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Exterior

1970 home renovation

power washing the patio

This project has been on my list since I did my Spring cleaning of the patio and pool deck in April.  The patio, particularly the old part, was so dirty and stained.  It’s the sort of project that keeps getting put off, though.  Not because it’s hard, but because it’s a pain to get the power washer out and set up and to move all of the furniture and heavy concrete planters.  We’ve been having great weather this week, though, so I finally convinced Marshall to help me get it done. Here is how the patio looked before… You can really see how dirty it was in this picture… When I took pictures of the patio, I tried to take them from an angle that would mostly hide the dirt, but you can still see it under the table and chairs… We moved everything out of the way, which was

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1970 home renovation

exterior window apron panels

As I’ve shared the exterior of our home, I’ve been asked a few times about the panels under some of our windows, so I thought I would write a post about them.  Let me start by saying that I’m not a tremendous fan of apron panels under windows.  I don’t mind the ones on my house, but I would prefer just to have taller windows.  While they were an intentional and original design feature of the house, they give the appearance that original larger windows were once replaced with shorter windows, and panels were added to fill the gap.  In some homes, that might be the case, but in our house, this detail is original.  It can also be found on many other homes in our neighborhood, so it must’ve been a trend in the late 1960s to early 1970s. I don’t know with 100% certainty why the architect of

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1970 home renovation

removing english ivy two ways

There was a time when I thought English ivy was charming.  I mean, it is. When you see it growing up old brick homes, there is something beautiful about it.  Now that I have lived in a mid-century brick home that was half-eaten by English ivy, I no longer find it charming.  It stains the brick, it grows in windows and screens, it chokes out bushes and trees, and it’s incredibly hard to remove and control once it’s gone unchecked. A lot of ivy was removed from our home before it was put on the market.  We could see the remnants of it and have cleaned off the roots and staining as we’ve worked on the exterior of the home.  (You can read about how we removed ivy roots & stains HERE.)  And now we’re working on removing ivy from an overgrown bed on the left side of the house.

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All Things Home

painted garden obelisk

When I decided to make custom lattice for our DIY A/C surround, I measured and counted out how many 1 x 2s I thought we would need for the project.  I estimated that we would need 85 1 x 2s and figured I should round it up to 100 to have some extras in case some were warped or in bad condition.  I was confident in my math, so Jeff and I primed and painted all 100 pieces, even though he pointed out that we wouldn’t be able to return extras. Well, it turns out that math still isn’t my strong suit, and I dramatically overestimated how many 1 x 2s we would need.  Since I have a big pile of primed and painted, unreturnable 1 x 2s sitting on our newly-organized garage floor, I decided I should get building!  We’re going to make a surround for our propane tank,

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1970 home renovation

DIY custom A/C surround reveal

Jeff and I noticed a stretch of stifling days in the forecast, so that gave us the push we needed to get the DIY custom A/C surround installed and finished this weekend.  I shared the progress we made on building the surround a couple of weeks ago HERE. Since I had all of the pieces painted and two of the panels of the A/C surround built, it was pretty quick and easy to install.  We had a general plan of how to attach the pieces for stability and longevity, but we knew we might make some adjustments along the way since this is the first one we’ve built and installed.  It’s all finished and I am so excited with how it turned out! As a reminder, here is how the store-bought one we’ve been using for a couple of years looked… THIS is the one we had.  It worked pretty

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1970 home renovation

power washing the front walk

We have done so much work on the front of our house over the last couple of years.  After all of the painting, planting, and updates, there was one glaring thing that needed to be addressed.  This front walk desperately needed to be cleaned. We bought a power washer a few years ago, so we just needed to get it out and put it to use!  (The pressure washer we purchased is no longer available, but it’s similar to THIS ONE.  We paid much less for ours, though!)  I imagined doing this long sidewalk, along with the patio and pool deck, inch by inch, so I looked into power washer attachments that cover a larger area with less effort.  I ended up purchasing THIS 15″ surface cleaner attachment by Karcher.  Jeff was highly skeptical and really didn’t even want to get it out of the box.  He kept saying things

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1970 home renovation

progress on the custom A/C surround

When I last shared about the custom A/C screen/surround we’re building, it looked like this… My dad came over on Thursday to help me with turning those primed and painted pieces into finished panels.  My dad and I are a good building team because we have a similar approach – done is better than perfect.  Several times, we said something like, “We’re not sending anyone to space in this thing, so it’ll do.”  Even Jeff, who usually brings more perfectionism to the table, said it doesn’t have to be perfect.  It’s just hiding an A/C unit.  No one is hanging from it or living in it. That being said, now that we’ve built two of the panels, I can see some minor flaws in my design!  Perhaps they are not so much flaws as things that could be improved upon.  My design allows for access to the A/C unit for

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1970 home renovation

DIY Custom A/C Screen

After having the lumber on our garage floor to season for a few months, we are finally building the DIY custom A/C surround.  I am joking about letting the wood season.  I bought the material without consulting my building partners, and we were not all on the same page regarding starting this project in the fall.  That meant we were stepping over it and tripping on it for a few months because I put the cart before the horse.  Now, the supplies are off the garage floor and we are making the plans (sketched on a now crumpled piece of paper) come to life.  You might be wondering about the A/C screen we already have… I bought it when we opened the pool a couple of years ago, and it does a pretty good job of hiding the A/C unit.  THIS is the one we have. Here’s the thing: when

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I’m Marian, a painter, writer, and lover of all things creative. From art and antiques to home projects and everyday life, I share my journey in hopes of inspiring you to embrace your own creativity and make beauty in the spaces you live.

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