Thursday, June 10, 2010

Home Work

I am swamped at work, so naturally I am blogging.

I was so pleased with all the compliments I got on our garden and house, from the pictures I posted last week. It has come a long way, let me tell you. Hub and I have been in the house for 11 years now, and it was as bare bones as they come for the longest time. We did remodel the bathroom almost immediately after moving in, but Hub’s dad financed it for us. We started painting a few years ago though after we officially bought the house from FIL and it seems to have been project after project from there. The biggest by far, was the kitchen, where the brunt of work was completed while I was pregnant with Liv. Aside from hanging the cupboards and installing the counters, Hub did it all from tearing down the old plaster walls and hanging drywall, to plumbing and painting. We still have only a super cheap linoleum floor, and haven’t done the molding or the backsplash. Mostly because I hadn’t made up my mind as to what I wanted. I have a pretty good idea though, and we’re looking forward to getting it finished soon.

We’ve put substantial work in to our yard, and it has become one of our favorite places to spend time in the nice weather—especially at night when we make a fire. To me, there isn’t much more that is as relaxing as sitting and watching a fire. We talk a bit, and listen to the radio and basically just chill. It’s nice. Yes. We’ve got the play set out there for the kiddos now too. In the next year or 2 we’d like to build a small deck out there, but right now, we’re looking at doing a small patio to get the picnic table out of the grass. We can do it for very little money, so that’s a big win.

We want to redo our driveway as well, which is a bigger expense than I would have thought. It’s old black top now, and it crumbles, and tons of dirt gets tracked in to the house. We’d like to make it nice smooth cement.

And even with all we’ve done, there is much more to be done inside. We’ve been talking for years about building bedrooms upstairs and expanding our living room in to what is our bedroom now. Hub wants to move the front door and windows. We’d like a bay window in the kitchen.

I don’t think it ever ends when you’re a homeowner. It’s nice though to take pride in your work, and be happy with the way your home looks to others.

If only I could keep up on the housework…

5 comments:

Tess said...

This is one of the reasons I almost feel SICK thinking of moving from my house, which I've been in 8 years now. We did SO MUCH WORK on it, and I hate to think of starting over. Uch.

LoriD said...

I agree that it never seems to end. I feel like I'm chronically in the middle of something, waiting to get that done so I can start the next thing. We try to do most of the work ourselves, which has mixed results.

d e v a n said...

The way you describe your back yard makes me want to come over and chill out back there.

Jess said...

I just read in the Bottom Line about driveway replacement and how expensive it is. Now I am totally sending Torsten out to seal our cracks so that hopefully we won't have to face driveway resurfacing for a long long time.

Kristin.... said...

We have a gravel road and driveway (1300 feet) and I would love to pave some of it-just up near our house-so the kids can use chalk and ride bikes on something other than my grass. We built our house, so the inside is good, but we're constantly working on our gardens and yard. Doesn't mean I don't have projects, but their on a smaller scale.