun with the spray gun began!
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| We painted two coats on the entire house in one day. I will never paint a house without a spray gun again! |
The color turned out beautifully. We are still very pleased with it. It's so nice to walk outside and not see the spots and streaks where the house paint had faded over time and been touched up with unmatched paint... not very attractive at all.
We also started building a pergola on the side of the kitchen. The kitchen side faces the west, and since this is Southern California, it gets a LOT of sun. In fact, since we don't have air conditioning, we have noticed that the kitchen and our bedroom is usually about 15 degrees warmer than the rest of the house. When it hits the 90s (not a frequent occurance, but it does happen) it is very uncomfortable. To remedy this, we put a pergola over the kitchen patio and walkway that covers the entire west side of the house.
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| The patio area before we added the pergola. The area wasn't used very frequently, as it gets very hot even with the umbrella. |
Stay tuned to see the results of our current upgrades!!
