Mothers, porches and goodwill, oh my!

First off I want to wish all Mothers a Happy Mothers Day and all non mothers a just good ol day!

So this weekend Preston and I knew we were going to set aside some time to spend with our mothers, and that meant we would not get our whole weekend for renovation, which is completely fine because without our mothers we wouldn't exist! So we knew we had to work hard if we wanted to accomplish anything renovation style. So Saturday we were in "I don't know land" and that translates into, "we want to work on something on our home, but we knew we don't have too much time to do it but we don't want to not do anything." so we started off walking around talking about what we could do, and decided to go to our local salvage store and look around. After that we went to the Goodwill, because that always makes us feel pretty good about our lives, even though we might be poor we don't have to buy used undies. Then to top it all off we went to Sams and had a bunch of free samples and got some Mikes hard Margaritas.

When we got home we realized that we still didn't have a plan for what we were going to do and it was 3:30 pm so we walked outside to look at the lawn and realized something to do!!! The front porch needed some TLC! So like the crazy loons we are, we decided that's what we wanted to tackle. We set to work, ripped up the horrible patch job the previous folks did, jacked up the foundation that was supporting the porch, and by then it was dark.

The next day (Sunday, Mothers day) we went to get our weekly coupons from our favorite dumpster, and then spent the next few hours enjoying our wonderful mothers companies. I got to spend time with  my mom, and Preston got to spend time with his! After that we got right to work finishing the porch. After an interesting trip to Home Depot (3rd time in 2 days) we realized our "cheap one day weekend project" was more pricy than we had thought but still completely worth it.

Once we finally had everything we needed we installed the 2 support beams, the decorative surroundings, and completed the new wooden porch floor. All that is left it to: caulk everything really well, add the trim to the last beam, and paint it all!

Throughout the weekend we had several people drive by slowly, one lady stopped and told us we were doing such a great job and she hadn't realized how "run down this place was until we started fixing it up right" which just made us BEAM!!! It's just so nice to hear from strangers and friends that they notice what we are doing. It just makes it a little sweeter. :-)

Also, somehow on Saturday I got something in my eye and then I was getting eaten up by misquotes, and Preston said "It's just one of those days for you that you shouldn't have gotten out of bed, huh?"

Pictures:
Porch before the dynamic duo of "Preston the destroyer and Bailey  the bad-ass Ragsdale!"

                                                                       

What a good weekend....I love my life. <3

4/20 getting grass!!!

On Saturday morning we were so excited because we were getting GRASS! It was my early birthday present from my amazing husband! Cool your jets people, I know it was 4/20 but it was the LAWN St.Augustine grass! What kind of people do you take us for?

We ended up getting two pallets and we need about 1 to 2 more, it's a blessing and a curse to have a large yard. *sigh* but it is looking AMAZING!!! <3 So after that only taking one not even full day, we knew we had to find another project to do this weekend because that is our favorite time of week. We bust our asses on the weekend but that's when we are the most happy, when we work ourselves to the point of hunger exhaustion and we literally have to feed ourselves to have any kind of energy. That is the best.

After putting in our grass, we went for a bike ride to the square, we just had the best time on our ride passing by houses and talking about the good, bad and the ugly things people do to their houses.

Sunday morning we woke up, went to seek out coupons, jumped into a few dumpsters, and had some success! Then we got home, I made some amazing omelets (not trying to sound full of my self, but they were really good) and we sat out on the front porch and were bored. BORED for the first time on the weekend in almost a year! Since we are too poor to buy more grass right now, and too poor to re do the two bathrooms we are on a limited home improvement budget. After a few minutes I asked Preston "do you know the story of if you give a mouse a cookie?" his response was...yea? I said "we are like the home renovation version, if you till up the yard, you'll want to put in some grass. If you put in some grass, you'll want to paint the picket fence. If you paint the fence, the house will look drab so you'll want to paint that too!" and his response this time was laughter and saying "it prolly wouldn't take much!" and we we set off to get some paint for the house.

