Our deck is finally fixed!

Our lovely dog Cooper...he is still in his puppy stage. He just turned one year old this month...but he still loves to chew and destroy things. He thinks that everything is his to chew on! We are trying to break this habit because it is now costing us a lot of money. Before we had a carpeted deck. We liked it and it was nice to be able to go out there and vacuum it off. Yes, it was old school and a little grampa-ish but we had no plans of changing it in the near future. See below:

Well last month Terry was packing up for a work trip and he put Cooper out on the deck. Well Cooper saw him packing up and normally we bring Cooper with us where ever we go. Well Terry left for his work trip around noon that day. I come home from work around 4pm and Cooper has decided to tear all of the indoor out door carpet off the deck in front of the screen door all the way back to the furniture....

As you can see Cooper completely destroyed the carpet and even though he looks sad and remorseful in this photo he sure was HAPPY to have me come home and find this mess...I on the other hand was NOT happy. In fact I was furious! But since we didn't catch him doing it their was not much we could do about scolding him for it- since it would do no good.

 

We did lots of research on what we should do to fix it. We could of spend around $50 and got more indoor/outdoor carpet just to have him destroy it again. We also thought about getting a paint on sealant product but thought that the deck would not be able to breath underneath and it also takes days to dry in warm weather...which we don't get in Seattle in November. So after a weekly trip to Costco we came across these 12x12 deck tiles that just lock into each other. They were certainly not cheap ($400) but we thought they were the easiest to install and would allow the deck to breath and we figured that Cooper would not be able to destroy them since they are made out of this synthetic hard plastic material.

 

So Terry ripped off the old indoor/outdoor carpet and then pulled up all the old (somewhat moldy) plywood off the deck and we were glad that we found a pretty decent wood deck below. We were able to put the tiles right over the wood deck. We are really happy with the new more modern look of our new deck. Its unfortunate that we had to spend so much to get it fixed but in the end it does look a lot better.

 

 



Our Anna's Hummingbirds

Ever since we bought our house last October we have noticed a family of hummingbirds living around our yard and greenbelt. After doing some research we found out they are called Anna's Hummingbirds. They do not fly south in the winter months and actually stay and live here all year long. We have spent countless days and evenings watching these little guys. I am not sure exactly how many we have living in our greenbelt but I am pretty sure its about 4-8. All day long the make their little screeching grinding sounds and dive bomb each other....and sometimes myself.

Recently we recently purchased an automatic wireless remote shutter release for my SLR camera and set it up on my tripod to get some good shots of the humming birds. I absolutely love this automatic shutter release. It will trigger the shutter up to 100 feet away. So its great for shots like this and say family portraits. Much easier than hitting the auto timer button on your camera then running back to make the shot in time.

Here are the shots we got on Saturday evening of a few of our hummingbirds. From the looks of them I believe that most of these are females. The males are really bright and colorful their entire head is colored.

DIY Stepping Stones

A while back I saw a cool idea on Pinterest on making your own step stones. I quickly read through it (aka-looked at the photos) and sent it onto the hubby and told him I wanted to do this at some point. So while we were rebuilding our fence a few weeks back Terry remembered that I wanted to do this and purchased an extra Sonotube to use as our mold.



 In case you have no clue what a Sonotube is, they use them for putting concrete into for fence posts and such. Anyways, he cut out some rings from it with a saw to make them perfect for little stepping stones.

We laid out some tarp because I really didn't want to slop any concrete on the grass or patio. Then put a layer of garbage bags over the rings.

 I had to add some stones to make them all pretty and special. Then we added the concrete...

....but since I didn't read the directions from pinterest and was just wingin' it....they didn't turn out right. The weight of the concrete sucked the stones into the mold.

Good thing we only did one tester because I forgot the part where you don't put the stones on the bottom first. You first pour the concrete into the mold... then wait about 20-30 minutes (depending on how runny your concrete is) then place the stones on TOP! At that point you can do fun little hand prints...or dog prints like we did.

Here they are dried and placed in our walk way. It takes about 24 hours for them to cure out so you can step on them. They are a bit smaller than I wanted but they get the job done! I just need to make about 6 more and they will go all the way to the gate.

Our New Vinyl Fence

Our side fence was in desperate need of repair and looked like this! You cant see it from the photo but it was leaning into our yard and about to fall over.

Over the past month we have been doing research on who had the best deal on vinyl fencing and our lovely local Costco won! We were able to get a box of 3 panels for $199 a box and each box covered about 24' and needed two to get the entire fence done.  So our crazy behinds ended up scheduling our fence rebuild with our neighbor on the hottest weekend of the summer. We took off Friday from work and were done by Sunday morning. It was so hot that we were only able to work in the mornings and evenings! I felt so bad for Terry. He had sweat pouring off of him! He is such a hard worker.

