After all the work this house took, the closets were way down on the list for improvements. When we moved in, I just put our stuff in there and  ignored the rest. For some reason, right before Christmas I got motivated to spruce up the master bedroom closet. It took me one day,  some left over paint and peel and stick tiles. Cost aprox. $30

BEFORE

AFTER

This  House Make-Over post is for all of you who don't think you have the time or the money to fix up your house. This "kitchen cupboard painting project" was done in one day, with one adult (me!), 8 children (ages 4-13) and for less than 100 bucks!  See, you have no more excuses not to get started on that project you've been putting off.  

Need more information on how to do your next project? CLICK to see lots of great "How To" home improvement videos.

I didn't mind the stain on the cupboards too much but in many places the wood had water damage or the stain was worn off, so to make them nice again, it would have taken ALOT of sanding. Since we plan to do a major kithchen remodel (when we get enough $$ saved for it) down the road, I only wanted to spend minimal amount of money and time making this kitchen look better. Painting the cupboards was the solution. Of course those GIANT knobs from the 60s era had to go!!

Step #1:  Take down the cupboards. Even though it takes more work than painting while still attached, it's just  too hard to not get paint on the hinges, which looks awful.

Stiep #2 Remove hinges and screws: We had the daunting task of removing  total of 360 tiny screws.This is where the 8 children came in! Pictured above is the "hardware crew".  Three kids at a time would work for about 20 minutes and then I would rotate a new group of kids to spend 20 minutes, until all hardware was off the cupboards.

Step #3 Lightly Sand: While the hardware removal was going on INSIDE, the sandpaper crew was working OUTSIDE. You will notice that even my four year old was sanding. This job was perfect for the little ones as it just had to be lightly sanded or as I told them, "scratch it up kids!". 

Step #4 Prime and Paint:  I used less than a half-gallon of KilZ primer (water base) and a little more than half-gallon of creamy white, semi-gloss paint. Primer dries very quickly which meant by the time I finished with all the cupboards I was ready to paint. Yes, the children even helped with this. While I don't have the pictures to prove it, I do have the paint stains now permenantly on my cement. Oh, well... Tip! Before allowing children to paint, double up on the plastic covering!

Step #5 Reattach hinges & knobs: The knobs were the cheapest I could possibly find and actually were the bulk of the total cost to do this project (I already had the paint sitting around). To stain them, I had one of the kids dip each one in a bucket of stain and then let dry. IF I had decided to replace the hinges this project would have cost double (or more!). Since my hinges were covered in dirt and grime, I soaked them in TSP/water solution while we painted. We scrubbed them a little and they came out shiny and clean.

A few days later, I ended up priming/painting over that ugly wallpaper. Did you know you can paint over wallpaper? When we remodel the kitchen down the road, we will put in new drywall, so painting it seemed the best choice for now.

The end result is a brighter, cleaner looking kitchen. An inexpensive, quick fix to hold us off until we do a ktichen remodel. Now, what to do about those pink countertops...any suggestions (cheap and fast of course)???

I just realized that I don't have many photos of our dining room make-over. This room cost us around $400 which includes refinishing the floor (we did ourselves) paint and a light fixture that I bought off of Ebay and installed myself.

One of the last ugly bits to go on the outside of our house is the porch! We really didn't notice it unitl we painted, added grass and the new windows, then suddenly we couldn't stand it! The total cost for this was just under 100 bucks and took aprox. 8 hours of work spread over two days. There was a beautiful wood floor hiding under all that ugly paint.

***If you want great ideas on making fabulous bedrooms go to RemodelingMySpace.com....I love the bold colors! They also have several How to Videos, CLICK HERE for many do-it-yourself projects!*

Whenever I need to get a good estimate on a project I use this nifty online tool...The Cost Estimator. CLICK HERE!

We finally have grass in our front yard! We actually put it in a few weeks ago but I forgot to post the picts. Rolling out the sod (instant grass!)  was the easy part. Getting the lawn ready with a rototiller, leveling it, killing the weeds and taking out the dirt clods was the hard part. I am so glad to have grass! No more tracking in all that dirt into the house.  The cost  for a 1200 SF lawn (front lawn only) was just under $400....well worth it.

The night before the grass was delivered I got a hairbrained idea to line the walkway with bricks. So  I jumped in my car and off I went to Walmart for some bricks. These bricks cost around $25 and took me about 3 hours to put in.  I finished up under the moonlight but I got it done just in time; so glad I did as it's a nice effect for very little money. It was also a great way to incorporate more of the dark red.

Some flowers we have in the front yard...I call them "clown flowers"

Well, the 100 year old windows with the wavey glass are gone...so sad, NOT REALLY! Since we moved into this fixer-upper, one of the top things on my wish list was to get new windows. It took the glass guys 2 and a half days to replace all 29 windows. I can feel the difference inside already! It's much more quiet (we don't hear the cars drive by) and I don't feel a breeze blowing through my house.

Well, the painting is finally done! The total cost was around $1,300.00 (thousands less than hiring prof. painters) as we hired a guy my husband works with to spray it and we did most of the prep and about 1/3 of the painting. We  were also very fortunate to have saved 42% on all our paint. We just had our house re-appraised and the value increase $75,000 more than what we bought it for 8 months ago...now that's sweat equity!!! Well, not all of it, we have invested about $12,000 into it as well.

For the past several weeks we've been working on the OUTSIDE of our house. First, we rented a pressure washer and sprayed all the grime and loose paint off. Then we stripped half of the window trims down to bare wood (using a heat gun) and had to replace a bunch that were too rotten to even paint. Then, we were finally ready (after 3 weeks of prep work) to paint. We hired a guy dh works with to help with spraying the house using  a paint gun and he did much of the high stuff. All in all I painted about 1/3 of the house myself and he did the other 2/3. We saved alot of money (thousands of dollars in fact) by hiring this guy, doing it ourselves and we got our paint at Sherwin Williams at a 42% discount through special discount from dh's work! Our big, ugly, pink house has been a pink eyesore for as long as people can remember,  as it is one of the oldest homes in our town and I can't tell you how many people stopped their car to say how nice it looks now and thanked me for changing it!! I will post somemore pictures of the final result next! end  result next!