Keep in mind, that we have never painted the exterior of a home before, and after getting a 5 gallon of what we thought was the perfect yellow, and a gallon each of the complimentary colors (for the detailed work) we got home ready to paint and realized that perfect yellow had turned out a funky TAN! Not what we wanted, so we went for a bike ride, and looked at the other yellow houses in the area. After finding "our yellow" we knocked on the door and simply asked what color their house was, they said it was "Butter Up" from Sherwin Williams! That ended up to be awesome because thats where we had gotten the 5 gallon tan and thought we could fix it.

After looking at so many different shades of yellow at Sherwin Williams we couldn't take anymore. We were feeling upset, let down, depressed, yellowed out, and without whiskey because we were running errands. We left Sherwin, and the nice manager said to think about it because it's a huge decision and he would take care of us. We went to home depot to get some sample colors and paint them on the house. We have narrowed it down to 3 colors and we are completely torn. We had always figured on paining the house a newer color of it's original color of yellow, but we found an amazing blue. WE NEED YOUR IMPUT!

Below are a few pictures, 1 before, 2 with the Blue siding, red, white, and darker blue trim. and 3 being bicycle yellow (it's a semi gloss paint but we would use a satin or flat so it's not going to be that shiny) dark blue, white, and blue grey trim. And lastly is Butter Up yellow, with dark blue, grey blue and white trim.

Let us know what you think because we are torn!!!!!

Taking back the lawn from hell

So today Preston and I needed to get the yard back in some kind of normal people land. After spending a weekend on it already we decided this needed to happen. After continuing pulling out trees (some we tore out roots and all, so whiskey involved there)

 
So we went to the Home Depot and rented a tiller, which = the best $51.30 we have ever spent. We went C-R-A-Z-Y!!! we tilled up (in 4 hours straight) our whole front yard, it went through most likely more than that tiller had ever been through in it's life. We sent it through everything, vines, rocks, bricks, weeds, broken clay pots, dirt, and the layer of plastic she put over the whole yard (and then covered it up with an inch of tiny pebbles and dirt), shit, and everything else the crazy lady who lived here before us planted.

To give you a picture of what kind of landscaping this crazy woman did is just picture this: if you went to the local home depot and just bought everything you saw and got home and dug a bunch of holes and said yea! This looks so flipping awesome! And everything was placed in the yard as if someone on crack or some other kind of illegal drug had said "YES THAT LOOKS FABULOUS!" that is what the yard looked like prior to the tiller and the incredible duo of Preston and Bailey.

After cleaning the tiller up and returning it to the depot, we got home and raked up the debris, it looked like a massive war zone of plants and plant life. But like our favorite lady on HGTV says she just wants brick, we were saying "we just want grass!" Well to get grass we had some more work getting the yard ready. So we got about 2 loads of dirt, spread it around the whole yard and called it a weekend. Until we looked at our cute white picket fence. It was falling down at one part and we knew we had to fix it. So after working our butts off all weekend and being to the point of exhaustion we were like "oh that won't take long!" We fixed it in a few hours and then after being completely delirious we called it a day.

Throughout the week  I had kind of a Huckleberry Finn kinda week, I painted the almost whole picket fence and it just looks soooooo much better! (see picture below)

When did we put a brick walkway in? I don't remember but it happened.

Living in the Living room!

I found this on my computer, I think the Whiskey set in before this was posted!

