2016 Goals Check In

I’m a little behind on this update but once again I don’t feel like we’ve accomplished a lot lately. For May, I’m hoping to make a lot of progress on the front door project and the yard. We’ve been tackling the yard every weekend but it’s a lot of work! I know we’ve made a lot of progress but it’s hard to tell unless you live here and see it every day. Over the weekend we filled up our 96 gallon yard waste container plus 7 30-gallon yard waste bags with leaves and weeds. We haven’t done anything in the back yard for the entire 3 years we’ve lived here (at least not outside the fence) and the house was vacant or being rented out for several years before then so the yard has been seriously neglected.

We’ve cleaned up this whole area which used to be all leaves and weeds. Apparently I don’t have a before picture but trust me, it was bad! Eventually we’ll do some landscaping back here with plants that keep mosquitoes away. We weren’t able to take our fence all the way to the property line but we don’t mind because it gives us the ability to put in some natural insect repellents without having to worry about the dogs digging them up. Of course, behind this angle we still have all of this crap.

And that’s even after I did some weeding.

Anyway, we were able to strike off staining the fence! So at least there’s that. I have everything I need to repaint the study so hopefully I can take care of that this month too if I get the front door finished up.

House:
-Demo current deck – Postponed to 2017
-Clean garage…again – Done! 
-Build new, bigger deck – Postponed to 2017
-Refinish very old but new to us front door – Started at the end of 2015. 
-Install front door
-Repaint the study
-Add built ins in the study?
-Add crown moulding in the study?
-Create new area for dogs
-Remove dog crates from master bedroom
-Caulk windows – Started. All downstairs windows have been caulked. 0/4 upstairs windows have been done.
-Paint master bedroom?
-Clean up side/back/front yards – Started. Currently focusing on smaller side yard and parts of the backyard. 
-Price out all aspects of kitchen remodel
-Stain fence – Done!
-Extend fence?
-Remove trees? – Removed dead oak in front yard.
-Remove shed?

ADDED AFTER JANUARY FIRST:
-New flooring in entry/study/living room. – Mostly done! We just need to add the thresholds and then install the baseboards in the living room. – Done!
-Paint living room. – Done! 
-Stain beams in living room. – Done!
-Build/stain lower deck – We priced this out over the weekend and we’re trying to figure out when to tackle the project. Most likely August-September. 

Personal:

-Read 26 books – can be re-reads or never before reads, but must come from books we already own – Behind! I should be on book #10 but I’m only on #9. Hoping to catch up this weekend.
-Go on an awesome vacation – Booked and paid for!
-Lose 20lbs – This is still not going well but I’ve decided that I’m going to just shake it off and start over on Monday. I’m thinking about doing a weekly post on this to keep me accountable.
-Tone and tighten once I finish losing these last 20lbs. – Three of my weekly workouts are dedicated to toning.
-Walk the dogs more – We’re still not walking them as often as I’d like but more than we used to.
-Use my craft room – I rarely use this room and that’s pretty lame
-Get a new look for the blog

2016 Goal Check In: April

We haven’t really made much progress on our goal list this month but we did tweak the list a little. We’ve decided to hold on the upper deck project for this year and instead wrap it into the kitchen renovation next year. We are planning on moving forward with building our lower deck instead so that we still have an outdoor area to use this fall. While I’d love to get rid of the scary current deck, this new plan makes the most sense for us right now.

Anyway, here’s where we are now. I really need to start working on the front door and I have the paint for the study, I just haven’t had the motivation. We’ve been spending a lot of time on the sofa during the week and our weekends have been dedicated to yard work or traveling.

House:
-Demo current deck – Postponed to 2017
-Clean garage…again – Done! 
-Build new, bigger deck – Postponed to 2017
-Refinish very old but new to us front door – Started at the end of 2015. 
-Install front door
-Repaint the study
-Add built ins in the study?
-Add crown moulding in the study?
-Create new area for dogs
-Remove dog crates from master bedroom
-Caulk windows – Started. All downstairs windows have been caulked. 0/4 upstairs windows have been done.
-Paint master bedroom?
-Clean up side/back/front yards – Started. Currently focusing on smaller side yard. 
-Price out all aspects of kitchen remodel
-Stain fence
-Extend fence?
-Remove trees? – Removed dead oak in front yard.
-Remove shed?

