Side Project-Front Garden and tree down!

While my busy hubby is putting up a few fence post and cutting down the 3rd 60 year old cedar tree that was planted too close to our house. I have been working on a more fun little project. Sunday afternoon I heard about the fill a flat for $12 at Johnson's Garden Center. I begged and pouted for Jason to take me there and he finally gave in. $150 later I was ready to plant my garden.

Before: Just lilly's of the valley in the garden

All my flowers!
Done! Not very pretty YET!

Since this garden on the north west side of our house was right by our front window I got flowers that *hopefully* attract lots of butterflies for me to sit in my chair and watch. I planted lillies, hollyhocks, forget me not's, Avens geum, SNAPDRAGONS and a hosta. There were a few more kinds but I didn't get photos of the tags so I don't remember what they were.

Jason spent Thursday and Friday night cutting down all of the branches on a tree in our backyard. This tree is HUGE and between the cable line, two power lines and two houses it is quite a challenge to cut down. It is also very expensive to hire someone to cut down. Jason being a manly (CHEAP) man decided to buy a tree safety harness. He must be a monkey because he spent HOURS holding himself in the tree while cutting down limb by limb all the way up in that dang tree. We now have what we like to call a Dr. Seuss tree with no limbs. Soon he will cut down the stump bit by bit. I'm pretty nervous about all this so his dad comes over to "supervise" and I stay in the house!

Jason in the tree not even close to being done.

No more branches

My monkey..I mean husband.

Today Jason installed 4 fence post. We have an existing chain link fence in our back yard that is sunk to the ground using t post. He is using concrete to put fence post over the t-post and then attaching a 6 foot wood privacy fence to the metal fence post. I am excited for this because our neighbors yard isn't the best and our houses are so close it will be nice to not be able to see in her windows if you catch my drift :).

I went on a walk through College Hill tonight. I hope my next house is a little further south and east of this one and it smack in the middle of that neighborhood. A girl can dream right?

Next Project is BACKYARD

Side Yard
Back yard. Fence will be taller.
Tree removed
Privace fence to hide the neighbors yard. Yuck!
Where the Porch will go :)


Since spring is here in Kansas we have decided (along with votes from friends on Facebook) that we are going to fix up our backyard next. So far we have killed the weeds (not grass) that were residing in the yard. We have yet to use the rototiller (sp?) to mix up the dirt but we have guest with a dog visiting this weekend so we don't want to have a mud pit for both dogs.

Next step is pricing fencing. Jason is now working 4 am to noon everyday. Which leaves lots of daylight hours for him to work and get things done around the house and I have a great excuse for not helping called MY JOB :). We should be installing a privacy fence along the west side of the house so that we can't see into our neighbors house and vise versa and then a taller back fence to block out some of the noise from Central.

We want to put a small patio by the house next after the fence. Then hopefully move inside and get our kitchen done :)

Here are some photos of our backyard before and I included one of our new/use dining room table! Gretchen's parents donated it to The Koehn we don't have enough money for furniture fund :)

Enjoy!

Dining room DONE

Ok so I am officially finished with the dining room. Wow was that a lot of work. I started by Kilzing the ceiling on Monday March 29th. The texture and kilz on the walls was done previously. Tuesday Jason has old man beer league softball so that night was wasted. So Wednesday I decided to texture the ceiling. After finishing that I ate dinner and got up to paint the walls gray/notre dame. After getting most of the way through I RAN OUT OF PAINT. Jason was by the way at work all night Wednesday night on one of his overnight shifts.

So Thursday Jason was going to be off during the day and able to "help" me by buying more paint and a few other things a lowes. So Thursday night I came home and tried to finish painting. I also had to squeeze in church on Thursday night for an hour. So I finally finished the walls. The texture on the walls made it extremely difficult to get paint in all the nooks and crannies adding time and stress to finishing this room.

On to Friday, I usually don't work Fridays and so I decided I would try to sleep in. Jason came home from work around 10:30 am and announced that Tim (our brother in law) was coming over to help us finish that room. At first I thought how I just wanted to lay there all afternoon but then I was happy that I was FINALLY getting help!

I hopped out of bed and tried to get everything set up. However our ceiling paint which was purchased last spring had mistakenly been put away in our garage and had been ruined. Off to Lowes for the 2nd day in a row :) (Typical). We already had our light bought so Tim and Jason installed it while I put the light switch covers back on.

So Saturday I got ready for Easter dinner and had to buy a paint brush that would help me do the line at the top where the wall meets the ceiling!

Sunday Easter went off with no problems and we enjoyed the first meal in our new dining room! :)

Here's some photos of the fun!