5718: May 2011

Time for a New Header

>> Friday, May 13, 2011 – exterior

I figured now that everything is green and it is finally nice in Kansas, I should change up the header. Here is what we had before...taken on January 21, just a week or so after closing.

And here is what we have now...taken yesterday afternoon!

When Tony saw this picture, he asked if I photoshopped the grass at all. I hadn't photoshopped anything in the picture, except for the fact that it is a few pictures merged together, so I told him no. He was pleasantly surprised to hear that. He has worked really hard on getting the grass to grow in spots that it had been dead or patchy, and I think that he has done a great job!

One of the coolest things about Spring has been finding out what all of the plants and trees are around the house. There were a few trees Tony was certain were dead in winter, and now they are big beautiful trees creating lots of wonderful shade!

We still have yet to do any real landscaping. We talk about it a lot, but we haven't made any real decisions. We really do love the patio on the back. It is very charming and was a reason that we loved the house. However, the brick is just a mess...it is uneven everywhere, drains horribly and just looks kind of messy. We originally thought it was set in concrete (and not on top of sand/gravel or whatever you're supposed to put under patio pavers), but to our surprise, we realized that it actually is set on top of sand. So, that also kind of changes things...

Chipping away to reveal what was underneath the bricks...

The big reveal...sand!

So, the big question is, do we replace the brick? We both pretty much agree that it needs to be fixed. We have toyed with the idea of just removing all the brick and leveling out the sand and adding some more and laying back down the same brick. (Tony's idea...not mine) However, a lot of the brick is damaged, and that would be a lot more work to make sure and preserve the brick while we removed it all. Plus, there is about 500 square feet of brick on the patio alone.

So, the next option we considered is buying new brick to lay in the same place as the previous brick. It would be a lot more expensive, but would look a lot nicer. However, 500 square feet is a lot of brick. And if we're going to be spending that much on brick, shouldn't the patio be exactly what we want? The patio has a lot of wasted space towards the driveway, and butts up really close to the neighbor's house. His yard is really big, and there is a ton of just unused yard on the left of the patio, but with a wall around the patio, it kind of closes it off to the rest of the yard. So, do we shift the whole thing over and redo the shape? And that brings us to the wall around the patio? We really do think it is lovely, but it also is in pretty bad shape...it doesn't look very nice when you're close to it, and would be difficult to paint. So, do we get rid of that too? If so, are we just going to far? I don't know...we still have a lot to think about.

Here is what we're currently working with...

This is the entry to the patio from the driveway. There is lots of brick there, and ideally, if we redo the patio, I think it would be smart to do a smaller path with mulch on either side (including next to the house) and have flowers or other plants surrounding it. So, that would eliminate some of the brick we would need.

A view from the yard looking onto the patio. This angle was taken from just to the right of the arched entry you see in the first picture. Here you can see the ivy growing on the wall and kind of get an idea of the shape of the patio.

Here is a picture looking back at the entry.

An angle from a bit further back. As you can see, the patio exists mostly on one side of the house, and it just so happens to be the side of the house that is pretty close to the neighbor's house. Tony's property line on the left is about where you see a faint discolored line in the grass.

His property goes from that faint white line on the left to the fence on the right...so, you can kind of see all of the wasted space on the other side of the yard.

Just another angle of the patio

So, we have a lot of brainstorming to do and hopefully we come to some kind of conclusion about what should be done. :)

Landscaping...grrrr

>> Tuesday, May 10, 2011 – landscaping

So, who would have thought that to be a homeowner you either had to be able to afford to hire to have someone do lots of things for you, or you just had to be really good at...everything. I've already taught myself to remove carpet, paint, install wainscoting, sew (kind of), make pillows, upholster a chair, build a desk, etc etc...and now you want me to learn landscaping too?

The back patio wasn't really of much concern to us for the first few months, because it was pretty much always covered in snow. Now that it is in the 90's (in May...um hello Spring, where did you go?) I think it is time to evaluate the patio situation going on in the back.

Here are a few pictures form the walk through back in December...

The whole thing really is much lovelier in person, or maybe I am just overly optimistic. There are some major drainage issues and some bricks that have sunk and the whole thing should probably be replaced (this is coming from me and I know nothing on this topic, so I could be totally wrong). It would be wonderful to replace the whole thing, but obviously very expensive and difficult seeing as the patio is brick set in concrete.

My first idea was to tackle the ivy overtaking the wall...I looked into pruning ivy and maintaining it and based on that, though it might be best to really prune it back and get rid of all the crud stuck in it (lots of crud)...I pulled out so many vines that weren't attached to anything and sticks and crap and when I lifted up the ivy that was laying on the top of the wall, there was about half an inch of mud and things...lots of living things just chillin under the ivy. If you know me, you know I am terrified of worms. Weird, right? Don't really care about snakes, don't mind bugs or really many other things, but worms...scare the crap out of me. They are gross and disgusting, but in the name of a cleaner patio I threw on some rubber gloves and my big girl panties and went to town. I was nice to the Ivy and untangled mostly all of the vines before deciding where to cut. Lots more trimming needs to be done, but they are much cleaner and now we just need to figure out what to do with them.

Here is a picture of the ivy wall after I played Edward Scissorhands...

Pretty hard to see from the iPhone picture taken from inside, but I had just showered after being dirty all day and at that point, the patio seemed like a very dirty place to go...so I stayed indoors. You can see a lot of the remnants of the old ivy still on the wall. So, that needs to be painted, but for now I am kind of at a standstill. I think we should probably evaluate the whole patio situation before we really invest too much money into anything too fancy...just in case we replace the whole thing.

So, if you have any landscaping tips...please share...I am all ears!

The Living Room...Picture Overload

>> Sunday, May 8, 2011 – living room

*Quick note...I wrote this post last Thursday and of course am just now remember to put it up...

The living room is finally coming together now that we have a rug and a few more side tables. And I even had time to photograph it during the day...albeit very quickly. You know how I said I'm never at Tony's house during daytime? Well, yesterday my coworkers and I were invited to a suite at the Royals game, and because I was in Kansas City, I had time to run by Tony's house before I left for the game. So, in the 30 minutes or so that I was there (at 4:00 in the afternoon, no less) I was able to get some pictures with decent light.

Now, the living room is not complete (is a house ever really complete?) and definitely needs some wall decor...we're just not sure what that will be yet. It has, however, come a long way from where it started. Writing these posts and taking all of these pictures can be so time consuming and a real hassle when I have a million other things that I need to do, but when I go back through some of the earlier posts and pictures and read what was going on then it makes me so happy that Tony wanted to start blogging about the house, because otherwise I would have completely forgotten many of the things that we documented along the way.

Going through the living room before pictures, I felt so nostalgic about when he first moved in...the colors, the smells, the temperature (very cold) all came rushing back and it made me really proud of how far we've come. The progress these days is slower because the tasks are smaller and not as drastic as they were when we first began, but looking back at the pictures form January make me appreciate how far we have come and want to keep on working. With that said, here are a few before pictures of the living room and entry from Day 1 in the house: