Small Exterior Upgrade

We've done many exterior upgrades since moving into our little Rancher three years ago: painted our entire house, installed sod, painted of front door, upgraded our flower beds and more. Not long after we painted our house, we changed out the old dated light fixture (that's next our front door) into a chic black one. Total we have three exterior lights, and only upgraded one of them, shame on us! So on a recent trip to Home Depot, I stopped in the lighting department, which I almost always do and decided to was time we upgraded our fugly crooked motion sensor light fixture that rest outside our garage door that leads to our backyard. Here's our old light fixture, yikes right! I detest our ugly it is, its dusty and icky white outdoor lights in my book aren't a good thing.

 I decided to go cheap thrifty on this upgrade because its a sidelight, not seen from the street and matching it with our front door light fixture would have set us back 30 bucks, for this project um no. I found the perfect simple light fixture, a black matte jelly light fixture for only $ 6 bucks! We really like how black accents look on our grey house (black shutters, mail box, and hanging pots) Here's how new light fixture, sweet and simple! I love how it looks, we need to do a little touch-up paint around the light fixture our old yucky house color is showing. I'll tackle that 5 min project this week. 

I never thought a I'd love a simple jelly light fixture so much! lol

Next we plan on upgrading our Exterior garage light fixtures, and removing the over fuglly motion sensor light fixture. The one at least looks in better condition than the one we just replaced! We also plan on going from one garage light fixture to two. We like this light fixutre that compliments our front door light. Hopefully we'll tackle the light small exterior upgrade sometime this month. 

What do you think our simple exterior upgrade, much better huh? 

Mirror Makeover

* A big thank you to everyone for helping us choose our new Blog Pic! Another big thanks for all the sweet words about my family, we have lots of fun together & I'm glad our pictures capture that! As you can see we went with picture 'A' and added Mojo's picture too. We love that our blog now represents our whole family. Even though I'm they main blogger (Hasani chimes in from time to time) this is truly a family affair documenting all the fun and sometimes stressful projects we've done since becoming homeowners *

Now back to the mirror makeover. Back when I was shopping for a dresser for Avery's nursery I came across an old 70's mirror at a local thrift store. Once I saw the mirror, I knew I had to have it. A while back  I missed out on a fab mirror, because Hasani couldn't see its makeover potential. This time I listened to my gut and loaded the huge mirror into my shopping cart. I paid $ 25 bucks for the mirror, but considering its size and weight, it appears to be really wood cut all one piece, its actually a good deal.

When I came home with my prize, sure enough Hasani thought I bought home a lemon you know an ugly car that you paid to much for and can't take back. Then I reminded him of the mirror that got away, and shared with him my inspiration from Little Green Notebook. Jenny took an aged mirror and transformed it from icky to wow. She painted the mirror a moody grey.

{ Little Green Note Book }

I decided the best spot for this mirror would be at the end of our hallway. The one and only hallway hasn't seen much decor action in our house, just paint and an updated light fixture we installed months ago. I thought by installing the mirror at the very end of our hallway it would accomplish to things. 1. Bounce more natural light around during the daylight hours. 2. Make our hallway look larger, since mirrors always have that great affect. Next I took color inspiration from the pillows in our living room. I love the new floral pillows, great colors: greens, navy, golden yellow, turquoise.

I thought the painting the mirror a shade of green would look really good. I went to Lowes and bought a small sample paint size of 'Crushed Oregano. Before applying the paint, I cleaned the mirror with soapy water and then applied a coat of primer. After applying the first a few brush strokes of paint, I HATED how it was looking it was just awful. So I went back and thought what about a darker green, nope another FAIL.

So instead of jumping into another color fiasco, I do what I always do when I hit a design wall. I take a few days off from the project and come back to it with fresh eyes. See the to oops colors in the back ground, yeah not my cup of tea of this mirror. Anyways this time I decided to go dark deep navy. I bought 2 cans of Krylon Fusion paint in glossy. It says its for plastic, but also works on wood metal. Plus I liked the fast dry time.



