Walkway is poured

Well the concrete foundation is poured finally. We decided to do a reality check and look at our lives and realize that with our medical conditions it would be feasable to start planning for our future so we did away with steps and planned a ramp. Since we are investing so much money in beautiful stone it will be a shame to rip it out or put in ugly ramps down the road.

Here is a pic of Richard and I working on the concrete together. He is our contractor.I am the water boy and Bruce is the driver as he is in charge of driving the power wagon after I load the bags on concrete and bringing them over so they can be mixed. It is so nice to feel like we are part of this project. Next week the stone will be laid down. So this week i have to unload the pallets and lay out the stone on the front so we can see what the stones look like. Can't wait to see what it looks like as it will take a couple of days to get this done.

You can also see pics of the new house colors. It is charcoal gray and red which are traditionbal Asian colors.

This weeks happenings

Well this week has been a real busy one! It started off with me digging out the path for the new walkway. This has been a weeks long project as I have only been able to do it a few hours each day when it has been cool. So I get up at 6:30 and get started on it. Then we have made a few trips this week to get some rocks for the backyard. Someone on craigslist advertised them for free and there was a huge pile from small to boulders so we made three trips with the railer to get them. I am going to use them to make a planter box and also maybe a rock garden. I also started painting the house. This will take a while to do. But the house is no longer looking boring.As our neighbor Mike would say he does not want us to get bored,lol. We also picked up this garden bench for the start of our Asian garden in the front yard.

Some beauty pics

Welll after sharing some death pics I thought I would show some pics of life around here. We have loads of irises springing up all over the property. So Bruce decided to take some pics. We have a couple of shades of purple and to our surprise we found this wonderful orange one! Still waiting for the others to pop up. We went to the master gardeners sale and bought a yellow to add to the collection and our other neighbor is going to allow us to take some from their front yard as Bruce just loves yellow!!!

Paul Bunyan Imitation

Ok well this weekend I decided to change gears from renovation to demolition. we had a huge tree in the yard that ufortunately was neglected by the previous owners so it had to come down. We had hoped it would be alive but no such luck. So lucky me who is afraid of heights had to tackle the job. here I am as Bruce snapped the shots some unknowingly.

Now all this wood has to be cut down to small pieces. Some will be used for a fire pit I want to get and other we will take down to teh community composting program. The yard looks bare so we have to try and get teh roots dug up which may take all summer,lol. We want to plant a mulberry tree to take its place. Who knows what role will come next? george Washington??

Stay tuned for the next episode.

TUb Today, Gone Tommorow

Well the old hot tub is now history. Our wonderful neighbors came by yesterday and dismanted the top as I want to turn that into a gazebo. They then went ahreaf and called in reinforcements to lift this off and move it. Imagine our surprise when all these people walked into our yard to help carry thi this.

After this our neighbors went to town cutting the hot tub up so we could get it into the dumpster. We also found tge concrete pad that it was on was cracked. So Mike went and got his breaking poles and he broke all that concrete up too. It was a hard day and Bruce treated them to lunch at an Indian restaurant. Tommorow I am taking them out to Chinese Dinner. It is so nice to have this open space near our patio.

Heat are some celebration pics.

Concrete jungle

We started to get ready on doing the walkway for the fromt of the house in hopes of having it ready for Easter which is next Sunday. As I celebrate Orhodox Easter. this house was built where you have to go up the driveway and acrosss the house to enter. This seems like not a welcome way to enter the house so we are going to make a path down the center of the house. That meant renting a jackhammer and taking out 25 feet of concrete. needless to say I was exhausted after 3 hours of doing this.

More progress on the studio

Here is a pic of the vegetable gaden all filled in. Now just have to roto till in the steer manure. But pepper is doing his best to roto till but not getting far as it is still in the the bags,lol.

Well the studio is slowly coming along. We now have the insulation added and the sub floor will be added soon.

The weather here has been up and down but we have been in mode for getting things ready for Spring. we were in Costco and found these wonderful huge pots! we have seen them and kept waiting to get them. Finally we decided to just get them. we are not sure where we willput them but here is what we bought. Will post pics soon of the plants we bought too.

Also by popular demand here is a pic of the two of us. Hope this satifies your curiosity.