Here is a recap:

Grapes

We built the pergola so that the grapes could eventually drape over it. We ordered a variety called Reliance Grape. They are advertised as follows,

“A juicy, deep-red grape that is flavor-packed. This variety is perfect for eating fresh or putting in fruit salads. Also makes an irresistible, healthy snack for kids. Vigorous vines produce generous clusters. Blooms late to avoid spring frosts. Seedless. Disease-resistant to anthracnose and mildew. Ripens in August. Self-pollinating.”

Strawberries

We designated one half of the middle left bed to strawberries. The bed has a divider which essentially breaks the bed into two beds. The other half was planted with herbs that I had in containers. We choose an ever-bearing variety called Ozark Beauty and ordered them as bare root plants. They are described as follows:

“Enjoy fruit and a protective ground cover. In addition to keeping weeds at bay, this everbearer produces wave after wave of sweet, delicious, scarlet-red strawberries. In our test plots, this is one of the hardiest, most vigorous, heaviest-producing everbearing strawberries. Cold hardy. Ripens in early summer and continues to fruit until first frost. Self-pollinating.” 

Blackberries

I found this really cool YouTube video on how to train blackberries against a fence in which a trailing variety was used. This method was very appealing to me since I didn’t want to use one of my beds for blackberries.  We are trying his method and using the Triple Crown Thornless Blackberry variety. Here is the description,

“A unique flavor that has garnered rave reviews! This productive plant yields berries that offer a tasty blend of sweetness and tartness. The fruit is borne uniformly, so it is easy to pick. Thornless semi-erect canes may need support under heavy fruit load. Summer-bearing floricane. Late season. Heat-tolerant. Ripens in early August. Self-pollinating.”

Tomatoes 

I love looking through seed catalogs and just recently I noticed that Seed Savers Exchange offers tomatoes and pepper transplants.  We decided that this year we would skip growing tomatoes from seed and instead order them as transplants. This was super exciting since you won’t know which varieties are included until they are shipped. It was such a cool surprise! Here is a list of the varieties we received.

Amish Paste

Brandywine

Cherokee Purple

German Pink

Italian Heirloom

Mexico Midget

Seeds

We also ordered seeds for

Purple de Milpa Tomatillo

Traveler Strain Jalapeño

Gigantea Poblano Pepper

Snow’s Fancy Pickling Cucumber

Hearts of Gold Melon

Epazote

I have to admit that our seedlings are late this year. They took a while to germinate but they are doing much better now that is warming up.

After visiting beautiful gardens during our trip in Mexico, I got the itch to renovate our backyard. I really wanted a cozy space where we could lounge and relax. Mexico is known for having beautiful courtyards where people spend a lot of time relaxing, dining and hosting and I really wanted to recreate that feeling in our house.

In spring of 2016, we removed three trees that were sitting near the retaining wall. I hate cutting trees down but these were very close to the house and needed to go.

We also spent nearly all of our summer removing a trench of rocks that were at the back of our property.  This was definitely one of the most challenging and daunting parts of this project since it was difficult to carry them down the stairs.  We posted an ad on craigslist for free rocks and we probably gave away half of them; the remainder we had to haul ourselves.

We also built the raised beds at the beginning of the summer but we had such a hot and dry summer last year  that we we didn’t do much else.

Here they are, all built and stacked in our back patio.

During the fall,  Bill moved the blueberry trees, removed the grass and tilled the areas where the raised beds were supposed to go, and installed an irrigation systems for the garden beds. We also installed a small pergola and the raised beds, added gravel in the garden area, planted creeping raspberry in the retaining wall and a hedge of baby Jade boxwoods.

Oh man, I can’t believe how much we did. It makes me tired just thinking about it.  At the time, that picture was a “total” make over. Everything looked so different but looking back at it  now, the yard looks so bare.

We originally thought we could just pop the old treads off, add the new risers and the new treads and call it a day but after removing the carpet we realized that the treads were built into the trim. And after some research, we realized that we had to retrofit the new treads. This meant cutting the bull nose off, patching the trim and installing the treads on top of the existing ones.

Like I mentioned here, Bill has been busy removing the carpet

taking off the padding, nail strips and cutting the bull nose off of the treads.

I have been busy removing a gazillion staples.

