Pepper Design Blog

Curb Appeal: Outdoor Lighting Installation Complete

Remember how we started an outdoor landscape lighting project last week? Kevin and Rob (from Rob’s Electrical) finished up the installation and it looks so terrific! The house is a completely new house at night.

I couldn’t find Kevin’s keys to move his big ole’ truck! Of all the days…

Let’s start at the beginning though to get a better idea of where this yard began. Here’s our home five years ago just before we moved in, the only lighting outdoors included a lamp post (hidden there underneath that ivy bush in the front) and a front porch light in the alcove that leads up to the front door.

We eventually gave the yard a full makeover which included a retaining wall to get rid of a front yard slope, a flagstone walkway (right over the existing concrete path but with a few more curves), saltillo tile for the porch, and a curvy new lawn on each side of the path lined with LOTS of mediterranean-style plants (for low drought, San Diego-friendly landscaping).

I had always been itching to paint our Spanish home a more Spanish color, so last fall we painted the house!

Before:

After:  

A subtle change in the photos, but so drastic in person! That crazy weather doesn’t help the photos, does it?

Another phase of the yard transformation has been to install the 30 or so outdoor lights and transformer that we picked out from Lowe’s last summer (they’ve been waiting a while for installation day…). And now it’s so exciting that they are in! And working! Connected to electricity and welcoming us home each night.

Big thanks to our new outdoor electrician Rob whom we found through HomeAdvisor and who partnered up with Kevin (to save a little on the install costs) to finish the landscape lighting up. I highly recommend him for all of you local San Diegans.

A peek at the left side of the front yard during the day:

And at night (this angle shows how we added lights back through the deck area and side yard as well):

The right side of the yard during the day:

 And at night:

Kevin wrapped a few uplights around the right side of the house as well.

The majority of the lights we’ve added included these little incandescent mushroom path lights (for the actual paths and to line the lawn and sidewalk) as well as a few of these:

And our tree lights of choice included these low voltage halogen flood lights and several LED flood lights:

Most of the lights are also LED, which means they’ll shine on for a loooong time and will save us dollars in the long run.

Wow, such a huge difference. She looks so resort-y now – kind of like she belongs on a tropical island somewhere serving mai tais with the little umbrellas in them. No? Just me? Clearly I’m still in the ooh-la-la mode now (and clearly ready for a vacation ).

This project was sponsored in part by HomeAdvisor who helped to compensate for some of the electrician’s time in exchange for a review of their services. See part 1 here and part 2 here, we’ve been very happy and I will definitely be using the great online resource (with so many reviews of all kinds) in the future. You can check out the website for home repair/service recommendations right here.

PS all curb appeal projects for this casa are sorted right here.

Spring Maintenance with HomeAdvisor: Outdoor Lighting!

Our landscape lighting project is coming along so well. We are needing just a little more time before the big reveal, but the electrician we’re working with through HomeAdvisor has done a terrific job. Can’t wait to share the details.

A few sneak peeks…

He began installing the fixtures and transformer box (so that the lights could be controlled via a timer) yesterday and was hoping to tackle the entire yard in one full day, but it looks like we’ll be rolling this project into our weekend plans before calling it finished.

Meanwhile, head on over to HomeAdvisor’s Spring Cleaning Contest to enter to win three free months of maid service at your home! Perfect timing for all of the nitty gritty projects that we don’t necessarily tackle on a regular basis, such as the inside of light fixtures, a deep clean of those base boards or taking apart the stove top piece by piece. To enter, use HomeAdvisor’s Cost Guide tool to find out the average cost of a maid service in your city. Submit that cost in the entry form found on HomeAdvisor’s Facebook page by tomorrow, May 16th and you’re eligible to win 3 months of free maid service. I’ve already entered – I need someone for the nitty gritty .

Have a HomeAdvisor project in mind? You can always get started right here, as well: 

We partnered with HomeAdvisor to spread the word on their pro matching services, but the opinions and feedback are all our own. Feel free to reach out if you have any further or more specific questions about our experience.

Spring Maintenance with HomeAdvisor

Very recently I received an email from HomeAdvisor with their Top 10 Spring Maintenance Task List. It was a helpful reminder that come spring, it’s time to tend to some of those loooong overdue annual maintenance projects and to finish up some big not-at-all-appealing-but-necessary household tasks (dirty stain riddled patio and clotted gutters – I’m talking to you).

I reconciled the HomeAdvisor list with our own – we have a few big projects that we plan on tackling over the next month such as aerating and reseeding our lawn, restaining several pieces of outdoor furniture, and patching and repainting a few spots in both the kitchen and my office – and we have also just recently tackled a couple of other spring maintenance projects such as washing our windows and professionally cleaning the carpet in our living room and guestroom. None of it is sexy, but so goes the life of a homeowner.

When HomeAdvisor asked me if I’d like to try out one or two of their recommended pros to knock a few more items off of our to-do list, I jumped at the chance to tackle a couple of spring projects that have perhaps waited far too long for any attention. And to have a professional opinion and to complete the work on a time table that was not our own? Huge bonus.

When you have done so much work on your home personally, outsourcing a project to a pro can be nerve wrecking. I have found that the biggest challenge by far is finding someone who comes with solid recommendations, is licensed and bonded, is as detail oriented as I would be, and who is within budget. And finding five of those types of people to compare and choose from? Really tough to do on your own.

Here’s a little on how the HomeAdvisor website works:

My first bit of research was on expected cost. What exactly does one pay a professional to power wash a couple of years of grime off of your back patio and outdoor bbq area, for example? This helpful cost guide breaks out just about any service by local and national average, and gives you a few clues on what types of questions to be prepared with when discussing your project with your potential contractor match-ups.

Turns out power washing a big outdoor area with the appropriate boiling hot temperature for moss/mildew/hard-to-break-up-dirt-spots runs the average homeowner about $323. It’s much more pleasant to walk into a meeting with a potential hire with a price gauge in mind so that you can make an educated hiring decision. Click on the blue title in this Spring Maintenance List to see where various projects fall, and check out even more cost guide ideas here.

I played around with this feature for lots of project ideas before settling on two very much needed items from our personal spring list: fixing a broken gasket on our guest bathroom toilet (nobody likes to go for a roller coaster ride when they sit down) and installing landscape lighting to both provide a little added security and highlight all of the neat hard/softscape surfaces and plants that we’ve worked so hard to build and plant.

Here’s the before of our home when we moved in:

And the landscaping as she sits today:

Yep, painting the retaining wall is totally on our spring list as well, and the trim is a decidedly almost white these days as opposed to the trim sparring wars that the windows are having here. Our neighbors must think we’re crazy.

But that awesome flagstone path would look great with a little lighting, and the olive trees (just a few years old and already so big!) would look awesome with a few spotlights. The side yard? Can’t wait to see how the deck looks with a few well-placed uplighting accents, and I’ll feel much safer at night when I can turn on the lights near our big doors and windows when I’m alone.

Next up was hiring that pro! After filling out a bit of information on the type of project, the specs of our home and our location, HomeAdvisor sent our details off to be properly matched with the folks in their database. The process from my end was easy peasy, and very shortly I had qualified contractors reaching out to me with when they could stop by to bid.

Our landscape lighting contractor pick arrives tomorrow to install the correct transformer and wire the low voltage outdoor lighting throughout the front, side and back yard. Will keep you posted!

And if you want to check it out, here’s the button to get you started:

We partnered with HomeAdvisor to spread the word on their pro matching services, but the opinions and feedback are all our own. Feel free to reach out if you have any further or more specific questions about our experience.