The stump is gone!

The fence is up, the stump is gone and now all we have to do is figure out how to deter mosquitoes.

When we were first purchasing the house last August, this is what the backyard looked like

April Showers

Our front yard was pretty boring, in fact our house has negative curb appeal.

We're trying to fix that, see the post below about replacing the ugly fence. In the meantime I'll show you what a bunch of trips to Home Depot, Lowe's, a nursery and some serious hours of manual labor get you:

Note the growing collection of yard tools on the porch

This garden is pretty long, to the left is a couple rows of vegetables, which are pretty boring now, but I hope they look awesome later this summer.

This pathway is much more impressive in person.

We put a similar walkway on the other side of the house, but it isn't finished yet and after being there less than a day it was covered in bird crap, so I took a picture of the nicer looking one.

We took a break from digging holes in the ground to trim up dueling boxwood topiaries.

Can you guess which one belongs to Henry?

We went back to digging holes in the ground. This stump needs to come out, and we can't find anyone to pay to take it out (don't get me started on tree companies). Henry's been slowly chipping away at it using a combination of a chain saw, an ax, a sawzall and a shovel.

In non-garden news, we bought this table at a "flea market," I spray painted the frame black and now it's pretty sleek. Very DIY of me.

BAR 1/2 - Us 1/2

We formally submitted our application to replace the ghetto looking fence with a decent one at the end of March.

The links below don't exactly describe the full amount of ridiculousness that we had to go through just to get permission to replace our fence, but it's a start.

A video of our hearing our portion starts at 37:30ish. If you wish to see a 30 minute presentation on the wonderful architectural aspects of chain link fences you can start at 9:35. You will hear this phrase: "preservation isn't about the houses of great white men." It's must see TV.

Here's the staff report on our application. We have no opinion on the city's ability to maintain their property that apparently is not our property despite being inside our current fence line.

Bottom Line: we're scheduling the installation of the wood fence and have to work out some issues with our front fence.

Category: Hodge Podge

Let's play catch up!

Since our last post the house next door is almost completely built, we painted another room, I managed to take some catch up pictures (not all of which I can post today), and we started plotting a dream back yard! We even managed to get rid of the ugly red shed in the back.

We started talking to contractors again to help finish up the remaining work. Many feet of trim are needed and a bathroom in the basement needs to be either finished or demolished. I promise to be more diligent with pictures, I need to find a better internet connection since the pictures take a long time to upload.

We can now burn things in the backyard.

Flamingos dress up the backyard

Our pretty awesome closet.

The Great Outdoors

We've figured out how to mow the lawn and Dexter has made mortal enemies.

Catching Up Pt II

Next came the living room and dining room.

They used to be a shade of tan, and now thanks to Dexter and John they're a nice shade of brown, with an accent here and there.

Pictures in Drips and Drabs

Blogger doesn't like our internet connection, so I have to post in small batches. First the door:

The ugly door is now blue (and we hung Xmas lights!)