Bill has also been actively building the treads.  Which means turning pieces of lumber like these

to pre-treads like these

He has also matched the stain to our existing laminate floors

So here is what we have left

• Finish building the funky treads where the stairs turn
• Rout the edges
• Sand treads
• Stain & seal treads
• Cut and paint risers
• Patch holes on baseboards along the stairs
• Paint the baseboard along the stairs
• Install them

So once again the house is chaotic. We currently have exposed stairs with staples that need to be removed, there is dust EVERYWHERE, and while this is a sign of progress I have to admit that the chaos and dust does become overwhelming. This happens on every big undertaking we take, so we just remind ourselves about those occasions and the joy and satisfaction that those chaotic, dusty, overwhelming projects bring to us once they are finished. So don’t get me wrong, I am super excited, it is as if I am 90% excited and 10% overwhelmed with dust. That is totally normal, right?

But before we move on to the stairs part of the floor project let me tell you what we did this weekend. Ready?

So on Sunday, Bill installed all of the shoe mold. Which means big pieces like this one

and little pieces like these

Please don’t pay attention to our dingy baseboard. They need to be repainted but we are not quite ready to open THAT can of worms just yet.  I mean it is cracked a little, it has to be, because we have to paint the trim on the stairs before the treads are installed but we are just not ready to think about painting the trim in the living spaces beyond that.

For now, we have painted the shoe mold in our bedroom and in the office since those baseboard did not need to be repainted. We have also installed crown molding in the guest bedroom and in the guest bathroom. So our plan is to paint both the walls and all the trim in the guest bedroom next. I have even picked a color, woo hoo! Picture me doing a happy dance because Paint + Me = L.O.V.E.

Oh also, yesterday I removed the strip of wall paper in the guest bedroom and I plan on writing about my experience soon. I know so much to write, so much to do and so little time. I better get busy!

Enjoy the video

We chose laminate floors for the upstairs.  They are a nice rich dark brown “hand-scraped” laminate floors. The color is close enough to what we already have on the main level and we are extremely pleased with them.

It took about 4 days to install the floors. Here is the breakdown,

• Bedroom – less than a day

• Landing – One and half days for this tiny little area!

This was definitely the hump of the project.  This area has sooooo many angles and countless door jams.  Okay, maybe I am exaggerating a bit, but those suckers added so much time to this project that you’d think there were at least a few thousands.

• Office – less than a day

The office also had its challenges. See, we had already installed laminate flooring before we installed the bookcases and this meant that before we could install the new floor we had to take the old floor out. It was definitely not an easy task; We had to “lift” the cabinets up just enough to get the weight off the cabinets so that we could slide the old flooring out but thankfully it wasn’t too terrible and we were able to get all off the flooring out without any major damage. I wish I had pictures but I was too busy helping Bill that I completely forgot!

As you can imagine, the other issue was to install the new flooring under the cabinets. Before we begin the installation, we thought that we could just install the floors up to the cabinets and save some flooring so that later on if we needed to remove the cabinets we could “patch” in the floors.

Luckily,  after removing the old floors we had just enough wiggle room to slide the base out to install the new floors.

Notice how we took the base out

Although the cabinets were screwed into the wall, they started to sag due to lack of support so we literally had to grab my car jack and jack the cabinets up so that we could slide the base back underneath the cabinets. It was crazy but it all worked out and the cabinets are safe and sound, phew!

• Guest Bedroom- less than a day

As I am was typing this, we are were installing the last part of the bedroom, and I innocently typed “this is the easy part since its a rectangular room” so of course I ended up jinxing us!  It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. We kept having to re-adjust the floors because they were shifting and we almost ran out of flooring.

…I learned my lesson though!

We could not be more happy with the results. Yes we had to spend our anniversary installing floors which is obviously less than ideal, but the fact of the matter is that we are extremely lucky to be able to this. Not everyone has the ability, or the money, or the time to spend their thanksgiving break embellishing their home so I am extremely grateful for this.

So for now we are just enjoying our floors and recharging for what is next.

To Do List

• Install the stair treads
• Paint the raisers
• Install shoe mold

• cleaning under the washer and dryer
• cleaning blinds
• cleaning baseboards
• cleaning windows/doors
• cleaning the sliding door track
• AND cleaning this dirty old ugly ceiling

This ugly thing is what started it all. Admittedly, it was waaaay over due for a cleaning and when a couple of balloons got caught in it we were forced to tackle this dreaded task.

I had already planned on spray painting the blades and gold accents white in hopes of making it “blend in.” Of course just until we figured out what we wanted to replace it with.  However, once I saw the thing come apart, I realized how bad it looked and how much I want it gone but before I could go any further Bill quickly reminded me that the fan is a very efficient way to keep the air circulating and requested to keep the fan under consideration.

