From fire pit to sidewalk...

Remember that old fire pit in the back yard?

It is long gone, but now the bricks have found their way to the front yard.
After 25 bags of gravel and 60 bags of sand, I started to lay the old bricks in place. The supply was supplemented by more old bricks found on craigslist. We wanted to use the old bricks so that the new walk didn't look too new.

500 bricks later and a very tired arm from pounding them into place, the walk is halfway done. I ran out of useable bricks and have now returned to the search for a matching supply to complete the walk.

First Cut!!

There is something very gratifying about mowing your own lawn. Especially after planting it from seed and all the prep work to get it to grow. Today was the first cutting for the new lawn! We have some weeds starting to pop up, and have done a lot of hand weeding. We plan to use some weed-be-gone spray soon, but it is recommended that the new grass has really set in before spraying so we are going to wait another week and cutting or two.

and green and green and green....

The lawn is starting to fill in!! Won't be long till the first mowing!

A little green...

It has been a week since we seeded the lawn and we are now starting to see the results of our efforts!

The lawn is starting to come in. We are still on a twice a day watering routine but hopefully we can start to cut that back soon.

Here are a few shots of the progress!

Last week I also picked up 300 more bricks, so we should now have enough to do the front walkway!

More to come soon!
-G

a little light, a little color, a lot of dirt...

Yes, i know, it has been a long time since the last post. As usual, things here have been extremely busy. We have settled in to the house and we are loving it! However, we have both been very busy with work and the time has come to really dig into the wedding planning as well. Never the less, we have still found some time to continue working on the house. Abbey's father was out for a visit a few weekends ago and he was an enormous help with choosing colors for not only the inside rooms, but also the outside trim stain and door colors. We all had a great time going back and forth to Lowes, Home Depot, and Anawalt Lumber to look at colors and get samples and then bounce around from room to room and front yard to back trying to imagine the little sample cards expanding to coat the walls! We also had a visit from Abigail's mother who was in town for the weekend as well as our neighbors, Mark and Holly. It was our first official BBQ at the new house!

Here are some pics of the latest updates...

I added more temporary kitchen cabinets to accommodate our dish ware and food supplies, and was able to hook up the under cabinet lighting as well. Now, with a few exceptions, we have our kitchen fully put together based on the designs we had started with. It is actually a great opportunity to live and work within the space before we get our final cabinetry.

Over the past few weeks, we started to tackle the yard. I rented a tiller from Home Depot and fully tilled the front and back yards. It has been so dry here, however, that it became a very dusty job.

After that, Abbey helped me rake out the old weeds and level out the yard. She started to call me her LA Donkey as I strapped a large plank to my body and dragged it back and forth to level the yard out. Then, this past week I dug out the pathway that will lead to our front door. We are planning on using the old bricks from the fire pit that we took down in the back to make the walk, but we are a little short and I am searching for bricks to supplement our supply. This weekend we are going to try to seed the lawn and hopefully have some green grass in a few weeks!


Here are some pictures of the front of the house in the morning sunlight. You can see the new trim stain color and the newly stained front door! Thanks Mr. DeRocker!!! We love the colors!!! I still owe a second coat of stain on the trim, as well as both coats on the trim in the back of the house...maybe later this week. You can also see the pathway cut into the newly leveled lawn.



Here are a few shots from the afternoon, when the sun has passed and the trim and door are not in direct sunlight.

And finally here are a few shots of the house at night. I added some more lighting.

More to come soon. For now, it is time to make dinner and do some more wedding work!
-G