If you have ever seen the show “Renovation Realities” on DIY network you might be familiar with DIY. Preston and I love to watch that show and laugh because we have experienced many of the same battles (although, none of them have experienced anything like shit-mageddon. That would have been an amazing episode, or flea ridden home for months, or well-read some of the blogs.) Well, this weekend we decided on a whim to overhaul our living room. It had been a source of anger for months but we had just not quite gotten to it. Our first night at our home we spent the night on boyscout cots to wake up covered in fleas. At 5 am in the morning we ripped out the carpet, under the carpet we found an odd sight: a floor covered in splattered white paint (we thought) about 200 staples with carpet fuzz still attached, and a large section right in the middle of the floor that looked as if whoever had stained the floor had not bothered to move the rug in the center of the room and just stained around it; beautiful, just wonderful. We just put this room off and tried to just live.  A few months went by and one nice evening, Preston and I were having a lovely time watching the newlywed game and of course playing along, and all of the sudden while Preston walked across the room he started shouting and grabbing his foot! Blood started gushing out from his foot and we found that one of the carpet staples had punctured his foot deeply. After that it wasn’t long before we had to get revenge on this living room. 

Well, the time had come and we decided to finally get revenge on this room. Without any real plan of action we began to empty the room, as we went we decided the popcorn ceiling HAD TO GO! Seriously, I would like to find the inventor of popcorn ceilings and punch him in the face.  Once we had decided on ripping out the whole ceiling and painting the walls our attention was drawn to the horrible fireplace, it was like something straight out of 1975 threw up all over it, and as a bonus we found the 102 year old mantle was literally falling off the wall and taking some of the floor trim, and wall paneling with it. After several trips around Floor and Décor we decided on new tile for the fireplace; a beautiful marble tile that looked like it had been sort of distressed. Since neither of us had ever tiled anything before we figured why the heck not just go for it! We are pleasantly pleased with the results. *pictures below*

Once we got to work on the living room we showed it no mercy, it took us 2 days to completely re do this room and we are pooped. During those 2 days we spent many hours demoing the ceiling and painting it with two coats of white paint, repaired the 1970s paneling (yes we repaired it, we don’t have the money to replace it all with drywall and since our house is still on knob and tube we’ll probably have to rip it all out someday anyways. As a side note, to cut paneling the best way is a razor blade, but any way you do it it’s still a pain in the ass) painted the walls a beautiful grey color, repaired 102 year old baseboards, painted the ceiling fan, ripped out and re-tiled the fireplace, and oh! That was all in one day. The next day (Sunday) we decided to take things a little slower, so we grouted the tile work we had finished at 1am, cleaned the floors twice; which ended up not to have paint splattered on it. Nope, it was the droppings from the popcorn ceiling that had been installed; thank goodness they had put carpet over it instead of actually cleaning it like non lazy people. Stained the floor a dark color and we are now just waiting for it to dry so we can polyurethane it. There is a little bit of trim work still to do, but this weekend is almost over and it’s whiskey time.

Oh, PS. Preston’s new nick names are: Preston-the Grout Master-Ragsdale and Preston-demolition-Ragsdale, and mine is: Bailey-the bad ass- Ragsdale and Bailey-the plant killer-Ragsdale. 

P.S.S John Wayne is still the best in my book. Second to Preston of course. 

                                                     

                                             Before: Please note they stained around the rug in the center of the room, there was horrible pop corn ceiling, and the fireplace was just plain terrible. 

 

                                                              After: Yes, thats much better. No trim around the top of the wall, we're going to have a trim party. Blog on that one to come. Also, the walls are the most beautiful grey but the camera phone didn't capture that and the ceiling is white.

 

Where are you Mr. Yard crasher!? weeds.

So today Preston and I had planned on continuing working on the foundation, a horrible task that if we had the money we would pay some illegals to do it but since we are poor we are stuck doing it ourselves. Lucky for us there is air conditioning and whiskey. Anyways, we woke up today on this beautiful Saturday morning and thought why be stuck under the house when we can work on the yard? So (like all the folks on DIY network) we got started on our actual work at around 2pm. Prior to that we went to Sams Club to get some $1 pizza and go around to all the free sample tables. Hey don't judge, we are just trying to get our memberships worth throughout the year with samples. Then to the Home Depot we went, getting things for the chainsaw and we began to work! We went C-R-A-Z-Y and it currently looks like a yard war zone. We already got a few people asking to help us (for money) and we were like nah we got it. Oh whats that? Oh yea I know we have a half a tree laying in the street but nah, we're good.

