Vacation? What Vacation?!

Mark and I both took this past week off of work. But, instead of using our WestJet priveleges to go somewhere fun and relaxing, we decided to stay at home and do some work on our yard. My first reaction is to say that was the WORST idea we've EVER had as it was a lot of hard, grueling and DIRTY work.... however, we got a lot accomplished and are now not all that ashamed of our house. (It was pretty ghetto before.)

Below are two pictures of the front of the house that were taken last summer shortly after Logan was born. (I wish I had a picture of our house when we first bought it with the two giant spruce trees in the front yard, the hedge on the side yard and the liliac bush crowding the front step.)

Now this is what the front of the house looks like after this week. Mark finished the deck/rail/gate while I painted. We started painting the trim of the house as well, however, still have some more painting to finish. We got a new outdoor light, doorbell, mailbox and house numbers, as well as a new tree (a Russian Olive).

Here is a look at the side of the house after stage 1 of yardwork (which happened last spring.) In this picture we have already torn down a tall tree, the liliac bush and the monstrous hedge that used to run along side the house and are starting to put the fence together.

Here is what the side of the house now looks like. From the street you can pretty much only see fence and the umbrella from the patio set. But, we've also planted two hawthorne trees along the side of the fence (they're just tiny right now, but hopefully they will grow nice and tall to shade the side of the house.) We also still need to sand and paint the two window trims and the house trim.

We decided to make the side deck a lot bigger than the back deck so we have more privacy (our neighbors' deck is right next to ours on the back). We set up our patio set that we got as a wedding gift (more than 2 years ago!) and are looking forward to sitting out there basking in the sun. I havent painted the floor of the deck yet, I've been told to wait a year to allow the wood to settle.

Again, I wish I had a photo of what the backyard looked like when we first bought the house. There was no fence, deck, retaining wal or anything. It was just a crappy hill with lots, and lots of weeds. Here is a photo from last spring (again) when the fence and retaining wall were built. As you can see, Mount Duke is still there.

And here is a shot of what the backyard looks like now. The grass is in, the fence is painted and we have a shed up. The flower boxes still don't have flowers in them - just weeds. Thats next spring's task.

Mark has started working on the back deck. He got a lot more done this week than we had expected, but we still have a ways to go. That part still looks a little ghetto, just because there is lumber and crap everywhere. But once its done I'm sure it'll look just as nice as the front deck.