What's New!!!!

I have a feeling this will be my longest entry ever!! I thought that I was done writing the blog, but after I got a couple of complaints from friends and family that they were not being kept up to date, I decided that best way to update everybody at the same time was to write again. First I had to check out the blog where I left off and I have to say that a lot has happened since then.

Last fall I planted 70 flower bulbs in the front yard and 69 actually have come up. Here are the pictures of my crocuses. They are so pretty.

 

 

 

 

My five circles of daffodils are starting to come up, but I have not had time to take pictures of them yet.

A lot has also happened on the house front. We had signed a contract to install a deck in September 2012 and construction was supposed to start about 6 weeks later. To make a long story short, construction started in January 2013 after we asked for our money back, since we were tired of waiting. There were some challenges, since for example the old patio door was slightly bigger than the new patio door and we were not at all impressed with the guy that built the deck, but in the end it turned out pretty good.

 

 

We still have to build a small lattice fence around the bottom of the deck and we will add some small steps into the yard, but that will be done once the weather gets better. I am sure we will enjoy this deck for a long time. So other than some yard furniture and the usual yard work, we should be done on the outside.

Since the deck was finally done by the beginning of February Doug decided to look for a contractor to fix some of the stuff on the inside of the house. When we moved in, we knew that we had a water problem by the fireplace. When building the chimney, somebody forgot to put flashing on the roof to divert the water from the chimney and over time the water had soaked into the walls. I have to say Doug found a pretty good guy.

 Before

 

 Luckily he did not have to cut all the way to the floor

Thinking that we had this mold in our living room for a year does not make me feel any better. This is what it looked like after.

Next was the crack in the sheet rock in the hallway and taking out the pocket door in the kitchen. I expected the house to be a big mess, but I have to say that the contractor worked very clean.

  

After removing the sheet rock, we found out that the supporting beams where never joined and the stress caused the sheet rock to crack. The pocket door in the kitchen was never used and also caused additional support problems due to the void in the wall. The contractor took care of the problem and reinforced the wall that had housed the pocket door.

 

 

 

Next we had a mantel installed around the fire place.

Since the house was going to be a mess anyway, we decided to have the kitchen done at the same time. Here is the before pictures.

 

.. and here is the new kitchen.

We now have 40" cabinets,

a new floor

and a new granite counter top.

I spend this weekend putting all our stuff back into the kitchen cabinets and preparing a nice Easter dinner.

This should bring our major renovations of this house to an end and you would think that it would be time for us to relax. However, my parents are coming beginning of August and we will have to have the bedroom and the second bathroom done by then and of course paint the living room.

Maybe we will take a break next year!!   Happy Easter everybody.