When looking around my house brainstorming what I could share on my blog, I thought why not share some of the projects I jumped right in when I officially had the keys to my home! When signing paperwork for a newly built home, they highly stress to not paint until the one year walk through. At the one year mark, the builders will walk around my house and fix nail pops, cracks, etc. from the home settling. I understood that this meant that they would basically be stripping the paint off in some places to fix these imperfections but when I weighed out the pros and cons, it didn’t make sense to wait for an entire year!
One of the best things I did before moving furniture in was painting! You see, once furniture is in place it becomes more of a hassle to paint … Not to mention, less motivating. I was fully motivated to paint because the sooner I had it done, the sooner I was able to start settling in! I did have a family friend come and help me out so I could tackle a different room while another room was being painted. Super helpful! My gracious sister even stopped by to bring me lunch one day and helped me paint my office space! What a sister!!! 🙂 Even though my one year mark will be approaching soon, I cannot help but to think how happy I am that I painted. I saved some paint for touch ups when they do come through but touch ups are so much better than moving furniture, covering up the floor/furniture, painting and working around cords while LIVING in the space! Let me just say that having a painted space really made a difference in feeling “settled”. 🙂 Especially coming from a rented space where I wasn’t allowed to paint before!
Another thing I’m happy I did it while I was motivated … Woodwork around the house! I always loved a space that had some sort of trim work, whether it was crown molding or some sort of wainscoting/paneling. Not only does it look pretty and polished, it adds dimension to the space, duo tone coloring for interest AND it adds VALUE to the house! I had zero experience with this but thanks to many, many, MANY blogs, I was able to figure out how to do this myself. After researching, I thought the board and batten was the ideal style that would look great in any room. Plus, it didn’t look THAT hard since they were straight cuts. The only thing I was nervous about was the crown molding because of the corners. I knew I would want to have my family friend there to help me with that part. I was ready to jump into the project but then received the news that my grandmother had passed. With little energy to put into my house at the time so I could focus on family, I hired my family friend to cut and nail in the board and batten and the crown molding. To help me with cost, he left the rest of the work for me to tackle once I had the time. I eventually jumped right in so I could caulk the imperfections and paint the trim work around my house white. After just doing those two tasks, let me just say I’m SO glad I didn’t have to cut/nail them to the walls because I was so over it by the time I was done! Haha! Just doing what I had to seemed like it took forever! I’m very happy with the turn out and can say it was worth the late hours of hard work! 🙂
One last thing I was happy I did before moving in was the woodwork around the windows. The rooms where I had the board and batten work, I made sure to also install trim around the windows so the woodwork carried around. As you have seen on Pinterest MANY times, when you hang curtains high, the room feels taller. Same with the woodwork! I’ll be teaching you how to trim out a window on my blog in the future, but let me just say that it was SOOOOOO easy! The only thing I didn’t own was a nail gun so I had my family friend come and nail it in while he was nailing in the other trim work. Otherwise, I was able to pick up the wood from Home Depot and cut them down myself. After hanging them up around the window, I just had to caulk and paint! Super easy and I love the turn out!
Hope this inspires you to tackle some home projects around your house! It made a HUGE difference in appearance AND value!
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