Operation Cutify - 2011

(Rancho Cocoa, with it's shiny new tin roof...NOT RUSTED!)

In lieu of yearly resolutions, I've made a short list of goals I would love for us to accomplish towards our never-ending quest to renovate and rehabilitate our house and yards (a.k.a. OPERATION CUTIFY, or OP CUTE). We bought our house five years ago because we were sick and tired of dealing with unsavory landlord and roommate situations. Buying our beloved house was our big "middle finger" to all that guff. We bought our house at the very beginning of the housing market collapse and got a pretty good deal. Since then, we've been slowly but surely fixing it up, tweaking the house here and there, making our home truly and uniquly OURS. One of the main reasons we got the house at a good price was because the roof needed to be replaced. When we bought our house, we were warned that the roof probably needed to be replaced within the next couple of years...it wasn't until we started to experience major leaks in the roof that we finally buckled down and replaced it with a SHINY NEW TIN ROOF last year. Yay! With that major piece of renovation done and out of the way, we can finally turn our attention to smaller, much doable projects in and around the house.

With the new roof in place, we'd like to add to the curb appeal of our humble abode. We spent so much time on improving the inside of the house that we kinda neglected the outside of the house. We wanted to make the inside as livable as possible since, duh, that is where we spend most of our time. The facade off our house is such a mish-mash of building materials - brick, stone, wood, tin, metal. It would be nice to tie it all together by painting all the trim and facing in one uniform color:



We'd also like to fix up the SLATE WALL BED in our front yard, which has been damaged repeatedly by fallen limbs and family, friends, delivery drivers, and work crews running into it with their trucks and SUVs:



I'd also love to finally replace our ugly and rickety excuse for a MAILBOX:



In the backyard, I'd love if we could finally dismantle the FIRE PIT (buried under leaves here) and bring the soil back to life (ruined by the previous owners who used to burn their trash there), so that we can eventually turn it into a garden. Also, we'd love to finally pull up all the ivy in the back corners and eventually build a little WORK SHED STUDIO:



This little corner at the back of the house is where the spigot is...this corner always gets a bit muddy whenever we use the hose, so we'd like to remedy that by putting down PAVER STONES:



On our enclosed back patio, we'd like to build some sturdy WORK TABLES, where we could maybe put a table saw or use as a gardening and planting station:



Inside, we'd like to renovate our GUEST BATHROOM. The previous owners painted over this pretty PINK TILE with matte gray paint. We finally removed the all the pain-in-the-ass paint from the tile and we're ready to go to the next step...which involves removing all the peeling, cracked, and molding paint; filling in all the holes and cracks with putty; sanding it all down and then painting with a nice high-gloss paint...much easier said than done:



Another project is turning our dreary hallway into a miniature GALLERY to showcase our collection of art, painting, prints, and posters. In addition to repainting, we're going to run a PICTURE RAIL on one continuous wall down the length of the hallway and then install track lighting up above:



In the living room, we'd like to replace the warped CABINET DOORS on our built-in shelving, and finally decide on what color to paint the walls, so we can finally start hanging up some more of our framed art...