July 26, 2011

Our new patio


Okay, to address the obvious (that will hopefully become less obvious in the future). I've totally failed at blogging. The truth, and this is lazy on my part, is that when we got our new computer I lost my beloved photo program (I'm not even sure what I had before). So suddenly compressing pictures got more difficult, and uploading the full resolution picture just takes SO long. So, we've found a new program and I'm hoping it encourages me to update our blog more often. Here's hoping!
This weekend Trever's Dad brought his beloved Harley Davidson back to us!! (I'll post on that later). And since he was here, we thought it was a great time to tackle a big project.
The "before". Trever starting to clear out the space for the new patio. (And yes Dad, we do love using your tractor!!)
Andrew is more intersted in the grass than the project at hand. The border is finally installed... and by finally I mean FINALLY. My husband is *amazing*, and I am SO thankful for his dedication to perfection and hard work. However, he wore his dad and me out. We were nervous to do any work with him absent. And the work that we did??? Yeah, we had to remove it and do it again. If you know my Father-in-law you would be even more impressed by these statements. The man is definitely a perfectionist up to the highest standards!
Natalie helping to pound in the last brick. Did you know that when you cut a square brick into two triangles you can use BOTH of them for the finished product??? :) You had to be there.
Nathan loves the job of sweeping the sand. He had eagerly awaited this stage during the two days it took to build the patio.
Ahhh... the finished product. And what better way to enjoy all the hard work than a fireside sing along.
A huge thanks to both our Dad's for their contributions. We are so blessed to have your support, your skills and your tools.

July 21, 2011

House projects

We're obviously rested from the house build... it shows in our new found energy for house projects. We moved in a year ago, I'm not sure if that makes it a quick recovery or not. :) I'm just glad we can think of painting a space or finishing an area (mud room, pantry, office...) without getting a headache. It feels nice to be back to "us", where projects are a bit exciting not so much a drain on our energy which is how we felt a year ago. And that might be putting it nicely.

Our new dining table, found on craigslist for $40. (I'll just say it now, I fail in remembering to get true "before" shots).
The almost "after" shot. I love it at this stage! Then we put some poly on it... and it changed the color a bit. I'm a little bummed, but not enough to do anything about it. You don't really see the bottom that much anyway, and the poly will make it much more durable to the kids. I'm so glad to have a table that seats 8 comfortably!!
The office redo. When we made our list of projects that we'd like to accomplish this summer/fall the office was at the top of my list. I knew it would make a big impact on our daily life. Being in a room with too much clutter was not helping my mental energy. We got a bid on having it built out... yikes, almost $3000 and that didn't include painting/staining. Although the finished project would have been amazing, I just couldn't bring myself to put that much of our project money into my office. So we got creative. We used our current filing cabinet and my dad's old office components and created a new office. I love it! It's not perfect, we made some compromises, and we still need to come up with a plan for the wall area. But I still love it! (even though it hasn't managed to stay clean yet, we'll get there).
After... the total cost? $100 and some hours painting/staining.
Trever has given me some freedom to paint (he's an amazing painter so I'm generally nervous to tackle projects without him). It's working so nicely for us, I paint, he does the finish/install work. It's nice to find this balance. And an added bonus to these projects? We're using paint that we already had on hand, which means less gallons of paint that I need to beg Trever to get out of the garage.