Four Day Weekend!

 I am very happy with the progress that we made on the house this weekend. Some of the projects have taken a lot longer to finish than others. The backyard has definitely been a long running project and I am sure it will be for a while. Over our four day weekend we ordered a dumpster and hauled off all the concrete from the backyard. Almost all of the concrete was from last April when we removed the swimming pool. It was a lot of work and thanks to all the help from our family and friends we got it done. The final total tonnage for the dumpster ended up being 9 tons. I can hardly believe that we moved that much concrete into that dumpster but we did.

While Geoff and our friends moved all that concrete, I stayed inside and helped my dad install our newly finished wall cabinets.  I cannot get over how great it is to have storage space again. Here is a picture of the two cabinets that we are using for all of drinking glasses. The plan is to put glass inserts in the cabinet doors and have glass shelves.

Also on the list of projects was a workbench in the garage. We are really bad about randomly throwing tools in places and forgetting where we put them. Having a place for all of our tools is definitely going to be a nice addition. I painted the wall the night before and in the morning we built a frame out of 2x4's and mounted those to the wall studs. For the top we screwed down a piece of OSB. We also mounted a shelving system. We haven't finished it yet and we still need to organize all the tools but its a great start.

The last two things we did this weekend were finally installing the baseboards in the guest bathroom and also adding two shelves to the cubby. We still need to add the actual top to the shelf and paint them white but we can do that another day.

How was your Presidents day weekend? Get any major projects done?

Planting our new tree

We planted our new tree in the back yard, but first we had to do some hard labor to get it in the spot that we wanted. Breaking out concrete first because of course we make everything harder than we should.

Garrett came by to give us a hand in digging the giant hole.

Thankfully with his help we were able to get it done fairly quickly and had the tree in its new home.

We cant wait for this tree to get bigger and yes that is still concrete debris from the pool removal. It is really hard to get motivated to move concrete blocks.

But doesn't our tree look lovely even with all that crap behind it?

Our New Tree

On Friday Geoff and I went to Home Depot to kill time before a movie. We decided to check out the garden center to see if they had any good deals and before we even could walk into the building we saw a big sign that read, "Half Off Shade Trees". We walked over to check them out thinking that they would still be $100 which would be a great deal considering they were 10 to 13 feet tall. To our surprise the original price was $63 which meant they were only $31.50.

We have been looking at other shade trees around town at local nurseries and they were $130 and up for the same size. This was just too good a deal to pass up so we bought one.

The Pool Part 3

On Saturday after a long Friday night of partying we woke up around 9 and tore down our side wall. We had to take this down so we could get access to the backyard. It didn't take long to get this down. At first we thought it was going to be a cinder block wall that was stuccoed but it ended up being a wood wall that was stuccoed so it came down in one piece.

After we took that down we went and grabbed some food. They dropped off the first load of dirt around 12:30 which Geoff ended up moving by himself. Slowly all of our friends started showing up. Within a few hours we had it almost done. Here is where we left Saturday, so much progress!

We also had a bunch of dirt left in our driveway to finish moving. We took 4 days to move the rest of the dirt.

I can say we are officially done filling in the pool! Thanks to our friends and our brothers we got it all done! Woohoo! now that is progress!

Now we need to remove all the cinder block and concrete. We also need to figure out what we are going to do with all of this space!

The Pool Part 2

Monday came around and it was time to remove the cinder block walls. My brother got started right away.

Using a sledge hammer he broke out all of the cinder block and I stacked it into piles.

My mom and I also started stacking the concrete pieces in the back left corner of the yard. We plan to reuse some of the broken concrete to create a few paths and maybe even line the flower beds but we haven't decided anything just yet. It looks like a bomb went off in our yard. Okay maybe a very organized bomb. 

The Pool Part 1

I said I would not take on any more projects until I finished the kitchen... I was wrong. We started taking out the pool this last weekend.

On Friday my brother informed me that we needed to have the pool ready for fill dirt at the end of next week. My parents are redoing their backyard and have tons of dirt they need to get rid of. Instead of us buying dirt to fill in our pool we are going to use their extra dirt from their yard. They get a bobcat in a week so we have to be ready to take all of that dirt. That means have the pool ready to fill. We started on Friday by poking holes in the pool liner and draining the half foot of water that had accumulated. Also cutting down the liner from the walls.

Saturday we decided that the concrete needed to start being cracked up so we could get to the cinder block walls easier. We had a few friends come over to help us and we started right away.

 

We made great progress.

Within 2 hours we had the whole concrete pool surround broken up and stacked into piles.

Next step will be to clean up the piles and get ready for Monday when we start removing cinder block.

Thursday Update - Ivy is gone!

Geoff pulled out the old toilet. He had to use some snippers to clip off one of the bolts because it was so rusted.

On Wednesday Geoff put the finishing touches on the guest bathroom including some blinds and a new curtain rod!

On Thursday dad came over and removed the ivy. Unfortunately there was a bird egg in the ivy that fell out when it came down. Steph says she knew it was there the whole time, but didn't tell Geoff about it!

Closing day

On Tuesday the 21st of April at 8 frickin AM we closed, after fighting rush hour traffic at every turn. After closing we grabbed some McDonalds and had planned to go straight to the house to begin working but Geoff needed a "20 minute" (2 hour) nap before we got started. Finally, around noon, we got to the house.

Geoff continued sanding the fireplace.
And Steph went to work on that pesky ivy (she needed a tan).

After we had each had enough of our individual jobs we decided to tackle paint in the master bedroom. First Steph finished patching the holes in the hallway.

And then we got to work on priming the red master bedroom!

After a while we got on a roll and continued on to the hallway ...

After dinner we recruited Sara to help paint.
Seeing a little color (that's not red, pink or blue).While the girls added some color Geoff patched holes in the "hot pink tent room".

After patching Geoff got to priming (2 coats!) while Steph and Sara moved down the hallway towards the living room. Before the night was over Sara tested out the door and trim color on the front door.