I was very impressed after spraying on one coat of paint. Everything was looking smooth and shiny. Crazy glossy shiny and I HATE spray painting, but this spray paint and I for along. I was a little concerned the navy blue I was going for wasn't getting dark enough, but by coat # 2 I could already see a darker shade emerging. After spraying on the final coat I wait 12 hours before bringing the mirror inside, plenty of time for the 'spray paint smell' to blow away.

This once dated mirror used to be attached to a dresser, so I needed to install new hanging hardware. I decided to go with U brackets, they promise to hold 50 pounds. We estimated the dresser was likely around 15 pounds. I my ruler to pick the placement for the brackets and help create a strait line. The Hasani nailed in the hanging hooks. The mirror hangs just outside of our bedroom and Avery's in the future we'll look into a new method of hanging the mirror as Avery gets older and mobile and starts to pull himself up on objects. I can see us drilling directly into the mirror into a stud. We'll share what we end up doing.



Here's a the after, a nice long shot of how the mirror looks in our hallway. In this picture its hard to tell what color the mirror is, but in real life you can easily tell its a deep navy. I LOVE how the mirror looks its glossy and pretty and does exactly what I wanted, bounces more light around and creates the illusion of a larger hall.

Look at the shine!

Although it took longer to get to the after on this mirror with the two color hiccups along the way! I'm really glad I stuck with it, I love find old pieces and giving them a second chance and an updated modern look.

** Update, I forgeot to mention, I spray painted right over the green paint and did not prime and had great results! It's usally recommended that you prime first **

Have you transformed any old mirrors lately? Have you had in color hiccups with a project before, what was the end result?

PS: Also check out this post here about Organized Spaces on ReNest, from Apartment Therapy Chic Little House was mentioned! :) Super cool to be included in such a great group :)

Spring Intervention

Over the weekend our flowerbed and front porch received a Spring intervention performed by the family. Normally our front proch is nice and tidy and our flowerbed full or flowers and no weeds. Our flowerbed has come along way since buying our house a little over 2 years ago. We replaced the leaning brick with stone and added pretty flowers & hanging pots, installed a trellis, painted our front red (in addition to painting our house and installing shutters) which added tons of curb appeal. Here's how our gardenbed and front porch looked like last Spring.

We've been working on various indoor house projects and getting lots of rain, the front porch and flower bed etc have been neglected. Finally after pretending not to see weeds, dead plants & leaves and a dired up paint brush, I decided its time to stage an intervention. Yep this is how the entrance to our front door looked, can we say so un-welcoming.

I really wanted out bring various shades of color into the flowerbed and on the front porch. I stoped in Lowes, Home Depot & Wal- Mart since both our close to our house. For our flower bed I always try and look for pre annuls because they come back year after year. For our potted plants anuuals are fine, becasue its far easier changing those plants out. While at Home Depot, I found a really pretty shurb called sweet broom, it has soft green leaves and delicate yellow flowers. I knew the shurb would look perfect at the very begining our our flower bed. This will make the third plant we've planted in that exact spot. Let's hope this one grows!

Before planting, I soaked the flowerbed and we pulled all the weeds and added some fresh topsoil to the flowerbed. After planting the flowers we used one bag of mulch. New mulch makes a flowerbed look so much better. I also replaced the dead flowers in our hanging pots and pots on the front porch with fresh flowers. 

A quick sweep of the front proch and a little rinsing off of the siding and front door made a huge improvement. I aslo swtiched out our Fall / Winter rubber mat, with a mat simple door mat from Ikea. I think I'll add a little more personality to our mat soon. Here's how our gardenbed and front porch looks like now, interventions are good thing.

Thank goodness we performed this intervention before the hot Northern California Summer arrived. Our house feels more spring like and so much more inviting. I still have plans to add a few more colorful bushes is this garden bed as soon as I find the right ones. We also plan on added some more colorful bushes to 'the other side' our garden bed under our livng room window. But I'm looking forward to making some improvments to our backyard soon?

Have you performed a Spring Intervention around your home?

