stuff around the house

getting our gardens going

this area in the back corner of our backyard, we'd like to have a concrete patio there soon.  we were going to do it now, but decided to wait

our little shade garden is getting more filled in

this path eventually will lead to where we will have a patio with firepit

our hydrangeas are getting bigger!

a glimpse of our back garden area from the grass

so, i haven't posted about any house stuff lately. mainly because i haven't had any time to do any projects around the house. but now we have a few things in the works.  hubby is always working on something, and usually in the springtime he starts getting our gardens and yard in shape.  he starts with removing the moss from the yards and then overseeding.  this winter when he was on paternity leave, he made this rock path through our back gardens.  we have been talking about doing it for awhile, so it was a good project for him to bust out while home.  then he got the gardens and raised beds ready for planting, and then got the seeds going. and then weeded over and over. and planted some more stuff and moved other things around and because we planted a bunch of stuff last year especially in the back, our shade garden, it's all starting to look more filled in. i'm so excited! we wanted to get a patio poured in the back but talked ourselves out of it because there are some other things we want to do inside and should do that before we spend money on something that we only can enjoy two months out of  the year.  but we do plan on re-painting the back deck.  we painted it about two years ago.  i was not a fan of the brick red color, i didn't particularly like it, it cast a weird color on the inside of the living room and made the walls look dingy, and i felt like it really clashed with the bright yellow color of the house (which i am also not a fan of, but we will have to deal with that later).  anyway, the color i chose was supposed to be a medium gray-beige color but turned out to be super light, almost like the color of light sand.  i really didn't mind the color but we wanted something darker since we are surrounded by trees and keeping the deck looking clean would be hard.  but we ended up not spending another $300 to repaint it and left it as is.  we followed all the directions closely---cleaning, sanding, painting the cracks, all that.  we waited until July, it had been sunny and warm for awhile and was forecasted to be sunny and warm for awhile longer.  but after we began applying the second coat, like within minutes, it started to rain.  arrrgggg! it only rained for a few minutes, and it was a light drizzle, but i think that it messed up our paint job.  and we think that the red paint that was on before wasn't done properly because now, all the paint is peeling off the deck, down to the wood.  oh and also after reading a bunch of stuff online, this happened to a lot of people after using one of those deck resurfacers, chipping off, so i think it is just not a good product. so when i spoke to the paint people at a couple home improvement companies, my options were to repaint (probably over and over throughout the years) or to put some nasty chemicals on the deck that would remove all the paint and we could start all over again.  i'd like to stain it, i think stained wood decks are so nice and don't know why people would paint a deck (i guess if the wood is not nice, huh?) but hubs and i really don't want to put such harsh chemicals on the deck---so toxic and stinky and would leak down into the ground.  so hubs bought a scraper and came up with a plan and we have started scraping all the loose paint off this damn deck.  when we're done with that, hubs will sand, repair, power wash and clean with TSP, then use a heavy duty primer, and then we will let it dry for awhile and then repaint.  probably in august since that seems to be the dryest month.  and thanks to global warming, we will probably have a pretty warm and dry august.  so i have to find another deck paint and choose a color.  it's tricky because they don't usually have samples of deck paint.  but i did read that choosing an exterior color is different because it often turns out to be lighter than it seems.  so that's once major project coming up.  i think we are going to rip out the wood front porch and have it replaced with concrete so we don't even have to deal with that business anymore.  oh and hubs has some garden terraces planned at some point.

i originally blogged about the deck painting here

and it looked nice at first

an improvement from the brick red that was there before...

but now looks like this:

to be fair, this is after scraping commenced, but you can still see how terrible the rest of the deck looks; the color is too light and the pollen and dirt and everything gets stuck on the paint because it is a little gritty (for non-slip), and it's peeling up and cracking everywhere.  terrible.

so for the inside, i am still in the process of finishing the front room: looking for a rug and art, etc to hang in the walls. i still want to replace the tile around the fireplace and hang a mantel. 

my mood board for the front room, so far

and recently hubby made me a table for the laundry room to use as a folding counter. i was so excited when it was dry from staining that i lugged it in all by myself (not smart) and started organizing the laundry room. a bunch of stuff migrated there that doesn't belong, so i spent some time cleaning it out. next we will paint and fancy it up a bit. i'm excited. 

here she is in action, haha

moving this in made me want to organize this room!

this is pre-organizing, i'll post an after pic after i paint the room and all that

some laundry room inspiration:

i love how light and clean these laundry rooms look. i think i'm going with white walls, light blue ceiling and some light accents. i'd like to do something else with the floor as well, on a budget, so no ripping out the vinyl and laying new tile or hardwood.

and the kitchen. oh the kitchen. the place we spend most of our waking hours. it is so ugly hahaha. i dream of painting the cabinets this summer but we'll see.

this is an older picture, but you get the point, the green on the walls, the wall paper, the wall paper border, the orangey oak cabinets and the outdated vinyl floors.  the only thing that doesn't annoy me about the space is the countertops.  they are not nice or anything, they are vinyl, too, but at least they are white and not some crazy color or have gold flecks or something, haha.

inspiration:

so anyway, that's a little of what we have going on right now.  we are really learning that there is always something when you own a house!  and not enough time to get to it all!