I'm back from my blog break! We moved in mid-February and it feels GREAT!
We are still have many projects to complete and I will continue to document our progress.
15 years ago Brent and I purchased a lift chair from Sundance. They changed out all of their chairs and Brent was certain that someday it would make a fun and unique porch swing. The chair has been resurrected and it looks fantastic!
First Cole and Maya spent a spell of time grinding off all the old green paint (can not find that picture...). Brent and Cole painted the lift black (can't find that picture either...). Brent cut, sanded, and stained new walnut slats and then he assembled the chair.
Yesterday Brent rented a back hoe. He excavated behind the first retaining wall for another retaining wall.
On the left is the northeast corner of our house. In the bottom corner of the photo you see the first retaining wall we placed. In the upper right of the photo is a bucket with caution tape--that is close to the end of the garage sidewalk. Our idea is to place the retaining wall up along the dirt wall to be parallel with the first retaining wall. We will have concrete stairs poured BETWEEN the two retaining walls.
Cole and Brent figuring out where our base needs to be...
Since we had the backhoe Brent scraped the entire yard and VOILA--almost weed free again. Our former neighbors are putting up their house for sale (wanna' be my neighbor?) and they just installed a lawn so I have got to keep the weeds down.
In the below photo I am standing in the corner of our lot. From this point to the furthest end of the trailer will be our vegetable garden. Cole and I are going to get it cleaned up a bit more. When that's finished we will lay thick clear plastic and solarize the soil in preparation for a vegetable garden. We left such pretty vegetable garden dirt (worked on it for 14 years) and this will be a lengthy project. We need healthy soil here but it will take some time.
I had suspected and we confirmed today, that we have a gopher (s?). Hopefully we can keep the vegetation down and let them know that they are not welcome at our house. The lot was scraped pretty clear and relatively flat and ka-boom--new holes this morning.
Our laundry cupboards came...
But at the end of the molding we have a joint like this: (we are waiting for the fix)
We do have a size-able to do list. Items include, but not limited to, (I sound like a warranty): concrete pad on side of driveway, retaining wall/stairs at the end of said pad, large retaining wall in back, stairs in back, plaster finish on foundation, finish painting exterior of house (we got caught in the weather at winter and couldn't paint anymore), final grade, sprinklers, landscaping, blinds for kitchen doors/windows, blinds for front door, finish caulking baseboards, finish painting baseboards, and more!
Yesterday was a good work day and I felt like we made progress. When I have Saturdays like that I always feel better!
We really enjoy being in our house after a very long wait. The kids are happy and comfortable here and that's a great feeling. The landscaping will be a big project and we often have the kidlettes out there pulling weeds and cleaning up. Last week, after watching neighbors put in their yards, Estee asked me if we could just get some "carpet grass" and be done with the weeds. She likes the idea of sod! (we will however seed the yard)
One of the really great things about the house is that we have a finished basement. LOVE that. I won't have to live through a basement finish, it's done. We may have a bunch of projects to get to a more complete stage but we live in a lovely creation!
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