Renovations with Lowe's

As you may recall, my husband and I had big plans this year with the outside of our home.  Since the house fire, and having the inside of our home completely renovated, we decided that we needed to make the outside finally match the inside. 

Our list for the next 18 months is a long one.  The house needs to be scraped and painted, the plans for a two tiered deck, raised garden beds, a new hot water heater, purchasing a shed for all our outdoor tools,  and all the existing garden beds completely redone.  Phew... That is definitely a long list, and new things added to it each week, it feels like we will be pretty much in our yard for the remainder of the good weather. 

After thinking about how we would pay for all that needed to be done, we saw a commercial for Lowe's Tax Refund Gift Card.  We put money on a card, and after a certain date, they would automatically add 10% of your total to the gift card!  We decided that we would take our tax refund and buy one of these gift cards.  So right off the bat, we received an additional $400.  That would be enough to purchase the shed we were looking at.  We then signed up our email accounts to receive the Lowe's Newsletter, which gave each of us a coupon for 10% off our total purchase.  Bam!  Basically an additional $440!  Enough to purchase the pressure washer we needed.  Our friends and family all gave us any coupons they received from Lowe's increasing our available amount to spend.  I have redeemed points from survey sites for approximately another $350.  Which was enough to purchase ALL of the painting supplies.  I guess where there is a will, there's a way to save.  Granted we dished out quite a bit of money for the original gift card, however we have been able to turn our initial investment of $4000 into over $5000 in purchases! 

We planned, designed, and planned some more, and came up with a deck that would fit our needs, and our wants.  Since we already had a deck that was pretty much ground level, we decided on making the new deck meet up with the existing deck.  The thought of this was, to be perfectly honest, well frightening.  I was sure that this project alone would take at least two solid months.  My husband on the other hand kept telling me, no once he started it would only take a few weeks.  I humored him by saying "Okay."

We decided that with 3 sides of the deck being supported by the house, we would be able to use these floating deck blocks.  What a life saver these were.  For less than $5 a piece, we were able to fully support every inch of the decks, without having to dig four feet into the ground, mixing and pouring concrete, and letting it set up.  Sturdy?  Let's just say that the walls of the house will come down before the deck does.

This is now the second tier of the deck.  This was originally planned to be a 6 foot by 6 foot deck, however after looking at the pieces of flooring that were cut off from the first deck, we noticed that all the scrap pieces were 48 inches long.  Change of plans.

We had more than enough room to change our plans from a 6 foot by 6 foot deck to an 8 foot by 4 foot deck.  Bringing the cost of flooring needed now down under planned budget!  By doing this we were able to also change the stairs on the second deck to a full 8 feet wide, which, looking at it now, definitely made the whole look!

I honestly can't believe how well this project turned out.  We are by no means professional carpenters, and for that matter, really had no idea what we were doing, well not at first.  Anytime we had a question, the people at Lowe's were so helpful.

As you can see, the painting and scraping has begun as well.  We were making progress, that was until we hit a solid week of rain.  After only getting this small section of our home painted, I now realize why they say to start in the back of the house when painting.  It's such a tedious and time consuming job, that if you start with the front, you'll never finish the back, well because no one but you sees it! 

We have made scraping and painting a family project, and although the girls really don't like doing this, they know that once the house is completed, they too will be able to enjoy relaxing in the yard, and looking at all they accomplished.  ( Plus it helps that for every week, they help, I am using my other reward offers to get them gift cards for iTunes!)