With All the Trimmings

We'll take it with all the trimmings. I'm pretty sure this was what Huz and I said when we bought this place. Unfortunately, when it comes to home ownership, we don't get to order off the menu and have it brought to us on a platter, do we? Owning a home is not always as easy as opening a box of Annie's organic mac & cheese. Actually its never that easy. The "honey-do" list can get quite long once you move in and realize that the water heater didn't have the right valve on it to switch over from propane to natural gas.  Or that the countertop in the master bath, with only one sink, is a unique size and will require a custom order (cha-ching!) to replace it. Minor setback. The returns though....you gotta love it when you can see your hard work paying off! Huz and I have been working hard on our new little love nest and project by project are starting to make it feel more like our own. We are excited to share these updates with you even if they didn't happen as quickly as we would have liked....

Here is what the walk-out side of our house looked like when we purchased it in June 2011. Decent looking for sure, right? Livable and certainly good enough to enjoy the view from the beach for the summer. We had a lot of outdoor projects to work on this year so we had to be choosy about which ones to work on. Clearing overgrown brush next to the lake was a must! We seriously spent 3 months working on this. Our beach has a steep bank, so hauling the branches up and out was a full body workout! Did I mention we don't have steps? We'd work on it til we got a rash from either poison oak or ivy, (or maybe something else, we really never identified the culprit) and then we'd let it sit for a couple days and start up again once our "irritaions" had subsided. We learned to put on gloves and wear long pants and long-sleeved shirts after only a few times of getting these itchy skin irritations. What a good idea even if it meant you were bathing in your own sweat in 30 seconds!

In August we got a new septic system so our yard got ripped up on the right side of the walk-out to remove the old septic system. A new one was put in over by the garage. We are hoping the new grass--that we babied by watering it 4 times a day during our 80* weather in October--will have good enough roots to come back this spring. Note, it was not 80* until the grass seed was down and it was wet. Then it suddenly got hot. Can someone give me an "oof-da!"

Here is what a little paint with all the trimmings and Huz with a tall ladder can accomplish. I love the way the white paint pops against the red brick. And you? I've been waiting to take this picture til we had a light dusting of snow. Perfect timing, don't you think?