How The Kitchen Makeover DIY Projects are Doing Four Years Later

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How The Kitchen Makeover DIY Projects are Doing Four Years Later

It’s almost time to start demo on my kitchen to make way for the new space, so this is my last chance to share whatever can be shared about the current iteration of the kitchen!

As you probably recall, the kitchen was just a phase 1 makeover to hold us over until our full remodel. I thought it would only be like this for 6 months, but it’s been over 4 years. Oops. Because I didn’t want to dump a bunch of money or time into the makeover, I did some quick cosmetic fixes. They weren’t designed to hold up for a long time, but some of them have. Here’s a full report.

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Our Mills Act Tax Savings + The Secret Calculation & Some Financial Transparency

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Our Mills Act Tax Savings + The Secret Calculation & Some Financial Transparency

I shared awhile back that our home was designated historic - yay! I already went into the nitty gritty of how we got our home designated, what it means to be designated, what Mills Act is, and the pros and cons of how it affected our home in this blog post. Give that one a read first or you’ll have no idea what I’m talking about here.

So, I’m here to update you on where we’re at in that process and also share some nitty gritty finances with you. If you’re thinking about applying for Mills Act, this post is for you. If you like snooping on other people’s finances, this post is also for you.

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Clean With Me: Windows Edition - A Video and A Guide to My Waste-Free and Streak-Free Clean with A "Helpful" Puppy

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Clean With Me: Windows Edition - A Video and A Guide to My Waste-Free and Streak-Free Clean with A "Helpful" Puppy

You know I love cleaning, and there’s nothing like squeaky clean windows! Now that summer is truly upon us, I know there’s no more rain in the forecast for several months, so I feels good to shine those windows up.

Window cleaning can be a struggle, they can turn out super full of streaks, and the process can create a lot of wasteful paper towels. But, as someone that ditched single-use towels years ago, I’ve found a technique that uses no waste and is 100% streak free! I also use this technique on my mirror, too.

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The Whys, Whats, and Hows of Landscape Lighting

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The Whys, Whats, and Hows of Landscape Lighting

I’ve been sharing oodles of front yard and landscape posts (get ‘em all here) and the icing on the landscape cake is always lighting. I installed the lights only a couple of weeks ago and it’s amazing how much the space has transformed in the evenings. In typical fashion, I thought long and hard about lighting, so here’s the full scoop on making our front yard garden just as pretty at night as it is during the day.

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The Goals for My Front Yard Garden - For the Love of Water, Food, Bees, and Flowers

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The Goals for My Front Yard Garden - For the Love of Water, Food, Bees, and Flowers

I have lots of front yard gardening posts to share with you so I’m breaking them up into a few pieces. In this one, I want to share with you the goals for our front yard landscape. A a serial over-thinker, you can bet that I had multiple goals that I thought long and hard about when planning what to plant to replace our pathetic front yard. From trying to save the planet to wanting to enjoy all the pretty things, here are my garden goals.

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Dark Walls and Unpainted Woodwork - Thinking About Painting My Dining Room

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Dark Walls and Unpainted Woodwork - Thinking About Painting My Dining Room

I shared a couple of weeks ago that I was inspired to paint my dining room a super dark moody color. So, in an effort to write more popping-in-to-share-inspiration-and-thoughts-blog-posts I wanted to well, pop in to share inspiration and thoughts about giving my dining room a dark hue. I’ve compiled a bunch of inspiration images and mocked up the dark hue in Photoshop to give you a good look at the potential

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Clean With Me: Kitchen Edition - A Video and My Guide to Non-Toxic and Zero Waste Cleaning

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Clean With Me: Kitchen Edition - A Video and My Guide to Non-Toxic and Zero Waste Cleaning

Among my top 10 hobbies is deep cleaning my house. Call me crazy, but it’s just my jam. I’ve spent ages perfecting my routine to be as efficient as possible, years finding my favorite non-toxic cleaners, and just a few months to learn how to do it all without any waste. I filmed a quick video of me doing a kitchen deep clean and wrote out my step-by-step cleaning process. Check it out!

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Redesigning the Kitchen Layout... Again! But This Time I May Have A Winner?!?

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Redesigning the Kitchen Layout... Again! But This Time I May Have A Winner?!?

If you know me IRL, or if you’ve been here awhile, you may have noticed I’m really indecisive and over think things WAY too much. I’ve been designing my kitchen for nearly FOUR YEARS now. I made minor upgrades to my current kitchen because I thought we’d only live with it for a mere 6 months. Well, here we are 4 years later and I’m still designing the future space. BUT! I think I may have come up with the best layout that makes the fewest compromises and sticks to a more reasonable budget! Check it out and let me know what you think.

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Getting Our Home Historically Designated - New Rules for Renovations & Tax Savings

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Getting Our Home Historically Designated - New Rules for Renovations & Tax Savings

Our house is a 1915 craftsman bungalow in a charming old neighborhood of San Diego. While the house is special in our eyes, we’ve been going through the process of making it even more special with historic designation. It gives us cool street cred, plus with an extra step, we get a discount on our property taxes. There’s a lot of wins, but also a few hurdles to jump over, so I wanna share where we’re at in the process, how to apply yourself, and what this all means for the future of our home.

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