The Backyard Project

Before finishing our kitchen, we decided that our sagging and nasty deck should be replaced too. I don't have a picture of the old deck because it was covered in snow when we bought the house. I didn't take a before picture either, but believe me when I say it was bad.

Anyway, when the guy started ripping it out he found out that our hot tub room, which is an addition, was built on the deck and was the only thing supporting the room. Awesome. Our simple deck project quickly turned into a much bigger project. He had to build supports, jack up the room, and put the supports in place. During the process the drywall cracked and the door out to the deck broke. The door was gross too, so replacing that wasn't a huge deal. I was planning to paint it, but replacing it worked too. We are planning to repair the drywall when we install new, bigger windows in the hot tub room, but we're still saving our pennies for that project.

Back to the deck/backyard project... It's almost complete now. Just in time for winter ;)





Today AJ ripped out a randomly placed bush and a dead tree.





Now we need to fill in dirt (which is surprisingly expensive) and have the deck guy come back and install some stairs. After that we want to lay a patio and plant grass, but we'll probably have to wait until spring to do that. It's almost snow season!

The Home Improvement Snowball Effect

It all started when our kitchen faucet snapped in half. We stopped at Lowes to pick out a new one, and the next thing you know we have changed pretty much the entire kitchen.

This is what our kitchen used to look like (realtor photo):

Since then we have replaced the faucet, painted the cabinets white (using Rust-Oleum Kitchen Transformations), bought new hardware, installed under the counter lights, and replaced the light fixture over the sink. After painting the cabinets we realized the ivory wall color doesn't look so hot, so now we need to paint the kitchen walls too.
Here are some pictures of the work in progress:

The cabinets are back on, but we still have to paint the walls, touch up the ceiling where the previous light fixture was hanging (yuck, do you see that?!), and paint the pantry white. Did I mention we started this project at the end of July? Oh yes. Luckily, we finished all that stuff in early August, but the rest that needs to be done has been on our to-do list for two months.

Any paint color suggestions?

Where have I been?

Let's just get right to the elephant in the room. No, I'm not pregnant. I didn't take a long blogging break for any particular reason. After we moved up to NY, I started my new job (did I mention I got hired full time after 3 weeks of working per diem), we got settled into the new house, and life just got really busy. We had a lot of fun times with friends and family, we tackled a few home improvement projects, and AJ took the bar. He played golf for a few weeks and then decided to start working at the firm a couple weeks ahead of his original post Labor Day start date. Both of us working (my job is a 12 month position so I work over the summer) plus trying to maintain a house is a lot more work than we anticipated. Not in a bad way, but in a "it keeps us busy" kind of way.

Nothing particularly noteworthy happened this summer, but it was a lot of fun. It definitely will be remembered. I had a "last hurrah mentality" and drank/ate my way through the summer. I'm not going to lie, it was pretty awesome. We've fallen into a great group of friends here and have re-connected with some high school and college friends that are still in the area. This is such a relief because I was really worried that we would be lonely and that we wouldn't have any friends.

Now that summer is over and school is back in session, I plan to cut back on drinking, reform my eating habits, and exercise regularly so that we can start trying to have a baby again. We got all our infertility/recurrent miscarriage test results back in July and nothing was abnormal, so I just need to work on my mental health (I am very easily stressed and my not-so-new job is pretty stressful) and really pray that the third time's the charm.

That's pretty much it for now. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Hi

Hi,

I miss blogging. I'm going to try and make a comeback (for the 3735 time).

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

As you can see, I have to blog from my iPhone, because my MacBook has kicked the can. We'll see how it goes.....