So went went to town tearing down miscellaneous bologna tree like things and other various bull shit plants out from all over the freaking yard. We also chain sawed down a tree that was hanging on the telephone line and after almost a year of them saying "they'll get to it" we put on our John Wayne britches and said WE WILL TAKE YOU DOWN!!!  After  a few hours of this we just took a break for whiskey and realized we had nothing left for the day. We went to the CVS to get the coupons and free shampoo and Taco Bueno for dinner to watch DIY network  and our recording of Rehab Addict. We love that show, but unlike Nicole we do all the work ourselves which is why you often times hear about whiskey.

Our mission tomorrow is to save up for a big magoilia tree ( which will take more than a day), rip up all the bull shit fabric layer of black junk that is a "weed stopper" layer, and put in some patches of St. Augustine grass so we can have it grow together. We know it's not going to be perfect, but it's gotta be better than what is there currently. 

 Tonight we celebrate and tomorrow you'll hear more! Pooped at 8:40pm and people our age are just now going out and being crazy! Man we are getting old but I love it!!!!!

Ps. We had some MAJOR weeds growing in the yard, not weed that would make Larry Hagman proud but crazy yard weeds check it out!

Caulk Party

Get your mind out of the gutter.

Today, day 2 of our vacation, we tackled the sunroom. Before it was a puke looking green, with green floor, ceiling green, and it just reminded us of the *beep* that used to live here. So this morning, we got all dressed up (and for us while renovating that means showered and not in hobo-esk clothing) and went to breakfast at the Waffle House! After that we decided on a whim to go to a place called Orr Reed Wrecking Co to check out the cool old stuff they have, we were in heaven. We didn't buy anything today but we will for sure be back.

Once we stopped by the Restore (Habitat for Humanity place that sells cool things, and cheap paint supplies) we went to work. Primed the sunroom and started painting. The colors? Yellow for the walls, and navy blue for the floor. I'm pretty excited to see the end result on this one.

After priming the walls, ceiling and floor we decided this room was pretty revolting as far as the lack of caulk goes, so yes folks, we had a caulk party. We caulked E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G! Used about 6 tubes of caulk:

     Yes thats right folks, I am wearing war paint. We have declared war on this *beep* who used to live here.

                                                                BEFORE

                                                                      BEFORE

                                                                   BEFORE

Then we painted it the first coat of yellow, more tomorrow on the finished product. For now we are having some champagne and Whiskey to celebrate the engagement of my cousin Austin to a wonderful woman and the start of a new year!

CHEERS YALL!

Finished pictures to come tomorrow. :-)

The Cinderella of light fixtures

You know you are doing something right when your husband walks into the room yall just worked on for two days and says " WOW! IT LOOKS AMAZING IN HERE!" :-)  The dining room is finished, and we are so completely thrilled about how it turned out! We painted the ceiling, walls, one door, and re purposed our ugly light fixture.

The light fixture was an ugly-stupid-colored-with-stupid-looking-globes-crappy-ass-light-fixture.  So since we are poor, we decided to paint it and put in false hoity-toity light bulbs (edison bulbs, you remember when we were sitting in our kitchen drinking whiskey wearing sunglasses in awe of our newly found favorite $8 light bulb?) I do. Well, we spray painted the light fixture that made us want to puke before and now we are just so in love with it. Mind you, the bigger and more amazing Edison bulbs are about $10 a piece. * also, as a bonus our local Home Depot has a "coin star" type coin acceptor in the self check out line so we were able to take our mason jar filled with coins and it was enough to pay for two!

Here are some pictures of the dining room that is done!

PS. whenever you are taking down trim and crown molding always number or label the pieces so it makes it easier when you put it back in. Unless you just love puzzles, then why the hell not just scramble it all up.

Disclamer: the camera phone (thank you yet again jerk face who broke into our home and stole both our cameras) doesn't truly express the beautiful color the room is painted.

More to come tomorrow, 5 days off work together, this is so amazing.