It's a Sad Day at the Radmall House

It is a bittersweet time in our lives to say goodbye to this amazing home, but after owning a fixer upper and making changes as fast as we did we are officially worn out.  The time and money we have put into this home has definitely been worth it, but now we know that we aren't the fixer upper type of people.  It was fun and we learned a lot but we just don't want to keep putting money into it that we could be using to save and make family memories.  We don't want to spend all of our time and efforts always working on our house.  So we decided to downgrade in size and upgrade in quality.  

Here are some before and after pictures

(the afters were pictures used on our listing for the house)

Exterior - Before

After

Before

After

Family Room - Before

After

Kitchen - Before

After

Family Room & Kitchen After

Master Bedroom - Before

After

Other Angle - Before

After

Master Bathroom - Before

After 

Another Angle - Before

After

Payton's Room - Before

After 

 Basement - Before

After

Backyard Exterior - Before

After

Deck - Before

After

I Can't Get Enough of Utah Summers

I live in Utah for the summers.  I grew up in Vegas and definitely have a hard time in the cold, but every summer I remember why I put up with the freezing cold winters here.  We have decided to stop working on the house and just enjoy the amazing summers here.  Best decision ever.

We have already gone to the zoo twice this summer.  Payton LOVES it.  

Especially the lions.

And "riding" all the animals.

Payton turned 2 this summer.  When did that happen?  She is the happiest, sweetest, funniest little girl 

I know.  But I may be just a bit biased.  She decorated her own birthday crown and insisted on wearing it all day long.

My husband is a pretty awesome picture taker so we dressed her up, bought her a sucker and starting taking pictures.  It was a pretty easy photo shoot with a sucker to keep her happy. 

This is my favorite.

That Saturday we had family and friends over to celebrate.  I have been so lucky to always have my sister and her family in town from Scotland for her birthday.

4th of July was so fun this year.  Watching the fireworks across the city on our deck was definitely the highlight.

Progress...

I love making lists, but even more then making lists I love crossing things off of my lists.  I posted about our spring/summer to do list here and wanted to look at our progress.

Hallway - 75% complete

Remove Swamp Cooler from ceiling and wall

Re-drywall where the swamp cooler was removed

Paint trim and walls (the last of the yellow and green paint)

Add some art and a runner rug

Front Yard - 66% complete

DIY Paver Patio in front of window on the right

Add some landscaping (bushes/flowers/rock)

Paint the front door a fun blue

Master Bathroom - 29% complete

 Paint the hideous vomit colored walls
Replace the off centered circle mirror
Paint the cabinets and get hardware
Spray paint the light fixtures black
Repaint the grout

Paint the outdated tile in the tub and shower

Refinish the ugly tub with a $30 Tub and Tile Kit from Lowes

It has been a lot of work and very tiring so we are officially taking a break.  A much needed break.

DIY Paver Patio

So we are so excited to FINALLY have our front patio done (well everything but the final landscaping touches).  Hopefully by the end of this month I will finally be able to put the before and after pictures of our finished front yard.

So after 2 weeks of internet searching and shopping around for the best prices we finally got started.  This project has been the longest and most difficult project yet.   

These are the things we needed for our project:

-15 bags of Paver Sand 

-Paver Set Polymeric Sand 

(this is the finishing touch that we actually haven't done yet...whoops)

-Wood framing

-Metal Stakes to hold the frame

-Pounder

-Pea gravel

-Landscape Fabric to keep the weeds out

-2 x 4 and 2 ten foot PVC pipes for leveling

So this is the area we started with

The first thing we had to do was dig down so that each of the three frames were level with the concrete.  We also had to measure out the frame EXACTLY to the pavers we had since they were going to be fitting hopefully snuggly inside the wood frame.  It took a lot of work and a lot of mess ups but this is what we ended up with:

The landscape fabric has been awesome.  We bought a huge 100 foot roll at a local nursery for $40 and have used it for everything.

Next step is to lay a 2" layer of pea gravel over the landscape fabric.

After leveling all the gravel out we placed our two PVC pipes towards the edge like this:

Then we started pouring the paver sand in excess in between the PVC pipes.  I just tried to level it the best I could just by looking at it before we really leveled it.

The leveling part was actually pretty easy.  You just need the small 2x4 and you run it on the top of the PVC pipes.

Then you take out the first PVC pipe and use a small shovel to add sand to the line that it left in the sand.  As you can see it isn't perfect but it worked.

Then you start laying your pavers in whatever pattern you want.

Then you move the PVC pipes and repeat the process until you have the whole thing filled in.  

The LAST paver...

It took us about 4 hours just to do the paver sand and laying the bricks.  Total time to do the digging, framing, and everything else was probably 10 hours.  We spread it out over about 2 weeks though so it wasn't too bad.

The one thing we still have to do is sweep the polymeric sand into the cracks and lightly mist it so that the pavers set and hold really nicely.  It was so late that we decided to wait on that.  Unfortunately it has been 2 weeks since we finished it and that step still isn't done.

Here is the finished product in the daylight...

Hopefully by the end of this month we will have all the landscaping done around the patio.  I'm crossing my fingers.