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In the midst of all of this, blogging about my house felt trivial… and more often than not, I was left with very little energy or emotion at the end of the day. As recently as earlier this week I thought, “The blog is dead.” Putting words to that thought made me stop and really consider if I was done here, and I decided that I wasn’t. I want to be here in spite of everything going on – mostly as an outlet where I can put some positive energy to pull me out of much of the negativity waiting for me in the world.
While I sincerely hope that the November 3 results in a much needed change to the occupant of the White House, I know that the work doesn’t end there. We’re in a marathon to change America for the better – to create a more perfect country where our ideals are truly available for all. And because it’s a marathon, we all need time and space to step out for a minute, to recharge. So I’m here to do that for me and if my ramblings help you do that too, welcome friend.
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This post was inspired by Redfin, who has suddenly broken through the Gmail barrier and lands their emails in my inbox (rather than the black hole that is promotions folder). I don’t mind. You probably already know I have a thing for real estate, and the emails make it easy to keep up with the houses selling in Camarillo. I feel like I’ve adjusted to the California real estate market, but every once in a while I see a listing and react with “they’re listing a 3/2 1,200-sq-ft house for WHAT?” It was one of those listings, that made me visit our home’s Redfin post to double check the size of our lot. And the listing pictures gave me such a kick that I decided to give you a current status look at where we are vs the listing photos. We had more than one COVID construction (COVID-struction?) project so there’s plenty of new content for any of you who have been stalking my Instagram or just generally wondering what we’ve been up to on the home renovation front. This will give you a taste and I’ll swing back with individual posts (and more photos) on some of the major areas that I haven’t posted about.
Let’s dive in, because the front of the house got a major facelift… and we didn’t do most of the work (gasp!)
The updated paint is a little hard to see in the after shot (more on that here) but the lack of grass is pretty apparent! We were so excited to pull the trigger on a xeriscaped front yard AND pay someone else to do the work. The front beds are still a work in progress. We also have plans for the entryway and a new garage door at some point.
Stepping into the main space of the house, it was fun to remember what was where and try and get the same angles. My lens wasn’t quite as wide, but I think you get the idea.
I really want to pull out the before photos of the living room and give it the post it deserves, because the transformation is CRAZY!
We haven’t talked much about the master bath… mostly because it’s kind of meh. We painted it white and it feels a little sterile and disjointed. I painted the cabinets and hated just about every minute of it. They turned out ok.
Yep! We did it! We finally got the wine room of our dreams. It’s not 100% done (still need to hang some art) but more details coming soon!
I loooooove the changes we’ve made in the backyard.
The only thing I’m not super jazzed about is losing the ivy covered fence. That’s a story for a different day.
So that’s where we are. There’s plenty of projects to dive into and I’m genuinely looking forward to pulling together some before/after shots of most the recent (within the last year-ish is recent, right?) transformations.
A few weeks ago, Aaron took a trip down memory lane and reread all of the posts detailing the renovations of our current abode. He “helpfully” pointed out numerous mistakes, like when I told you I’d show you the updates to the master bathroom and didn’t. It’s true that I can sometimes over promise the exact content of the blog, but in this case I said we would paint the exterior of the house in 2018 and we finished with a just few days left in the year.
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Shortly after we moved in, we selected the new, black roof to go with the as yet undecided shade of blue gray we intended to use. The winner was Glidden’s Approaching Storm, which we color matched to one of Behr’s exterior paint lines. We loved the subtle gray undertones and thought this blue would go well with the dark brown accents, thereby saving us the work of repainting those sections.
The blue looks fantastic with the crisp white trim and black roof! It also makes the brick on the entryway pop a bit.
Ultimately, we didn’t love the blue/brown combo and opted to paint most of those sections blue (to add extra cohesion). The only section we wanted to accent was the front corner windows. We grabbed a medium gray that inadvertently is the exact same color we used to paint the front pots. So clearly we like that color 😉
Over the summer, we also ripped out this bush, which was constantly overgrown looking. Not a great story… which is why it didn’t get it’s own blog post. There was a bush, now there’s not. It looks better. The end.
Ok, fine. It’s not really the end. We opted to mulch the planter this bush lived in rather than replace it with other plants. We’re firmly set on the idea of doing a drought tolerant front lawn. We have NO idea what that will look like and mulching seemed like the easiest and nicest interim solution. The end (for real this time).
Painting the exterior was actually fairly easy. We opted to roll the three sides with low peaks. Originally, we intended to knock this project out over the week of the Fourth of July, but the weather turned very hot just a few days in. At that point, we decided that no one would notice if the sides of the house changed colors at different times and ultimately stretched this project over the course of 4 painting sessions, the last one culminating on December 28th. #CaliforniaWeatherRocks
We actually did the back of the house first. This area was in serious need of paint thanks installing fresh stucco and wood from moving doors and windows around.
Here you can see where we originally kept the top of the wall brown. After painting the peak on the front of the house blue, we circled back to change this section.
Opting to change the brown peak to blue really extends the height of the house.
This set is a good series showing all of the changes on the back wall of the house, starting with the original configuration.
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The last side of the house was the most difficult thanks to a high peak and large shed with grooved siding. We opted to spray this section for speed.
We also decided to simplify the look of the sheds by painting the door and corner trim blue. It’s a technique that helped unify the multiple doors in the master bedroom at the firehouse and worked well here too.
So the house is now blue and we love it!
We actually knocked out a bonus exterior project that we didn’t expect to tackle in 2018. More on that next time (for real).
We thought it would be fun to do a walk through of the living space 1 year post-renovation so you could compare. So here you go! About a year ago the space looked like this Jan 15, 2018:
(Full breakdown of the plans, befores and video commentary here)
As of Jan 13, 2019, it’s looking a lot more fresh
A few notes: