Outdoor oasis!

When we bought this house, the yard was an overgrown mess, to put it nicely. Very private but very jungle like:

They say things get worse before they get better. I am still holding on that little gem as we are mid-backyard update...  We are rapidly approaching the 2 year anniversary of the purchase of this house and everything looks very different than purchase day.  We put in a front sidewalk to replace the wood chip pathway leading to the front porch (in the winter, how does one shovel a wood chip path way?).  In the process of that, we pretty much destroyed any grass we had there so we added "grow grass" to the project list.

Front of the house pre-gutters & sidewalk, while we still had grass

Ready for stone

Post sidewalk & gutter install.

The front of the house is shaping up nicely (minus that whole missing grass thing). So we turned our efforts to the back yard.  We had to bring in some dirt so the pitch wasn't so severe, we didn't want anyone rolling down the hill! and we wanted a flat spot for a fire pit!  So we called our township and asked if we needed a permit for grading and earth moving, they told us no, check with the county. So we called the county office, they told us no but check with your township. Since every governing body that issues permits told us we didn't need a permit from them, we proceeded. We had a hard time finding people to come all the way out to our house to deliver fill. So when we finally got someone we were ecstatic. Said they would be there Monday. Well since he didn't specify which Monday I guess the following Monday was as good as any!

This past winter our dismal view out the back door

Then we started to get some fill!

And more fill!

I've never been so happy to look at dirt!

How it looks today!

 Hopefully this weekend we will start to get some posts sunk for the building of the deck! Then we can get our gem of a hot tub (free off craigslist) set up before it gets too hot to use it!

Needs some TLC but not bad for free!

The un-invited guest...

Last fall my husband and my dog were gone for the weekend so I had the house all to myself, glorious! When I got home Friday night after Tom and Dad had been working on replacing the front door all (still no trim the house was thicker than the new door frame) I thought to myself, thats an odd spot for there to be insulation on the floor. I woke up bright eye-d and bushy tailed the next morning, as I was walking out the bedroom I heard loud birds chirping and thought, "My goodness those are some loud birds"  I made a cup of coffee and sat down on the couch to read the paper. That's when I heard nails on the kitchen floor and freaked out cause my dog was not home which could only mean A WILD ANIMAL WAS IN MY KITCHEN! 

After the initial shock of the whole there is something potentially wild and crazy in my kitchen, I grabbed a broom and tip-toed around the corner to see a chipmunk eating from my dogs food bowl! so I chased him toward the laundry room (there was still a 1" gap under the door from the missing threshold) I lost him (those suckers are fast), I wasn't naive enough to think I got him out on my first try so I went and got any traps I could find. A HUGE live trap (like fit a raccoon huge) and a rat trap, screwed to a 2x4 (Racoons kept getting caught in it and walking off with it). I opened the back patio door just wide enough to fit the live trap opening and put Lucy's food in the live trap. I then set the rat trap (wearing Tom's big bulky gloves cause I thought for sure I was going to snap it on myself) in the laundry room near the back door. I sat on the couch and waited. And drank coffee, cause coffee is important at times like these. And waited. 10 minutes and nothing happened. Back to the paper. As soon as I opened the paper I heard the nails on the floor. I was still armed with my broom in case he came near me. I was also of course armed with my camera. So he hung out in the kitchen for a little bit (hopefully cleaning my floor) and then as I was watching my live trap he ran in, but he wasn't heavy enough to trip the door closed!  I got off the couch, ran over in my slippers and kicked the whole live trap out on the deck and slammed the door.

I then left the little guy outside for Tom to handle when he got home. I also put a towel under the back door gap and a gallon of water in front of the little hole and pile of insulation by the front door. This was a very eventful Saturday morning.  When Tom got home, the very next day we had the door insulated and trim back up and a threshold under the back door!!

Soooo its been a while since I updated....

Nothing really major has been done to the house over the winter. We started working on the Master Bath (but that's still in progress, lots of plumbing and electrical to work out first). We added some shelves to my craft room and cleaned out the spare bedroom. We did some decorating and once again redecorated/rearranged the foyer. I also re-re-re-painted the wall in the bathroom (Tom put up trim boards so no more painting!) We rearranged the living room so it is a bit more open. Tom and Dad adjusted the patio doors so they slide again which is key for using our back deck to grill on!

I will post about all of these things over several posts. For now enjoy this photo of our currently grass-less house!