2001-2011.....

That's the time frame for our home remodel.

A whole decade!

It just hit me tonight that we are all but finished on the structural remodel of this place.

Now the only thing left to do is to finish the painting inside!!

Such as the kitchen cabinets.

I sure do like them!

He does too!

It was like pulling his teeth to get him to agree to doing anything inside the house.

He wore himself out on the exterior I guess, Thank goodness we didn't have a lot of inside work to do.

Still a ton of cabinets to finish, the stairwell
laundry room and big bathroom will get a new coat of paint.

The bar sink in the kitchen needs to be hooked up....he told me today that he "thought" about that the other day and that I should give him credit for that one!!

We need a new storm door for our bedroom door that leads out on the deck and a couple light fixtures need to be replaced......

Then we will be FINISHED!!!!!

This has been a long 10 years too!

No wonder my hair is so grey and his is falling out!!

I think I will plan a big "Thank Goodness The Remodel Is Over Party" for around May 1st, the day we moved in in 2001!

Thank You Lord for letting us live thru this one without killing each other!

Now we have a barn to build.........OH NO!

This is where I have been....

Besides working fulltime in the Dr's office, which is about 40 hours more a week than what I want to do. I have been trying to get a few things accomplished around the house.

Such as a makeover for my kitchen!

I finally convinced Danny to let me paint the cabinets white!

He even hung my new light that I have had for a long time.

I had an oak board that stretched out between the upper cabinets over the window, a valance I think they are called. I wanted that board removed for almost 10 years now, so it would no longer block the light. It took him about 12 seconds to get it down!

Now you can even see the new light and it really opens up the space!

I still have several more to paint but we are getting there.

We have also been sick, Danny with the flu, I with a stomach bug and then a sinus infection that has been going on for over 2 weeks.

I think we have done pretty good for ourselves.

What you think?

Better before or after?



We have also been getting in lots of coon hound puppy loving!
See they are already treeing!




Little Willie will not be going to Wisconsin afterall
BoooooooHoooooooo!!
Actually Terri asked us to find him another home because her son is not enjoying the training of a coon dog pup. You have to be 100% into that or there is no need in trying.....from what I've heard anyway. Danny and Colton are 150% into coon hunting!
Of course we had a waiting list a mile long for these pups, so there was no trouble finding him a home. Danny says he thinks he is the smartest of the litter, definately the most unusual coloring for a red tick! Most folks think he's a lemon beagle!






So with the gas prices over $3 a gallon now it would have been a very costly trip to deliver Willie to Trent, a 1200 mile trip one way in the gas guzzling truck, but it would have been worth it to get to see Terri, her family and her farm! Maybe some other time.
Danny has promised me a beach trip instead!

hahahaha this one is so funny!!

So that's what I've doing!

Whew!!

Her Mother's Garden!

Where do I begin?

Her Mother's Garden is actually my garden.

My beautiful daughter Robin posted the most beautiful post

over on her blog about my garden

today.

(What a nice Valentines Day present that was to me!!)

(Danny bought me a bushel of sweet potatoes LOLOLOL!!! and a camera)

We moved in our house soon to be 9 years ago on May 1. Robin and her husband had just separated and she moved back home with us for a couple years while she went to nursing school.

While she was with her husband she had started a really nice perennial garden and had put a lot of money into a lot of plants that her husband did not care at all about so as she was moving in with us we bought our new house. She dug up all her plants and brought them to my house!!

Danny and I had been renting a home from her father-in-law and we were looking for a home to buy. I had told my landlord the year before that I wanted to put in some plants but when we left I would take them all with me too.

So here we move into a new house May 1 and it was a perfect time of the year to dig up all these plants and move them too.

Robin and I worked our poor fingers to the bones digging up plants and carrying them across the county in the back seats or floor boards of our cars.....her Mustang GT convertible made a good plant hauler!! As did Danny's trucks and trailers......at least a tractor trailer load of plants were moved in here.

We planted and planted with out a game plan (or garden design in mind) other than to get those plants in the ground and watered. We were not going to loose a plant. There were thousands of dollars tied up in these plants.
The new neighbors would ride by and slow down

lurking at us out there planting more and more plants each day.

We weren't sure if they didn't think we were 2 lesbians that had moved in together

who loved to garden....rich lesbians at that. I mean there were a lot of plants and a lot of $$$!!!!

Our house had been occupied for many years by some very very earthy 60's leftover hippies.

They grew marijuana and had evidence left of that all over the place!!

They did some really good amending of the soil in some places which I was really happy to find.

I hauled in I think 7 pick-up loads of mulch that first year........oh yeah I forgot to say that on moving day I made Danny unload his bulldozer and completely clear our yard of way overgrown Forsythia bushes and many other disgustingly overgrown trees and shrubs that were beyond repair, pruning, cutting back or what have you. This made my entire front yard from the door to the road a perennial garden!!!

I always wanted that!!

My parents came up and helped us move and I was telling my dad how big my flower garden was to be and he pondered on that idea a little while and then he said to me..."Well that will be nice if you will keep it maintained."

