Our house has undergone a lot of change since we've moved in. Not a lot of expensive change, mind you. We have invested a lot of sweat equity into our home, but, I've got to admit, that makes the changes that much more personal to me.
Here's a taste of what we've done so far. For example, the kitchen BEFORE:
(Kitchen before: dark, drab, ugly, with pink tile, dark gray walls, dark ugly cabinets and green curtains. Needless to say, it needed to be changed. Sorry for the poor quality photos)
Our kitchen AFTER a gallon of primer and white paint (for the cabinets and the tile - YES, I painted the tile backsplash!), a gallon of taupe paint (for the walls), and new hardware (that cost us $.99 a piece on clearance instead of the original $3.99!):
(Looks pretty good, huh?)
We also used the same white paint for the cabinets and kitchen tile in the little half bath off our kitchen, which also had the horrendous pink tile in it.
Half bath BEFORE:
(Blech. Excuse me while I vomit, please)
Three days and half a gallon of paint later, the half bath AFTER:
(Soooo much better. Ahh, I can breathe. I love paint.)
Another big project we had going on this summer was our backyard fence. Originally there was a dinky little wire fence that worked okay for our two dogs, but only fenced in a small portion of our yard. We decided to get a vinyl white picket fence and install it ourselves (well, my hubby installed with his dad and brother. I just made "executive decisions.")
Our backyard BEFORE:
Six long months and a nice vinyl fence later:
The moral of my story is: did we do some giant, bank-breaking renovations to our house? No, of course not. We have a two bedroom ranch in a modest neighborhood. We're not going to get a huge return on large investments. However, you can really turn a house into a home with some modest investments that might take more time than money, but are definitely worth it in the end.
(Our dogs, Baxter and Molly, definitely think it was worth it!)
Posts