ADDED AFTER JANUARY FIRST:
-New flooring in entry/study/living room. – Mostly done! We just need to add the thresholds and then install the baseboards in the living room. – Done!
-Paint living room. – Done! 
-Stain beams in living room. – Done!
-Build/stain lower deck

Personal:

-Read 26 books – can be re-reads or never before reads, but must come from books we already own – On track. Finished #6 and 200 pages into #7.
-Go on an awesome vacation – Booked and paid for!
-Lose 20lbs – This is not going well. I’m working out a ton but I’m having a lot of trouble getting my eating under control. We eat out way too often!
-Tone and tighten once I finish losing these last 20lbs. – Three of my weekly workouts are dedicated to toning.
-Walk the dogs more – We took them on a short walk last weekend. Hoping to do it again at least once this coming weekend. They play in the backyard a lot so the walks are just to give them a change of scenery. 
-Use my craft room – I rarely use this room and that’s pretty lame
-Get a new look for the blog

Happy Friday! Fingers crossed for a productive weekend.

Yard Progress

We’ve made a tiny bit of progress in the great yard clean up of 2016. We’re really trying to get our property in decent shape this year since it’s been pretty neglected for the three years we’ve been in the house. Of course right now it still looks pretty crappy but it’s a work in progress! We’re starting on the side of our yard that sits between our house and our neighbor’s house. We figured this side is the most important right now because our neighbor actually has to look at it (we don’t have a neighbor on the other side of our house) and her house is on the market so I’m sure it will help her if our yard doesn’t look like total crap.

Here’s our overall plan for this side of the yard:

-Remove weeds
-Remove ivy
-Clean up leaves
-Remove monkey grass
-Remove overgrown azaleas
-Trim other giant bushes
-Trim fence posts
-Clean fence
-Stain fence
-Landscape around outside of fence (mostly mosquito plants)
-Plant plum trees
-Install edging from fence to front of property
-Mulch from fence to front of property
-New walkway (this will happen later down the road)

Our time has been pretty limited lately since our past several weekends have included at least one day away from the house and the weather hasn’t always wanted to cooperate. We’re also limited by how much we can put in our yard waste container each week. Here’s the best I have for before pictures…this is after we raked up a ton of leaves and I removed some new ivy growth.

I hate monkey grass with the fire of a thousand suns so we decided to rip it all out and put in plum trees. Kyle hacked everything up with a pick ax and then I picked up all of the chopped up plants and tossed them in our yard waste bin.

Once most of the monkey grass was up, we went ahead and planted our plum trees. There are two in this picture (taken a couple of weeks ago) but they’re almost impossible to see.

On Saturday, we removed the rest of the monkey grass and I worked on raking out all of the loose grass remnants and leaves and tried to level out the area a little bit. I apparently forgot to take a picture but it looks a lot worse right now than it did when we started working. I’m planning on cleaning up the rest of the leaves and dirt this weekend and hopefully we’ll also be able to install the edging and just maybe start mulching.

We have zero plans and a forecast full of sunshine so fingers crossed for a productive weekend!

Timberrrrrrrrr

One of the things we want to do this year is get rid of some of the troublesome trees in our yard. We got a couple of quotes and after discussing our options, we decided to move forward with removing the oak in our front yard. All of the pines in the front and back will eventually go but with a total over $3k, it won’t be this year.

The oak in the front yard was in poor shape and we were afraid that if it fell, it would hit a neighbor’s house or car and we didn’t want our crappy tree to be somebody else’s problem.

I don’t think I have a real “before” picture so here’s a screenshot from Google Maps.

The tree in question is the one close to the center of the picture. It doesn’t look bad here, but this picture is almost 4 years old and in that time, the tree started to die from the top down. Every storm left a ton of large, heavy limbs in the street and the leaves were dead for most of the year. So $600 later we have this…

We could have had all of this hauled away but leaving it here saved us about $100. We had planned on burning the brush pile and hauling the logs to the backyard to eventually split and use for firewood. Actually moving the logs proved to be a little difficult but lucky for us a neighbor from a couple of streets over saw the pile and said he’d be willing to take whatever logs we didn’t want and cut down the logs we do. Hopefully that will happen this week! I’m glad that we finally got this tree taken care of and it gives us one more thing to mark off of our 2016 goal list!

I’ve got a small side yard and even smaller bathroom update for you guys later this week so stay tuned.