Thanks Husband
Thanks Husband
I think?
Any movie poster with Lori Laughlin on it is okay by me. Confused? Watch this.
My only hope is that he doesn’t try to name our first born Cru.
Our Dining Room
Is looking like this nowadays.
We made the curtains to match our living room curtains. Yes, we’ve mentioned them 2348 times before. I am not so sure about those white faux wood window blinds now - but replacing them seems frivolous. Thoughts?
Oh, and the Texan brought me daisies. Best husband ever.
Step One: We Can Have Lots of Fun
Don’t you guys remember that song? Are we Am I the only NKOTB fan out there? I think I stared at Joey McIntyre and his topless hat on my bedroom wall for at least two years of my childhood.
Now, for the past two years, I’ve been staring at our screened in back porch trying to figure out how to best maximize the space. Being completely honest here, these were the true “before” photos. A cluttered, messy space mostly inhabited by the pups on lazy afternoons. You’ll remember from this post, that Lucy spends a lot of time standing on the grill.
The wooden Adirondack love seat and coffee table are the new addition and were purchased from World Market over the Fourth of July weekend for… wait for it… $44.99 for the loveseat and $18.00 for the table. We couldn’t believe it. The loveseat was marked down 75%, originally selling for $179.99.
We scooped it up on the pronto, after disassembling it in the World Market parking lot. We had to buy the floor model because at such a great price that was all they had left by the time we arrived and it wouldn’t fit in the Jeep as is. I literally sat on it until the salesperson wrote up a sold sign to tape to it while we kept shopping – in order to physically prevent anyone from actually buying it out from under us. Once said sold sign was in place I think I skipped all around the store at least twice until Chad told me people were staring.
As much as we love it, our back porch is w-a-a-y over cluttered and not really functional at this stage of photographs. You can see we have a big plastic storage box in the corner keeping our french door from opening all the way. We also have Lucy’s perch in the other corner, also known as the grill. Add in some dog beds, a couple of rocking chairs and a table and chairs and it’s less than organized chaos up in this piece. What’s a guy and a girl to do?
Well, in this case the girl did nada and the guy did some rearranging. This first step is our idea of fun, even more fun than the New Kids, figuring out how we use the space and adapting accordingly. Here is the first step towards a cozier back patio. By no means done, this plan just brings us into functional territory and lets us see what we already have.
Here’s what we did. First, the big plastic box got moved into the corner of the car port. Most of our small and inexpensive lawn and garden items end up being tossed into the car port somewhere rather than on the porch anyways. Think hand shovels, small bags of potting soil, bulbs to be planted garden twine, etc. Not larger, theft-worthy, items. So moving the box was pretty logical.
Secondly, because we never open left hand side of our french doors we’ve moved the small table and chairs over into that corner. It’s a bit more out-of-the-way there and now that the other door opens completely it feels less cramped than before. This could be completely temporary though. We’re going to eat a few dinners on the porch this week to figure out what we like best, casually lounging on the loveseat or sitting at the table. The table may a Craigslist post if we decide to look for more space (sorry mom! this was my first kitchen table in my first apartment about seven years ago thanks to the ‘rents).
It’s definitely a first step towards a more livable outdoor space. The curtains are going up next so look out.
Hey, You’ve Got To Hide Your Trash Away…
Remember that song? Only it’s “love” not “trash.” Trust us, those things are not one in the same around the casa, but we find it an appropriate title for the post about the completion of Chad’s little trash can concealer project.
We talked about his idea in this old post. The goal was simple. Hide the ugly trash cans, don’t spend a fortune or take forever to do it. Truth be told the hubs finished this project awhile ago, very shortly after our post about the idea, the wifey has just been slow about getting the deets online. So grab ‘yer recycling bins ’cause here we go.
The drawing:
The supplies:
- 4 4″x4″ posts, 5 feet in length
- 3 1″x6″ boards, cut to size (this will vary depending on how wide and long you want your fence to be)
- 4 1″x4″ boards, cut to size as well
- wood screws
- drill with countersink bit
- concrete for setting posts
- concrete pavers for flooring
- exterior paint and brush
The side of our house was looking a little blah before with the trash cans as huge distractions from the natural beauty that was our cluttered car port and dirty cars.
Got to include the flag shot, after all it is Memorial Day. Here were all the weeds to be cleared in order to make way for our concrete pavers and fencing.
The first step, as mentioned, was to clear away all the gross weeds and trashiness, in order to make room for new flat concrete pavers. Perfect for rolling trash cans onto.
