Patio Pergola

Now that the bar is installed, we decided to go with a two tone colour stain on the Pergola from Lowes - Olympic Maximum stain in Ebony and Cedar Natural Tone.  I love it!

We repurposed the 2x6's from the carport formally on this spot and made this outdoor sectional

Thanks Sean for helping me stain all morning! 

I think the black helps define the area more instead of blending into the fence.  We have two shade screens since me and the babies are so freaking pale

Here is the before when it was a carport and Sean's hard work  

 

Sean removed the carport himself.  The roof line was so steep that 4' of the carport/covered patio was unusable

A contractor put in the cement slab, fence and posts

 This was all guess work for Sean, he is NOT a contractor.

Not bad for an IT guy.

 Our pallet coffee table LOL.  I was so over the moon when Sean bought me the fire-table for Mothers Day 2020.  Really improved all our staycations

Corrugated roof going in

The finished product before staining

Sean finally caved and built a bar.  Secondhand stools from Kijiji - $40

 

 

Patio Delays

Sean worked like a dog in the hot sun on Saturday last week removing the yellow cedar and 3 Yucca's in the front of our house so that our Contractor could dig the footings for the new porch this past week.  Of course the porch didn't end up happening and the concrete guy had to delay the pour for the patio.  However our fence is in !!!  

Oddly enough our backyard seems bigger now that the fence is in, not smaller.

We were crazy busy yesterday moving dirt around to fill in the double deep slab removal.  We ordered 4 cubic yards, but it ended up taking 7.

The plan is to buy new edging stones in the Spring to finish off the re-directed Hosta Garden.

We are throwing down grass seed after the new patio slab is pored, hopefully this week.  Crossing our fingers the grass takes a bit before the frost ???

Bye bye wacky neighbour lady !!!  Above is our view of her now :)

Outside Renovations Underway

Before:

Old Fence

 

Cement slab & broken bit - before renovations

After:

Renovations have finally started.  I came home from work and the driveway fence was gone, that next day they started on the cement patio

 Low and behold we had an unknown cement patio under our cement patio.  Yeesh.

One cement slab down, one to go

Hello extra pad - who knew?

Bye pathway

So the concrete guy has to come back after this weekend to finish by using a hydraulic jack hammer.  Thank goodness we planned for the contractor to remove the slab.  Sean wanted to take it out himself next summer.  After  finding the second slab the contractor said there's no way Sean could have gotten the bottom one out himself.

Bathroom Signage

So it's been a while.  I think the house renovations, starting with Boo's room and closet have eaten up all my crafting mojo.  As well, my crafting room is now housing my 1 million and 1 IKEA kitchen boxes.  I can't even so much as open a cupboard in there.

I had a friend who recently repainted her kids bathroom and requested a sign.  I had planned differently lettering, but since my craft room is clogged up, I could 't get to the old machine that I use Sure Cuts A Lot on, so I had to resort to using a Cricut cartridge.

I wanted to add Enter at own Risk along the bottom, but my friend didn't want that.

This pre-made distressed wood sign was $7.00 at Michael's using a 50% coupon.  So quick when you don't have to assemble anything or distress it yourself.

I cut out the vinyl template using my Don Juan cartridge.  I read a tip online eons ago that to help the lettering remain crisp when painting, to Modge Podge over the template first.  I can say 100% DO THIS.  It really works.

So here is the IKEA mock up of our kitchen.  We have moved appliances around so we can have more counter space.

The stove was on the other wall, by moving it that whole space can now be counter top.

And here is our mock up for the basement bathroom.  We aren't doing it through IKEA, but I used the free online IKEA planning program to play around with it.

We went back and fourth about tiling a bathroom stall vs a prefab stall.  Since we have seriously hard water and it's meant to be the kids bathroom, we have decided to do a prefab that looks like it's tiled.  We aren't settled on the exact one, but I did see one at Lowes that is faux Carrara tile.

Basement Before and After - Click on Image to see more

Okay okay, so our basement renovation has been a long time coming, it's why we bought the house 10 years ago.

Fall 2016 (Before)

During...

During... (hurray, bye-bye cinder block support)

After (X-Mas 2017)

The hubby has to finish the bricking the fireplace sides paint the beam and the floor.  We have some shelving projects planned for the New Year.  Soooo close to being done.  Hubby done good!