test

test post

New Pond Update

With the close of Summer now behind me, I think that this pond will be the one outdoor project that I continue to work on until the snow sets in. I have about 4 tons of rocks to gather by then, so I need to start now. The problem with all outdoor ponds is this; as soon as you are done making them, you immediately try to think of ways to make them bigger. I am already on this idea and am warming up the shovel and the back-brace for early spring 2009.

New Pond Coming!

Some new pics of the stairs and front yard

Newer pics of the stairs

Whoa, completely delinquent for the month of July!

Ok, so things have been busy. My teaching schedule for July was totally insane and I am just coming into the end of summer coast before taking off in the Fall again. Nonetheless, I have been working on the house with Kat and we are making progress. I am going to post some better pics this weekend of the front porch renovation, but let me give a bit of an explanation before we get into that.

Our place is half of a double and it is clear from the way the yard and front porch divisions that there was not a strong sense of neighborly community. We are changing that. First of all, we completely lucked out with our neighbors and we love them. If you look at the two pictures below, notice the spindled rail down the middle of the porch. This was such an OBVIOUS boundary that we felt like getting rid of. The neighbors did not really use their half of the front porch when we moved in for the simple fact that the space was so small because of this divider. The stairs to the porch were also an issue. They were only built on our half, meaning that if we did open this porch up for sharing, we would have to rip them off and build new ones all the way across.






The following picture does not really show this too well, but I will add more this weekend. What you are seeing is the new stairs, the newly opened front porch and an extension of the blue stone patio extending the area by a huge amount. This is a much more intimate setting for sitting, chatting, reading, etc.

That is our neighbor putting white Christmas lights in the Japanese Maple for some patio ambiance. My wife Kat and Katie ( shown in pic ) were all about the lighting.......

More to come!

Sneak Peek at the Spare Bedroom before/after

Before

Unfortunately there are no really detailed "before" photos of the walls and their condition. I can assure you that they looked like they had been imported from afghanistan. The patching and sanding on this room alone took me an eternity.... or so it seemed. The paint on the floor was also an issue. It too much longer to heat and scrape that off than I ever expected. Here are some after shots........




There is only one coat of finish on the floor in these shots and as you can see, it is still drying. I will hit it with 3 more this week and we should be moving the furniture in a week after that. The blue was hard to capture with the light coming in the windows, but it is somewhere between a robin's egg and a Tiffany's box.