The hubs bought two tones of pavers for a nice checkerboard effect. He’s an artistic guy.
The posts are set in Quick Crete, approximately one foot deep each.
While the concrete set, he cut the boards to size. Sorry there aren’t more witty comments or smarty pants remarks inserted here. The hubs performed all this hard work on his own, he took photos for the blog but I don’t have any other good dirt on the dirt. Just the facts. So like I said, here are some cut boards.
And well folks, that’s were the story ends from the hubs’ end. Apparently he needed two hands or something and couldn’t take pictures of everything he was doing to construct the fence. So I was forced to pick up where he left off. But all I did was add a second coat of paint, after the hubs primed it, and then plant some pretty flowers and mulch around the base of the new fence. But here it is all finished.
I really like the way he alternated the six-inch boards with the four-inch ones for an interesting visual effect. Artsy fartsy, no?
One one more flag picture, you know, because it’s Memorial Day still.
You might be thinking that the height of our fence is a little off in that it is higher than the brick wall of our car port. Looks weird huh? “Why wouldn’t they cover that too?” you ask? Well we’ll let you in on a little secret. We are planning to enclose our car port, converting it into a garage. Pretty big time, right? So we thought that it was pretty useless to try to build out that wall of the fence when it’s going to be covered up soon.
So in the meantime there is a hint of ugly trash can-ness but that will be taken care of and the remaining fencing is such a great improvement to f-ugly trash cans. Agreed?
Go Ahead and Call PETA
Because we killed him.
And when I say we, I mean Chad. After listening to me shrieking from inside the house like the little girl that I am. I can handle bugs, spiders, mice, etc. Not snakes. I like to think that it just makes me more like Indiana Jones. He was still cool even though he hated snakes.
Chad wanted to scoop him up and dump him into the woods behind our house alive, while I had already determined that if we had gotten home an hour later the dogs would be dead and half digested and that we’d be next.
It’s hard to ignore your wife jumping up and down in the kitchen yelling “kill it, kill it, kill it, ew, ew, ew, ohhh, ewwww!!” Yes, that’s verbatim.
So he did the thing that any husband with his amount of chest hair would do – and he killed it. This picture was taken of course with me safely inside the kitchen.
After checking out this website, he also determined that it was a semi-baby elaphe obsoleta or “rat snake” which he claims is harmless. It’s now “obsoleta” in our trash can biotch!
I prefer to believe that it was in fact a baby black mamba or even a tiny anaconda that would have returned from the woods to kill us in our beds. The killing was justified.
Just so you know, this all happened about twenty minutes ago. We decided it was breaking blog news. I’m sure you feel better for knowing the story.
He was kinda cute looking in at me through the screened porch. Poor guy just crawled into the wrong back yard. Eww, eww, eww… I feel like he’s crawling on me now. Ewwwww.
If You Build It…
… will the trash cans go away?
There is a long-standing doctrine in our household that the inside belongs to me and the outside belongs to Chad. This isnt’ a joke or a theory – it’s a fact. I do not touch the lawn mower. I would if I had to – say Chad broke both his legs in a freak Buckhunter accident then I would pull out the lawn mower. Or pay the neighbor’s guy to mow it for me while I paint a bedroom - let’s be honest.
But since the hubs has function of both of his legs and no real interest in picking out bedroom decor (more honesty) he is focusing his attention to the great outdoors which is his domain.
He has long been annoyed by the side view of the casa for one reason.
We’ll give you a hint as to why, and it’s not the flag.
We love the easy, through-the-carport access we have to our trash can and recycling bin but have hated how obvious their presence is on the side of our house. We even planted the tree that’s in front of them, hoping that could alleviate the f-ugliness, but that was not an effective solution even though it’s big and green.
Rather than go Paul Bunyan on the tree, Chad’s harnessing his inner carpenter/architect and designing a more appropriate home for our waste recepticles.
His plan? Lay some concrete pavers and create a wooden fence around the existing trash cans to mask them from the road and our house guests.
His supplies?
- Square concrete pavers
- 4 4×4 posts
- Concrete to set the posts
- 4 1×6″ boards
- White outdoor paint
- Tools such as a level, post hole digger, drill and screws, etc.
Before beginning to use any of these supplies it is imperative for the Mr. to clean up all the weeds and trashiness along the side of the house. Nice right?
While he is hard at work doing all this external homework – we’ll be sure to snap some pics and keep you updated on how it turns out. We’re thinking this may just be step one in Project Curb Appeal, or technically step three since we added a front garden and painted our peeling, ugly front stoop last summer.