That remark has haunted me for years and years!!!

The hard work paid off though.

The pictures that Robin has posted is July 4th 2003....we moved May 1, 2001

My garden never looked better!!!!

I had another cookout the previous year and it looked really good but in 2003 the plants had really came into their own and was in full swing!!!

The next year we started full force on the remodel and I would loose a plant here and a plant there until I had lost almost half of my bed......

This post of hers has me really inspired to get my garden back to the way it looked that year. I still have the good bones in place and lot of other bigger and better bones now than what I did then. I just need to get the elbow grease in force again this spring and summer.

I don't want my daddy to be talking about how non-maintained my garden is any more!!!!!

Here is the post from Mother's Day 2009.

Now go on over and compare to my garden from 2003.

Do you think I will ever get it back to looking that good?

Here is a post that shows a little of the remodel.

Thanks Robin for reminding me that this horrible winter weather may come to an end!

I will be happy to just see a dandelion peeping thru the snow!!!

I will be much happier to see my garden look like it did then.....well there are always pictures!!!

ps. I forgot to mention that the pictures on Robin's blog are of a cookout in my garden where there was the water gun fight of the century held that day. There were some big weapons pulled out that day. I think Travis won!! (Leslie's husband in the grey Tshirt that you see everywhere with all those very innocent little children and he is soaking them!!!) (That was payback from the previous year when they all got him and he had no weapon!!) What fun!!!

It's just a labor of love!

OK Folks. This all got started 8 years ago, when I/we were much younger and had lots of energy! I thought I should explain that right up front because you should be able to tell that we have ran out of steam now. This remodel has been an adventure that's for sure. I have been aiming for a long time to try and post the before and after's and I kept putting it off til today. I guess I had blogger's block and couldn't think of anything interesting going on around here except the enormous buckets of ran that has been coming down til this morning when I hopped over to see Shandra at http://www.frontporches-sweet-tea.blogspot.com/ and saw her for & aft pics of her landscaping. OMG!!! They should have a hottub sitting on that deck to crawl in at night after all that hard work they have done too!!!!!!! Just take a peek at her yummy yummy veggie garden. I have veggie garden envy now!!!

May 2008 after.
May 2008 after with the new addition of my master suite that I love! Should be called "Queen's Suite"!!

This one was Mother's Day 2009 We are getting there!
(sorry but the pics below were scanned and I hope that you can click to enlarge them but if not please get a magnifying glass so you get the gist of the before's)

July 2001 I had some better before pics but I can't find them now. We had already started painting the window trim here, it was brown like the rest of the house. Notice all the trees!

Sept 2001 we were painting the navy blue with white trim that I loved until the navy paint started peeling in a couple years. Yuck!

Sept 2001's garden was the best ever, not planted til middle of June either. Guess it was all that shade ;-)

While I was gone to the grocery store my big timberjack decided that all my rotton-at-the-trunk-pine shade trees had to go.

What a pile of firewood we had that winter!

And this is what I came home to! A 45 foot pine thru the garage that ripped the deck down! (don't tell anyone but the deck/stairs haven't been replaced yet!!!!) honey where are you?

July 4th 2002

July 4th 2002. This is my precious grandson Colton standing in my GORGEOUS FLOWER GARDEN!!! I had a HUGE cookout that evening and my flowers have never looked better than they did that very day. Actually half of the flower bed got trashed when we put the foundation under the house, the rock on the foundation, the patios, the roof and the vinyl siding. I guess it was a good trade!

June 1978 (I think) before!

Nov 2006 after! I guess that happens when we eat like we did tonight. I made "The pot of chicken and dumplings that tasted just like his mother's" ........Yes that was in his own words!!! It only took 32 years of trial and error. Not bad for a beginner huh?

So now you understand why I am wore out all the time, why we are broke and why we never go anywhere fun. We have only spent time at Lowe's and Home Depot for the past 8 years. That's OK we always eat good!!!!!

I hope I haven't bored you guys to pieces with this incredibly long post!!

Becky

Happy 7 year anniversary in our home!

This is the inside of my new dairy barn and milking stanchion. The barn is shown below near the white picket fence. Not intended to be a barn but sure made a nice one. The doorway is about 2" too short though and I have cracked my head on it too many times to count, maybe one day I will learn to duck.

Look at my old wringer and wash sinks. I love to use them!!

It is hard to believe but we moved in 7 years ago today. I wish I could post the before pics because we have done so much around here. A new roof, vinyl siding, foundation and rock, lots of buildings, a new bedroom on the back of the house, tons of landscaping, a garden pond and a 1/2 acre fish pond, dairy barn, picket fence, more fencing, 2 new covered porches and 2 new patios, and lots and lots and lots of bulldozing and we cut or push down or top another tree every year (so I will have something to do cleaning up the mess) and I can't even remember what else we have done cuz I am wore out. I really enjoy it here though. It is so peaceful nothing but the birds and goats talking.