Office, Kitchen and Back Yard

Three areas, one update. First is the office. Finally after 2 1/2 years I've figured out a decent layout for the office.





It's kind of sad that it took so long, but at the same time it's great to finally have an office that I'm not embarrassed of. It's very minimal, and the only thing I can think of that would add anything would be a low bookshelf in the corner across from the desk; something maybe 3 feet high maybe.

Next the outdoors... a truckload of mulch came late Thursday afternoon that I got to move out to the back yard. Anyway this is what 10 cubic yards of mulch looks like. What you can't see is that it's about a car length from front to back. It took about 4 1/2hours to get it all back there. Needless to say I was tired the next day. Right now it's in smaller piles in the back yard waiting to be spread around where it belongs.



And the kitchen... the granite is in, everything is plumbed in and the backsplash is nearly up. It would be all the way up, but I didn't order enough. Hopefully it won't take long for another two sheets of the stuff to get here. Here's how it's coming out. This is all that's left to do in the kitchen so we're really close to the before / after post.







Tomorrow I'm going to work on the back yard and get back to work indoors on cleaning things up after it's dark out. We're nearly done with everything and it's been a long time working on all of this, but it'll all pay off soon.

The Great Outdoors

Since I don't have so much to do inside anymore I've been able to work on the front and back yard some. This is something I really should've done when we moved in, or maybe later that year when it wasn't over 100 degrees out for what seemed like every day until December. Anyway on with the show.

The front yard didn't need as much work as the back and I was able to take care of all of it in maybe an hour. Here's the before / after.







The back yard though - it's pretty bad. It's hard to convey the level of neglect it seems to have had since the 1990s, except for the grass anyway. Here's a short video of what it's like.



I spent at least 8 hours or so clearing it all out. So far all the overgrowth is gone except for the bushes next to the house. I hate to cut those down but they've become so overgrown it's impossible to trim them back and have them look even remotely normal within the next year or so anyway. The one fault I could find from what the original owners did was that they planted too many of them. Otherwise they made a wonderful layout that's given me a canvas to make something new from. The short trees have really matured well on their own.

Here's a brief count of things found so far:
Shoes: 1
Acorns 300,000
Beer cans from a nearby high school student or their friends: 1 (this one is on the house but any more are getting returned via their mailbox)
Lost dog toys from someone in the past: 2
Pirate treasure: 0
Huge broken pots that are now part of the landscaping: 1
18 year old RC Cola bottles: 1









I can't do as much when night falls so I go back indoors to pick up where I left off. So far the upstairs is nearly complete. Tomorrow it all will be, except for a couple of things I have to pick up at Target. By complete I mean absolutely nothing at all left to do. Staging, cleaning, building - it's all done. Here's how bedroom #4 and the hallway came out. Bedroom #3 from the last update is the room angling off to the right in one of the pictures.