Home Improvement

With Spring in the air, we have gotten the "fix-it-up" fever and are going to town on our house. There is still so much to be done, but in the past month we've taken on some projects that we're really proud of.
Trent went to town building shelves in our garage. They are awesome! We now have a place to put tools and garden things and still have extra storage space.We were sick of having our coats draped over our kitchen chairs (mainly because the kids always managed to get food on them) so we build this coat rack from a strip of wood, paint, and hooks. This was mostly my project (painting, sanding, and marking out where to go) but I needed Trent to help get everything screwed in. We love having a place for all the coats now!Our big project this year will be the yard. We've decided to just completely start over--it's that bad. Last summer, Trent made a nice design in front with some red rock the previous owners had left behind but we wanted something more permanent. So I built a retaining wall for our little front corner garden. My brother Jon helped us with the design of the front yard and this is only phase one, but we think it's a great start.We also needed to fix the deck. It's a wonderful deck- big and spacious- but it didn't have railing (apparently that's against code) and the stairs needed some love. Trent took off the stairs and found this lovely cement pad.
So he started to chip it out and found not one, not two, but three cement pads poured on top of each other. Each more heinous than the last. All in all it was around 2,000 lbs of concrete he chipped out and hauled to the dump. Then we started over. Together on a stormy day Trent and I poured a new concrete pad and it's not perfect but it's way better than what we started with. Trent then went to work with his dad getting the stairs done. (on another stormy day--we sure know how to pick them!) and the other day the vinyl people came and put in our railing. Our deck is finally finished!!!!! Now it's on to killing off the weeds/crab grass, tilling, putting in sprinklers, getting curbing, hydroseeding, and planting our gardens. Should be a fun Spring!