Paint Chips: Front Door Color Options

To kick of our plans to pretty up our front porch, Sunday morning the family and I stopped in Lowes in search of the perfect red for our front door. We I did all the looking  found four top contenders for our front door color.

Color Contenders { from left to right }  Spanish Tile, La Fonda Geranium Red, Cut Rudy and Posh Red

Like most colors reds tend to change though out the day, so we tapped our choices to the front of the house. We wanted to make sure our color looked good against our gray house and looked good in direct sunlight. Our house colors are Grey, with white trim and black accents (shutters, mail box etc.)

The lineup next to the front door { from left to right, top to bottom } Posh Red, Spanish Tile, Cut Ruby and La Fonda Geranium

From a distance the reds really pop of great against our grey house. It's going to make walking up our sidewalk much more inviting.

The color that keeps standing out to me the most is Posh Red { top left } and the color Spanish Tile { top right } I think those two colors look the best against our grey house and red/orange brick on our front porch. I'm thinking the Spanish Tile might be a little too dark since it lends more towards the cranberry shade. Posh Red is a good mix between cranberry and reds. The paint colors are from Valspar and I love using their paint in our home inside and out! I'm really looking forward to tackling this project and breathing new life into the front of our wood door. A few months back we we did our entryway and painted the inside our front door a glossy white.

Out of the 4 color options above which one do think will look best on our front door?

Front Porch Pretty

With the sun shining outside the past few days, its got me thinking about our front porch (I use the term loosely, since our porch is tiny) but it was one of my 'must have' on our buying list. I can't complain even though our front porch is small its come along way since we first bought our house in December 2008. Back in 2008 and over half of 2009 our front porch and house looked like this.

I know its hard to tell { from the picture above }, but we just placed our patio set on the front porch and called it good. After we painted our house gray and added shutters, a new light fixture, new house numbers and redid our flower bed things started looking up.

To me our front porch still looks boring and not that inviting. I think one major change we need to do our front porch is add some pops color that will look nice against the grey. I've been thinking about painting our front door for quite sometime. Mr CLH and I butted heads over our front door color - he wanted black and I wanted a cranberry red. I love red front doors, I know they are the norm in some areas, but I only counted one on our street so I thinking we are going to go red.

I also want to add some either cushions to our bistro set or add pillows to create warmth. I was also thinking spay painting our plastic plant containers on of porch to add more color. Right now the containers 'natrual Terra Cotta color' just blend in with our brick exterior.

Here are some pretty front porches that are giving me serious inspiration for small porches!

Isn't this the perfect sunny spot for morning coffee, I like the cushions and bright potted plants that surround the front porch.

{ via Ladies Home Journal }

This front porch is so charming, I like the bright floors

{ via Ladies Home Journal }

I love the swing on this porch so welcoming

{ via Country Living }

These two pillows are the perfect touch on this porch.

{ via Country Living }

Now that its getting warm outside, I'm really looking forward to added extra oomph to the front of the house. Our project list keeps getting longer and longer, looking forward to the time change when our days get longer too. Have you done a porch re-do? I'd love to see and hear all about it.

Curb Appeal Redo: Quick Fix

Here's some quick fixes we did to our the front of our house to create some Curb Appeal. To make our windows pop from the street, we added black shutters.

Next up was changing our basic light fixture to a chic black one

We changed our mail box soon after we moved in, we painted the bottom portion black to go with our accent colors more. We also changed our basic house numbers to sleek brushed nickel.

Curb Appeal Redo: Making Flowers Grow

I love flowers. I couldn't wait to add some to our front year for added curb appeal. For a simple fix I thought hanging flower pots over our front porch would add color and drama. I found simple chic charcoal ceramic planters from Ikea for $14.99 a pop.


Even before I found the perfect flowers for the pots, I was already in LOVE with how they looked.

Just a few weeks after I planted the flowers

The pretty potted plants today, I used 'Mircle-Gro Plant Food' once a week and it made a big differance. I'm not big on measuring plant food, so I brought the Mircle-Gro Singles packet. It's so easy to use; I just poured the packet into the watering can and watered the plants.

Even from a distance they make an impact when walking up to our front door.