The Patio (Part One)

 Welcome to the patio.

Sad, cracked, sunken, and just plain blah.

In fact, this entire area was in pretty bad shape. 

We kept getting water seepage in our family room. 

(Partly because of the poor drainage, and partly because of an inordinate amount of rain!)

After months of thinking, planning, talking, scheming, and dreaming,

we went to a great big store that sells a lot of great stuff.

(It starts with M and the end sounds like yards.)

Everything we ordered was on sale. Huge blessing!

Then pallets of supplies were delivered to our yard:

Then we started demo.

(And by "we" I mean studly Mr. Wonderful.)

My dad and brother came and helped demo as well.

And more progress has been made since Sunday:

  

This is today (July 3rd), and the progress of the new wall:

I'll keep you posted...

we still have to finish demoing the patio, and install the pavers for our new one.

I'm so excited for this update to our house!

Chalkboard

I sure am excited about this project!
(I love projects. They get my adrenaline going...and my decorating bug bites hard until the project is done!)

This all revolved around a can of chalkboard paint I got for Christmas last year. I've been practically dying to paint something but wanted to plan my action well.

We picked up some plywood from Menards, and painted it. We also got a basic trim piece.
(I decided this should be the first thing ever written on my chalkboard.)

Next step, buy a miter box and saw.
I cut this piece!
(Then my arm felt like it was going to fall off and my hand was cramping. So I found someone stronger to finish making the frame.)

My super-awesome Hubby got that frame cut out, and glued together for me in an evening!

And when you don't have corner clamps, you jerry-rig something with rubber bands.

The next morning, Hubby glued the frame to the chalkboard.
(Like our bracing system?)

One hanging bracket later (it will probably get two brackets at some point), and voila!

I. LOVE. IT.
(HUGE thank you to my AMAZING husband for making this for me!!!)
........................................

Random picture:
The framing around the door glass was white this morning. I like this look better!

New Light

This is the old light over the sink.It was a nice, bright halogen that illuminated well, until the bulb burned out.
I thought a recessed light would look really nice over the sink. Scott liked the idea, but we tried to find a bulb for the old light, with no success.
Recessed lighting fixtures are relatively inexpensive. We bought one.
Then we (Scott) pulled out the old light, and the wiring literally fell apart.
Yikes!

That light may have been the original from when the house was built back in 1973.
We are now thankful for a hard-to-replace burned out bulb.
Fire hazard removed, and this handsome guy put in a nice new fixture.

All we need now is some trim and a little touch up paint. I love the new light!

Summer is Here!

Miss Ava wanted to wear a headband she found. I loved it. She wore it several hours-a great accomplishment for a little girl that has a hard time keeping things in her hair!

Our summer fish. They are boarding with us until Miss Heidi takes them back to school in the fall. Ava really likes the "peesh".

We've been working on this garden. It's very disorganized, and the plants are lovely but not planted well. I would like to put weed paper down and mulch rather than rock. It's been extensive, but fun with two little helpers!

We now have seven hostas under our front window, courtesy of Scott's coworker.
Ava calls them "pasta".

Thomas is so loved here. Ava loves trains, and Thomas is her faithful train companion.

Bubbles...we can't get enough of bubbles!

And look who found her smile!

We are enjoying our summer!

Overkill?

I bought a lot of that linen-type fabric for those chairs. Then I became addicted to the fabric-the feel, the look, the texture, the color...yummy.

I became so addicted that I put a ruffle on my kitchen valance.

And these brown suede pillows that looked great in our apartment but really didn't do it in our living room got new slipcovers.

These were ridiculously easy. I had them cut out and sewn in an hour.

{front}

{back}

Here they are on the couch. I have a happy little sigh every time I look at them.

Apparently I'm in "let's see how many random things I can come up with and do before this baby is born" mode.
It's fun...but really, I think my house has had enough of the cool burlap/linen/muslin fabric!

The Great Chair Experiment

In which two chairs get nasty tweed seats removed and are given lovely new seats instead.

Step 1: Due to pregnancy hormones kicking into overdrive, find out that the tweed covers on a set of chairs is horribly disgusting, and decide to re-cover them.

Step 2: After removing the fabric, and attempting to wash the foam padding (and then waiting 48 hours for them to dry, and finally putting them outside only to have them get rained on once they are finally dry), you will realize just how horrendous these seats are and buy completely new toppings for them.

Step 3: Borrow a friend's staple gun to put your new seats together. Discover that, while the gun works beautifully, the staples aren't quite heavy enough for what you want. Also discover that two major retailers don't carry staple guns, and have a light bulb moment when you remember another major store that does. Buy yourself a staple gun, complete with heavy-duty staples, to finish the seats that have now taken far more time than you ever dreamed.

Step 4: Reattach your new seats, and love that you just did an amazing project all by yourself, 9 months pregnant, and you have beautiful chairs to show for it.

(the actual fabric color is more accurate in the picture of the cushions.)

More details:
-I used scissors to trim my chair padding, and only after getting the fabric stapled on did I realize how the uneven foam showed through. Lesson learned: use an Exact-O knife, and trim to perfection!
-The hardest part of this entire project was pulling the old fabric off. The old staples were so rusted they mostly broke off or I just hammered them down in the wood because they wouldn't budge.
-I just got the new padding and fabric at Walmart. Gotta love the small towns. :)