Sunset & Update on Yard

Not too bad for our backyard.

Not much has actually happened in the yard yet, but we do have a final design and are meeting with the installation people on Weds to figure how much it is going to cost - eek. We may do it in stages, or at all at once. This hasn't been decided yet, but we have plans for a new patio, back steps, and plantings around the perimeter of our backyard and along the house. In addition there would be all new plantings in the front, replacing our current root-filled, bumpy grass. New edging and front stoop would complete it.

Progress, maybe?

Big doings in our yard underway. We are working with a designer/contractor to redo our lanscaping, including adding a "real" (non-asphalt) patio. The first step was to fix up the lawn, though we suspect they messed up and used the wrong dirt to fill in the holes/overseed. There are a TON of small rocks all over the grass. Not exactly what we had in mind. I am confident it will be sorted out - the contractor has great Angie's List reviews, I have a friend that has used them and raved, and the designer has worked with them for years.

The big stuff (patio) will be done in late July (likely).

Updates to the house since Fall

New toy storage for the living room

curtains for the family room

radiator covers are finally stained (and dry)

new artwork for the dining room

Ugliest yard in town?

that is without spare parts and rusted cars?

We finally have down all the ugly, rotten fence, leaving ugly piles of dirt, old metal fence poles (presumably from an older chain link fence) and general ugliness. The removal was in 2 phases, because of the funny property lines here (nobody really knows what is whose) one set of neighbors removed the bulk of it in August and Steve did the rest yesterday.

We plan on adding something to close off the backyard (keep roaming children in), and add a gate between our garage and our neigbors to the rear who have 2 sons about our kids' ages.

If we get our act together, by the end of the summer we should have a small vegetable garden, a new fence along parts of the back and some sized-for-4 patio furniture.

Given our new neighbor to the side with boys age 2 1/2 and 5, I think the fight with the toys in the back will never be won! We do love the boys will have so many other boys to place with in adjacent yards. (All the parents seem like-minded too).

Let there be light (and paint)

Only 3 years after I thought it would happen, we have a new light for our dining room!

The radiator covers are stained, but still are stinky from the polyurethane, so they will remain airing out in the garage for awhile more.

The dining room was completely repainted, as was the living room. All our halls are the same sand color as the top of the dining room walls.

Now we just have to hang everything back up! ugh

Over the Kitchen Sink

We finally put something up over the sink in our kitchen. In what is probably the only thing I would change if redoing the kitchen, the window's (which is the only thing remaining from the original kitchen) scale is off to the raised ceilings making it an awkward spot. I think these Target items fill the space ok and are kitchen friendly. Better than the $375 versions I saw in a catalog, that is for sure.

Painters are coming Monday!

New Ceilings..

They look so much better. Even though we lost about 1/2" of ceiling height, the consensus is the rooms look bigger.

As you can see, we need some new paint in the dining room - ripping off and replacing the molding doesn't do good things to walls, it seems.

A mess is coming!

Well finally, after 3 years the ugly, barely hanging on (really according to Steve!), fan is gone. We are having our dining room and living room ceilings re-plastered on Thursday. There has been a damaged spot (see below) in the dining room since we moved in and we finally got around to dealing with that too.



Of course that means we need the ceilings painted, which means we might as well do 80% of the rest of the house too while the painters are here;/ The living room walls, front hall walls, stairwell walls and upstairs walls/trim are all going to be repainted along with the 2 ceilings! Stay tuned for an exciting new living room color (hopefully we will like it!).

The new dining room light I have picked out (the room will be light-less for awhile since we haven't ordered it yet...