Shedding Light

What with all this Christmas-ing, we nearly forgot to wrap up our True Value projects.  Eek!  But no worries, we squeezed enough projects out of our gift card to share one each day for the rest of the year.  I know.  That sounds uber-dramatic…but seeing as how there are only four more days left in twenty-ten, it really only means four more redo’s that were made possible by True Value. 

In case you are new around here and have no idea what we are talking about, here’s the lowdown.  True Value is uber-blogger-friendly (which we love) and sells stuff that DIYer’s dreams are made of (which we also love) and last year put together a squad of bloggers to tackle DIY projects and footed the bill (hiphiphooray!) and chose us to participate (enter fist pumping victory dance here).   And then this year, they did it all over again…plus made the BlogSquad bigger!  Our mission this year was to do as many projects possible with the $1000 gift card.  Here’s the list of what the projects that we originally wanted to tackle.  

So far, we tackled painting the guest bedroom, not to mention added crown molding and customized a fan, built a bed for our master bedroom, redid a Goodwill dresser, winterized our lawn, and painted our hallway and landing. 

We already made some major progress on our original To-Do list…but since we put the house on the market, obviously some things changed.  The first major item that was knocked off our list was the basement laundry room.  Our real estate agent said that it wasn’t worth investing in the basement space with this kind of market.  And then she told us that our money was better spent on sprucing up the master bathroom (as much as cheaply possible).  So we did.  More on that later.  The other item that got the strike-through on the 2010 list was the kitchen cabinets.  Even though I still really want white cabinetry, she said that a preference item like cabinet colors isn’t as important as making repairs to existing assests. 

So we got to thinking about our existing assests – namely the shed.  Yes.  We have a shed.  When we bought the house, we thought that one day we would move it to the back of the yard and make it not visible from the street.  Why would we want to do such a thing?  Well, it’s yellow.  

You can see that it is pretty big.  We love it because that size space can store lots and lots of ‘stuff’…like lawnmowers, extra wood, yard care items and a potting station.

Unfortunately, this guy has been out of commission for quite some time.  When we bought the house, we heard that just recently a branch from a tree had plunged itself into the back corner…rendering this bad boy holy.  As in holy water.  As in the storage space this beast should have…was drenched in water every time it rained.  As in this thing had less than half the storage space it should have. 

With all it’s faults, it did bring up our redneck status a couple notches with the tires that were stashed beneath it.

So we committed ourselves to fixing it up and bringing the storage back.

Oh…it’s a singing moment…”I’m bringing storage back…them other sheds don’t know how to act…I think it’s special to fix your back…”

Now imagine me doing my best Justin Timberlake moves…in a fedora. 

We got 11 cans of WeatherAll Exterior paint from True Value.  Since we decided to just go with a white color (to match our house), we knew that getting enough paint would be an issue.  Our local branch only had a few cans of each color – so getting 11 cans would be difficult.  Instead of worrying about the color – we focused on getting all the same finish (satin) and decided to mix them all together for a custom pastelwhite/naturalwhite/tintablewhite color. 

The first thing that we did was clear out the tires.  Can you believe that there were 31 tires under there?  Yeah…when I said our redneck status went up a few notches…I meant we just attained redneck sainthood.

The back of the shed was fairly easy for Jeremy to fix. 

He ended up replacing some of the supportive 2×4’s inside the roof and removing the outside side trim and two of the panels of siding.  One of them got shifted up till it overlapped only 4 inches vs. 20 inches.  You can see where the clean siding is now exposed.  Yeah…thank goodness for overlap.  Then we cut the other panel of siding in half.  After attaching half to the top part, we screwed in the vinyl siding on the very top to create the window.  Then it was just a matter of reattaching the side trim and patching the roof (which Jeremy did…I have no idea how…because I refuse to go out onto the deck). 

Now came to the part for me (well, me and Will)…pressurewashing. 

After a quick wash, it was ready for painting.  We set up a makeshift scaffolding…can you hear the clang of our redneck points?  I can.

And got to working on the paint job.  (psst – you can see where my boyfriend patched the roof below!). 

I got about two thirds of the way finished before Will woke up from his nap.  And then it sat there like this for….oh….two weeks.

Everytime I went to finish, it was raining…or the baby woke up early….or Jeremy wasn’t home (and we have a no-ladder-no-power-tools-for-katie policy when I’m home alone.  Don’t ask.). 

Until FINALLY….we finished it. 

Much better, huh? 

It’s amazing what a couple coats of paint can do.  And with the fixed roof (ok, ok, and a couple reworked studs and a new plywood patch to the rotted floor) we have more than doubled the storage space we had previously.

Repairing existing assests?  check.

Increasing storage space?  double check.

Feeling eternally grateful to True Value?  triple check

Wishing that True Value would sell Nascar paraphenalia and Possum meat?  well….we aren’t THAT redneck…

“I was one of the bloggers selected by True Value to work on the DIY Squad. I have been compensated for my time commitment to the program as well as my writing about my experience. I have also been compensated for the materials needed for my DIY project. However, my opinions are entirely my own and I have not been paid to publish positive comments.”

“My sincerest apologies to anyone who is a fan of Possum meat.  You can eat them nasty critters if you want.  Just remember…Possums are people too.”