She is COMPLETE!

The last few weeks at DSIFQ can be summed up by 1 word: FENCE!

I promised Brian that he could write the recap post of building the thing because it was all him and his dad. The worked soooo hard, and it paid off bigtime. While they were doing that, I was taming the rest of the yard. We had weeds galore, and lots of trimming that had to happen. It rained a lot while we were on vacation, so when we got home, I had a lot to catch up on! And along with that I had to get the house back in tip-top shape before we start another busy school year.

Without breaking my promise, I'll leave you with a teaser before/after-ish of the fabulous transformation of our yard!

When we moved in.

Down with the old!

And Up with the New!

And no yard transformation is complete without a great group of people to share it with!

Our informal deadline for the fence was this past weekend... so we could celebrate Brian's birthday in style with the whole family! (And the dogs, obviously)

DSIFQ Declares a Yard War!

Well, as anyone who has been to our house will know, our house sits on a lovely little 1/4 acre backing up to natural space. I use the term 'lovely' very very loosely.

We don't think Frank ever did much yard work, our earth is like cement, and there were over a dozen overgrown trees right up against the house, and the existing crap fence. Also the garage is even in rough shape! Well last weekend we made the first attack on the outside. Right now it still appears to be reeling from our betrayal, so we will continue to strike while the iron is hot, and before the mess can rally.

The weekend was FULL of projects and progress, but I'll break the update into two posts for easy digestion (chew your food, people!). Friday when I got home I began my assault on our much-maligned garage. We were very lucky to get a two car garage in our price range, but it does need some serious help. In the long run I'd love to gut it and re-drywall, but small improvements can still make a huge difference.

At the back of the garage is a little step up where items can be stored, a "cabinet" of sorts and the door to the backyard. Initially, most of this step was taken up by a huge home made work bench. This thing was a death trap, with 2x4s sticking out, and it basically made it impossible to neatly keep anything on it. And since we moved in last year already in the middle of gardening season and had to get the hang of home ownership, this bench became a dumping ground.

I started by getting everything off the bench (and out from under it) and piling it according to purpose and future location. I also swept up all the grass seed that had somehow spilled everywhere...

Lovely isn't it?

I did not get a picture of the bench covered in stuff, but imagine everything on this plastic sheet is on that piece of crap surface:

All of those boxes are from wedding gifts, we've been slowly recycling them. But see all that mess? Our 2 car garage has been 1 car only :( With the bench we couldn't even get the garbage can up there! Talk about annoying climbing around a car just to take out the trash...

I then attacked the bench with a claw hammer. Now, I was home alone, and had never demo-ed anything in my whole life... not a combination I would recommend. But for this table, I had it apart in moments! There was not a single bolt in the whole thing, just a random assortment of nails and staples. If anyone had ever tried to sit on it they would have come straight down. I'm really glad it's gone.

After the bench was gone, I started organizing the garage for the very first time. We got a freestanding shelf unit, and some more hooks for the pegboard. After another morning of organizing, our garage (while far from done or 'nice') is much improved!

Once we get rid of the rest of those boxes and install the other garage door opener we'll be able to put 2 cars in here! Of course there is a mountain more to do, but now our garage is usable, and not a death trap!

And I usually consider that a plus.

Landscaping MAGIC

Ok, so maybe it's not magic, but it's still pretty awesome if I do say so myself.

We've finally made progress on the front yard! I decided the weather was perfect for planting, so I went to Home Depot (sigh~* I do enjoy that store...) and made a tree-style decision! I got us a little 5 food Cleveland Pear. She's purty, and supposedly will grow fast! My first trip to HD last weekend resulted in this:

That's 50 bucks worth of fun right there.
1 Tree
2 Potted Mums (the ones I got from Meijer just never took right, I don't think they were good quality)
1 jug of Preen ~ for the winning of the weed war
4 New house numbers!

50 bucks of home improvement stuff can go a long way! After I got home Brian and I stood in front of the house for a good hour hemming and hawing over where to put the tree and what else we should do right now, because even after we planted the tree and put out the new mums it was still going to look fairly hideous. So the decision was made to mulch.

In fall??? Yes, in the fall. We'll spread more in the spring, but will be worth it so that I don't have to cringe when I look at our raggedy dirt clod farm. Also it's on sale right now, since it's fall. So back to HD we went...

Of course though, mulch was not all that caught our eye. Oh no. They had my hearts desire hidden amongst the junipers and shrubberies... a dwarf burning bush! I have always known I wanted these, I love burning bushes like mad, but the regular kind get so huge! But I didn't think a big-box store like home depot would carry that variety for some reason. Needless to say we bought it. Then we had to get it home....

Yeah, that's the ticket! Don't worry, we were gentle. I think it was still a little peeved though, because it did try to eat Brian on the drive home...

He survived, and the trauma is nothing a few decades of therapy won't fix.

