The Side Yard

Hey everyone we finally had the time to start working on our side yard! Yay for spring and being home for a little while! The wedding of our great friends brought us home in May. It was a not to miss event and we are so happy that we were able to be there and be apart of such an important day. We lucked out being able to get away from work for 2 weeks it was a fantastic little vacation and a great opportunity to do a little house work.

The outside of the house definitely needed some TLC after all the time away and lack of attention it was given by the previous owner and by us of course, it was time to tackle the jobs that we had been putting off. Time to remove some overgrown plants and begin the planning of the backyard spaces.

I started with the space just outside the living room, the side yard and the location of our future patio. We have big plans for this space, a concrete slab for a nice covered patio. This space will be used for outdoor entertaining which of course will include a grill for Geoff.

Before any concrete can be laid lots of things have to be done. All the gravel and plants in the area must be removed and the cinder-block wall must be taken down. We plan on building a new wall with a large gate so we have better access to our backyard, we might even extend the side yard forward just to add a little more room and a place to store our trash can within our yard.

I thought it would be a good idea to see what we started with in the very beginning. Here is a picture of the side yard when we bought the house back in 2009, wow everything looks so dead. Weird. This picture is from the back yard looking toward the front.

We have removed all the flagstones from the path as well as all the lining blocks, all that is left is the gravel and dirt. We left the plants so far because we were unsure of what we wanted to do in this area, we finally have that plan.

The plan is simple, add a concrete covered patio taking up half the side yard and then the other half lay sod for a nice large area of grass. To do this we gotta remove all that lovely gravel and sand. Thats where I started. On the left you can see where all the gravel has been removed, I also started on the sand but didn't get very far. The bar in the middle of the pathway is where the concrete slab is going to end.

After all the hard work and me thinking I had done such a great and fast job, I discovered I had a lot of work to do still. I lifted the weed blocker and discovered they had simply laid the gravel right over a layer of mulch... Lovely... That was definitely not in my plans..

Once I found that lovely layer of mulch I decided that was the end of moving the gravel for now. I decided that the cinder-block wall needed to come down first so we would have an easy way to remove all the mulch and gravel with a wheel barrow. The gravel will be reused in the front yard and the mulch will be promptly placed in a large dumpster. Once we have the wall down and a dumpster in place the project will move quickly I am sure and it will also allow the concrete people easy access.

So the patio project is at a stand still until we are home long enough to accomplish that plan. Which brought me to the next small project. Removal of the over grown Honeysuckle that straddles that cinder-block wall. I figured that the honeysuckle needs to be removed first before the wall can come down so I might as well do that now. Why wait?.. 

I sort of felt bad removing that honey-suckle, but honestly look at it! It is a gnarly mess of overgrown and dying plant. While I was taking it down a cloud of dirt was wafting out. Which reminded me of the character Pig Pen from Charlie Brown. I was covered in dirt when I finished. 

I would say that it took me about an hour to remove the honey-suckle minus the root. I decided that was a job for Geoff and that I had done my fair share of removing that plant. :) I think that it looks so much better already with that plant gone!. See what you can't really tell from this picture is that you look directly at this location from the couch in the living room. It's amazing how much better it looks.

I can honestly say that it was energy well spent! It surely cleans up the space and makes it feel like a much larger area. Next on my plan list for this area..... removal of the wall!

The Living Room

Continuing on the house update tour we find ourselves in the Living room. Starting off with our very first picture of the Living room with me standing there in shock. I was trying to figure out why the previous homeowner had put in small 6x6 Inch white tile with dark, almost black grout. This tile was in the entire living room, dining room, kitchen, hallway and  both bathrooms. The rest of the rooms are also in tile just another size and/or color...... Awesome I always wanted 18 million different colored tiles in my entire house making sure none of it matched and all the grout is almost black... Okay enough of the rant on with the show.  

In this first picture you can clearly see the lovely tile. 

In this picture you can see our pretty paint job in the fantastic sun light. Grey trim with one green accent wall. That big purple "Eggplant" couch was given to us by Geoff's aunt and uncle. We didn't have furniture so it was nice as a starter. This couch lasted about 3 months in the house when we received a new set of couches from Geoff's grandma.

Here you can see we have new couches and a few other things. Also you can see how different the green wall looks at night. It was so dark and really made the room feel smaller. Amazing how that works, so I changed it again. :)

This is our living room currently. Geoff and I got to live in the house for 3 months straight (YAY!) and I couldn't take how dark and gloomy  the room felt with the green wall. We still have almost 5 gallons left of the white/grey tan color so I painted over the green. I think it really makes the room feel more open. I find it amazing how paint can make such a huge change. As you may notice in this picture we also changed the layout of the room. The couch to your left is completely blocking out the fireplace. We never use it! Also a new couch and TV stand.

This TV stand is Tiffany's It looks great! Thanks Tiff!

What has really helped this room out a lot is adding a bunch of decor to the room. Paintings, pictures, and fun decorative items have really made this room feel more like a home.
                     

As I stated in the Dining Room post we still are not even close to being done but we are slowly getting there. Like the dining room we are going to take out all of that horrible tile and replace it with hardwood. It's a huge task that will probably take us days maybe even a few weeks to finish but I cannot wait to get started. That white tile is driving me crazy trying to keep it clean. Another change that will be coming to this room is replacing the "back" door with French doors. I think it will look fantastic to be able to open both doors and walk out onto an inviting patio. At least that is what I have envisioned. The only other project for this room is the fireplace. We are not 100% sure what we want to do with it yet but we know we dont like what it currently is. We both feel that it is way too big for the room so maybe it  will be as simple as removing the wood mantle. I guess we will see.

Maybe Something like this. Of course probably change out the tile surround to be more our style but you get the idea :)

The Dining Room

Hey everybody I was home for a few days and took some current pictures of a few of the rooms and decided that it was finally time to do a room by room progress update :) Mind you that we are still working on the house and not a single room is done yet but here are some updates. First we will start with the Dining room. 

Here is a semi Before picture before our wedding. We still don't have a table yet and you can see into the kitchen slightly where the cabinets are still dirty white and the old dishwasher is still there.

This next picture you can see we got our dining table and you can also see into the kitchen slightly. Darker cabinet color new dishwasher and still the old southwest style light.

Here is the current picture of our Dining room new light fixture is up and a bit of decor. Still have a few things to work on here but for the most part this room is done. All we have left is the crazy task of taking out all of the tile and replacing it with hardwood. That will be a fun day when we get to it. We will have to take everything out of the house for that project, its going to be one dusty and hard job! I feel that it will be worth it though. Also in this current picture you can see on the left we also finally got some outlet covers! Yay!