The End In Sight!

Jul 21, 2009 07:48 AM Filed in: Day To Day
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Ah, The Summer Of Projects rolls on, but now that we’re creeping up on the end of July things are finally beginning to shape up and come together. The end is in sight, and I like what I see.
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This week I can now officially say that the front porch is done. All we have left to do is put covers on two of the power outlets, but that’s close enough to done in my book! Of course next summer I’ll be painting all that treated lumber, but that’s for next year. Until then we’ll have the porch as it looks now, and I think that’s a pretty nice look to live with. They’re not in these pictures, but I now have three rocking chairs sitting on the porch. My sister yesterday bought for me a white slat rocker from Cracker Barrel to go with my other two rockers and now my front porch looks like a place for neighbors to come sit and make themselves comfortable while we talk about the weather and the events of the week. Cheryl and I sat out there for a couple of hours yesterday and talked part of the morning away. It was nice. And Josie and Finn even joined us for much of it, hopping in and out of the front door window as they pleased.
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^-^

The new roof and skylight are also done. It looks great! I think the new Chateau green color was the perfect choice, and the new skylight lets in SO much more light into the bathroom it’s amazing. It’s like having a light on all the time. Even at night the moon now bathes the rooms at that end of the house in a soft light all the while it’s over head. It’s really nice. Better than any night light by far.
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And even the arbor is finished! Dave & the guys put it up in one day’s worth of work, and even without anything growing on I think it looks wonderful. It helps to define that corner of my property and gives the whole front yard a different character than it had last year without it. Of course now it’s all raw lumber, treated too, so I can’t do the painting I have planned for it until next year, but it looks really good, and I can clearly see in my mind’s eye how it’s going to look once the grapes are growing up each post and across the top of the arbor. I’ve even started looking into the various types of grapes that might grow here, but I won’t do any actual planting until next spring. Patience! Bit by bit the place will be coming together.
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The only outdoor house projects now left to complete are joining the two back porches into one nice sized back deck and re-roofing the garage to match the new roof on the house. The guys are working on the back porch today, but I think it won’t be completed until next week sometime when the tractor comes back and they can use it to lift the old front porch up into position to be joined to the existing back porch. I know that might not be an easy thing to visualize, but I have some pictures in the Pot Luck photo gallery that will help if you’re curious enough to sift through the slideshow. Re-roofing the garage though I think might wait until next summer. We’ll see. Before I spend the money on
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that project I think I would rather focus on the inside of the house and paint all the walls (which I will be doing myself) and lay the new carpet and wood flooring throughout. That will be the last major task that will really change the whole feel of the house and make it truly my Home. I may not get to that until November or so, but I haven’t completely given up on the idea of completing it sooner. We’ll just have to wait and see how the last month of summer and the early autumn months go.
Of course that still leaves me with a lot of yard work to get done! The whole front yard needs to be landscaped now. All traces of that old gravel driveway leading out to the arbor are destined to disappear under mulch
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and a little winding walkway that will work its way from the front entry steps of the porch, around to the porch steps at the opposite end, and finally up towards the berme and into the arbor itself. On each side of the walkway will be flower and vegetable garden beds. Yes, much work yet to be done, and even much planning since I haven’t quite made up my mind how this will all look exactly. Not quite yet, but I am getting there.

For now though Josie & Finn & I are all just relieved to have our house back and to not be living in the middle of a major construction zone! The new front porch is already feeling like Our Porch, and we are enjoying our early mornings sitting out there together, sipping coffee (well, I’m sipping coffee anyway) and watching the neighborhood wake up to greet the new day. Life is good!