So after we got the mulch and my new bush friend home, we stood in the yard and moved stuff around for another hour, then got to work. We knew we had to put the tree at least 10 feet from the house, and surprisingly, the dead spot in the middle of the yard was exactly that! It used to have a tree in it, which was a stump when we moved in. Then we had the tree people grind it away, so it was just an empty dirt pile.

We got them planted and I spent that evening and some of the next day spreading mulch. We also planted the new mums, got the fall wreath out, and Brian went up to the eave to figure out why one of our shutters is pushing away from the wall. It's bees. It's always bees for me. He hit them with some 'anti bee' stuff and soon he'll knock the nest down so we can realign the shutter.


First, a reminder of what it looked like when we moved in:

Then all summer it looked like this:

So embarrassing... And without further ado:

Ta da! The tree is right on the edge there...

There it is, and that's the bush as well! I'm actually pretty amazed at how much better it all looks with a little mulch and a couple starting plants. Yeah, we know the yard itself isn't there yet, but one thing at a time people! Also, here's a closer view of the festive front door:

I will be adding to the festive-nature of the front door, but Brian won't let me yet, he thinks it's still too early.

One last thing, I am liking the view out our lower level window now!

That hosta better watch its step, it's the only one that survived from the previous owners. The others didn't know their place...

That yard post I keep talking about

I know I know, I'm a terrible blogger. It's been a whole week since my last post! But I went on my trip and then there's been some life-crap going on, which I won't bore you with here. But at long last here is the yard post I know you've been eagerly awaiting...

Last week I decided enough was enough. I had to make a tactical strike on our yard. Lucky for me, my friend Sanjeev had nothing better to do, so he came and helped! First we started just yanking weeds on the front and side of the house. The weeds have been nothing less then vicious this year thanks to all that rain. So they were monstrous. Of course I forgot to take a 'before' picture, so you'll just have to believe me that it looked even worse then this:

Yes those red dots are the evil eyes I'm sure were in there when we started. We also had to pull out 3 massive rosebushes. While they still bloomed nicely, they had been neglected for so long that they were breaking! They had years of random growth and they couldn't hold themselves up anymore. We also pulled tons of grass and other weeds that were crammed into the tiny space. Then it looked like this:

Wow, it can breathe! Although, I think I'm going to move a couple of the shrubs on the left. You can't see them all, but there are 4 crammed in there! There's one of whatever-these-are along the side fence in the back all alone by itself, so I'll probably put them there.

In the back corner there you can see the electric meter, and it's case is missing. That's because Sanjeev knocked it off, and we left it there. We left it there because it was full of HORNETS! Huge ones! After they had dissipated I snuck back over and got a picture of the empty nest:

I was surprised it was so small since the bugs that came out were so large! They must have just moved in recently. I am still majorly creeped out.

After that we moved on to the back yard. Again, lots of weed pulling and shrub trimming, but no massive bush evictions... yet. We need a chainsaw.

Also we got a new (to us) fun toy in the back from my parents:

hmm, maybe you can't see it from there, try this:

Yeeeeaaahh. That's the ticket. We have a hammock now! The trees already had hooks in them from the previous owner, and I love hammocks so it was a done deal. I haven't gotten to use it yet, but I'm going to use the crap out of it as soon as I have a spare 5 minutes!

On a less related outdoor note, any history buffs out there might get a kick out of our air conditioner:

We think it's from between 1973 (when the house was built) and the revolutionary war, but we can't get more specific then that. Truly it works well, we're just not sure for how long! Eventually when it does die and we replace the unit I want to move it out of the center of the backyard.

And finally, I'd like to have a moment of silence for our lovely hose. Brian ran over it with the mower (I still can't figure out how, it wasn't out in the yard!). It was a good hose, and will be missed...                    Thank you.

And again thank you to Sanjeev for all your help! You rock!

The Grand Tour

So after that super busy weekend, we're back to regular life! I didn't get to do a single thing on the house which was frustrating, but it was still a good one. On Saturday we went to 2 weddings! And during one of the receptions we crashed a star wars themed reception down the hall... Then Sunday was my birthday! I am now officially a quarter of a century old. But Brian had to work and I had an appointment, so we're lucky we even got the lawn mowed this weekend.

Anyway, here is a little visual tour of our place from BEFORE we moved into it, so these pics are either from the listing, or pictures I took the day of the inspection:

This is the front of the house, and yeah, we're gonna take those trees down...

This is the hallway when you come
in with a half bath at the end:
and the other way:

Then you go up the stairs to the living room:
which connects to the dining space:
and the kitchen:

Up some more stairs, this is the hallway and that door is the linen closet:

This is the main bathroom. We're really excited to have 2 sinks:

The bathroom connects to the master bedroom(picture taken from standing in the bathroom door). And there are 3 bedrooms total.

If you go all the way back down to the lower level there is a second family room with fireplace:

(That's Brian's mom) there is a window to the left, and the utility/laundry room to the right.

We sit on a quarter acre, which gives us a pretty nice backyard:

Well that's what we're starting with! Pretty great blank canvas huh? We've got lots of plans and ideas. Up next I'll start talking about what we've done with our first month here!