The old fence was so rotten that it only took about 20 minutes to get all of the old wood panels down. The pressure treated posts that were cemented into the ground we just kicked over. It indeed was time for a new fence!

The reason it took us almost 3 days to complete is becuase you had to set each post in concreate and let it dry for 6 hours before you set your next post. Thankfully the heat was on our side for that process and we were able to set 3 posts in the first day.

Each hole had to be dug down 30". We had tons of left over dirt to fill in all the holes Cooper digs in our yard looking for moles :)

Progress:

And finally on Sunday morning we were able to put in the final panels and this is the final product!

We are so happy with our new fence! It just looks SO much better and cleaner. We are happy that we dont really have to do a bunch of maintence like a wood fence. We dont have to paint or stain it. Just maybe pressure wash it every few years and it will last a very very long time! We are very happy with it!

Greenbelt...green fence

We have been going back and forth on whether or not we wanted to tear down our 4ft chain link fence and rebuild it with a 6ft vinyl fence. Since later on this month we will be replacing one of our side fences with vinyl and it would be nice to have it matching.



After looking at the cost to rebuild the fence ($900+) and the amount of labor it would involve (digging out old cement posts, and redoing them all also working around rock wall) we decided to just go with the green privacy slats ($360). The other thing we didn't like was the rust on top of the fence. So we cleaned it all up and added some rust stopping spray paint then a coat of silver spray paint to the bar. So it would look nice and new!

The greenbelt is just awesome in the summer time. Everything is blooming and its so lush and pretty but in the winter it doesn't look as glorious. So we figured adding in the green privacy slats would help make it look nicer all year long. This project took us most of the afternoon on Sunday and was really easy to do. We are loving the new look. The yard and fence look much cleaner. Here is our new green fence!

Up next on our project list is to replace this fence!

We got some nice vinyl fencing from Costco the other day and will be starting that project here soon! Did I say that we were going to relax for the rest of the summer?? ha ha yeah right ;)

Dull to Delightful!

So I am so happy to say that we are finally finished with not only the interior painting of our home but now the exterior and we could not be happier with the transformation. It is incredible how much a little yard work and some paint can transform your house and really add major curb appeal.

Now for the photos!

Our home when we purchased it in October 2011:

Here is our newly painted home now!!!

Does it look a little different? Just a bit!  Hopefully in a good way :) Here are just a few of the changes we made to the front of the house over the last few weeks!

Our previous entryway- October 2011

Entryway now:

Back of our house before:

And her it is now- LOVE the windows trimmed out it makes it look so much bigger!

Side of house before:

 And now:

Other Side before:

and after:

Terry and could not be happier about the new paint job on our house. It really does make it stand out in the neighborhood now and you actually notice it when you drive through. We are just so pleased with the new look. If anyone is interested our painter used Sherwin Williams Duration paint and the main blue color is called Distance- SW6243 and and the trim is called Classic Light Buff- SW0050.

Now its time for some much needed R&R! I think we will spend the rest of our summer kicking back out on our porch enjoying a few bottels of wine and hopefully some warmer weather!

Photos from last weekend

If you don't know one of my side hobbies is photography. When I was younger I had dreams of becoming a professional landscape photographer and traveling the world with some huge magazine like National Geographic...but after I found out you really have to be super good to make a lot of money...I decided I would just do it as a fun side hobby. So everywhere we go I am usually dragging along my baby (Canon Rebel XT 8MP Digital SLR) Over the years I have acquired a few lenses and filters but most of my shots are just taken with the normal lens (18-50mm).

So with that said every now and then you will find some photos that I have taken that I will add onto here. These shots were taken on the way to Terry's parents family farm last weekend out in a small town in Southeast Washington called Pomeroy. We went over to help work the calves which included giving them a few shots, a tattoo in their ear, weighing them, spraying them for flies and branding them! Yes indeed I did end up branding a calf. I think I was more scared than the calf was but I did it and Terry was proud!

Sorry the blog has been so slow this week. We are gearing up for starting a MAJOR kitchen over hall this weekend. We saved one of our biggest projects for last :) Can't wait to get that one over with!

Finally, here are a few shots on how the yard is coming along. The front is looking wonderful with so many more things are popping up and blooming.

We did also hire someone to paint the house. We are painting a few swatches on the back side this weekend to decide on the official blue colors. So excited to have the house painted. Its going to look completely different!