I’ve looked endlessly for some inspiration pictures where a fan fits into the design and I just can’t find one.  I think it is also much more difficult for us because our living room has 17′ ceilings and a fireplace with a mantle that goes all the way up to the ceiling. So, I always feel like the ceiling fan is stealing the show, and not in a good way, from the fireplace and the two-story ceilings.

For now, though, the fan is back up because that is our only source of lighting but this may just be the thing that we sacrifice for design. Don’t judge we’ve all done it! As matter of fact, I’d love to hear what you have sacrificed in the name of design or even fashion.

I was super excited to draw my floor plan with the free online software from floorplanner.com and see the house from a bird’s eye view. It was a bit tricky at first, I think I spent about 4 hours mapping the first floor, but eventually I got the hang of it so I’m hoping that the second floor will go much faster. Speaking of faster, I measured the whole house with this really cool device that uses a laser beam to take measurements. Have you guys every seen it? It was very easy to use!

Oh, question! Is there a formal name for the kitchen eating area? What do you guys call it? When I googled it I found, “kitchen eating area”, “kitchen eat-in area” and “eating area” so it doesn’t seem like there is really an assigned name for that space. Perhaps because its a new concept? Bill & I are always calling it the kitchen table or whatever comes to our head at that moment.

When we purchased our home five years ago the house had no curb appeal. I almost didn’t add it to my list of houses to see. I don’t know if this photo does any justice but the house needed to be painted. There was some major wood rot and the paint was fading big time on the sides of the house. We weren’t also crazy about the front flower bed. Those gorgeous privacy trees were unfortunately planted in the wrong place.  The shrubs were high maintenance.  They grow taller than 10 feet, do people not pay attention to the tag that comes with the plants?, and had to be cut back each year to keep our front porch from disappearing.

BEFORE

I think it was within the first year after we bought the house that we bit the bullet and hired someone to paint the outside of the house.

WITH BROWN FRONT DOOR/SHUTTERS

( Not the best picture to show the after but that is the only pic I have )

We picked our colors from an inspiration picture we found in a Benjamin Moore store.  We loved the color of the siding and the trim but we were not so crazy about the chocolate-colored front door and shutters but decided to leave it alone until we found something else.

That something else came when I saw a house in my mom’s neighborhood that had a purple front door and purple shutters. It was a pretty shade of purple and it really caught my attention because the idea sounded like such a bold move but somehow it just looked good not bold crazy like you would have imagined. Yet, when I mentioned the idea to anyone, including Bill, they automatically thought of Barney and dismissed my idea and called me crazy. But I believed that as long as I stayed far away from Barney purple and stayed closer to a shade of an eggplant we could pull it off.  Bill eventually got on board and so off I went to the paint store to search for the perfect shade of purple.

I bought two samples from Martha Stewart’s paint line that resembled the shade of purple I was after but once we tried the samples, I am guessing because of the bright outdoor light, none of them looked quite as deep and dark as I had hoped. Nonetheless the samples did not resemble Barney and Bill encouraged me not to back out and to go with my gut feeling.  After all if we didn’t like it, we could just paint it back. So with much needed support, I chose Griddle by Martha Stewart and I am so happy I did because I just love the end results! (Thank you Honey!) Funny enough, no one ever notices that the front door is painted purple.

The results encouraged us to finally tackle the front bed. We pulled out the old overgrown shrubs and replaced them with dwarf shrubs and a gorgeous dwarf butterfly bush. The privacy trees were taken out the first year we bought the house and the tree came down that same year due to a storm.

So that is the story of how our house went from this

to this,

Can you spot the yellow Dahlias?. Here is a close up of the front porch

So instead we installed a double rod and hung a sheer fabric for privacy in one and plan to hang a decorative fabric in the other. So far I’ve replaced the blinds in the master bedroom and in the dining room with IKEA’s sheer curtain called Matilda and I adore them. I can’t wait to add the second layer of fabric. It is going to look fantastic!

Check out the progress in both rooms.

MASTER BEDROOM

BEFORE

WIP

Can you see the potential?!

DINING ROOM

BEFORE

(…blinds were broken and during floor installation)

AFTER AZUL BROKE THE BLINDS

OUTSIDE VIEW OF THE BROKEN BLINDS

NOW

Not bad, right?