February Fling - 2019 - The Studio - In the beginning...

If you haven't read that I am getting a studio in my backyard then you are seriously missing my posts and you better catch up!  I'll give you a recap. 

We have a really huge backyard and I WANT to say that since the kids are grown we don't need all that room but TRUTHFULLY we never really utilized it much even when they were little.  I don't know why.  In time it got to look like this:

We razed the worst section to the ground and it looked like this:

But then we could see we needed a new fence desperately.

So we had a new fence put in.  Thankfully the neighbors behind us helped with the cost.  

Then the yard looked like this for a while.  You can see that the left side is still pretty much just dirt but the middle and right side has greenery.    

The outside of our house looked pretty shabby and the roof was starting to leak in the kitchen so we decided it was time to spruce the mansion up a bit.

We had 21st Century come and give it a facelift.  They are an excellent company to work with and we highly recommend them.

Quite a difference from the old to the new, but now the backyard was overgrown again.

We decided that the bathroom was more important than the backyard at the time so we called our friends at 21st Century again and they did this:  

But still the backyard looked like a hayfield or a jungle.

I tried to clear it myself since my husband has a bad back and can't do this kind of work but after a whole day this is all I could manage.  

One more time we hired someone to come and raze it to ground zero status.

And we even had a tent in it so we could have a get together after our daughter's graduation from college.  That tent is 10 x 10 just to give you an idea.    

We also hired someone to come and keep the weeds and other things from growing back until we could decide what we wanted to do out there.  You need money for these kinds of projects and even if money did grow on trees, we no longer had any of either :) 

That's it for installment #1.  Hope you come back for Part 2.  

In The Marry Month of May

May 17  -- Update

From this:

Through the measuring...

 ...and then the old stuff comes off.  Quite a noisy, dirty process this roofing is.

Let the sunshine in!  Looks like we really needed some extra protection on the garage roof!

An interesting conveyer belt gets the new material to the roof.  

To this...Not finished yet but it looks so much better!  This is the same spot on the garage roof as in the first picture of this post.  

I really like the color of the new roof.  It is going to look really nice with the siding and trim.   I didn't realize how noisy this procedure was going to be.  When they were scraping off the old shingles it sounded like the house was falling apart.  Then the nailing!  I do have to say that the company we are working with, 21st Century, is being very good about cleaning up after each day.  There was almost more mess around when the old shingles were falling off when it rained or was windy than there is now that the workmen are here!  

So, now they are working on the eves and getting the rest of the house ready for the siding.  I grabbed some of the TyVek that they were using to seal the house.  It makes great, sturdy binding for my mini albums! 

Stay tuned for the next installment and watch for my Instagram photos and quick videos.  There's a great one of some pieces of the roof falling over the side of the house and the conveyor belt in action.  I know you're fascinated!

In the Marry Month of May

May 11

May is turning out to be quite an eventful month for us!  In one of my earlier posts I wrote about my vision cards for the year and how our house is one of the areas I/we will be focusing on.

We moved into this house almost 20 years ago, just before our youngest daughter was born.  In fact, I was about 4 months pregnant and couldn't do much in the actual moving part.  We used to tell people that they should look for the house that was the color of mint chip ice cream.   

To say we've done nothing to the house is not quite true.  A few years ago we had a leak in the roof over the kitchen and, after living through one rainy season with pots on the floor, we patched that section of the roof.

And last year we replaced part of the fence in the backyard that had just about fallen completely apart.

There are many reasons why we haven't done much to the house over the years.  In the beginning, nothing needed fixing.  Then, as little things started to pop up, my husband, who is a pretty handy man, was busy working, sometimes odd shifts like graveyard or swing shift which would throw his sleeping habits all out of whack and make the timing of doing things inappropriate.  (He couldn't start making repairs when he got home from work at midnight or 3 AM and he would need to be sleeping during the day).  Now, when things are really needing attention, his back will not allow him to handle the strenuous activities.

So, we've made the decision to have a company come in and replace the roof and gutters and put siding on the house rather than paint.  I've gone around and taken pictures of what things look like now so we can compare them to the finished product (and so I can have another subject to scrapbook about - let's be honest)!

Pretty shabby looking, but I don't usually look up at the roof.

This is in our driveway at the moment.

There are men on the roof as I type this.  Inspection tomorrow, Friday they start putting new shingles and gutters on and it should be done by Monday!  Cross your fingers all goes well!