Let The Fun Begin!

After reading some of the comments, I think I have some of you confused about these pictures that I have been posting. The work that these pictures show is what we have already done since we bought the house in April, 2004. With that cleared up let's walk through the room additions to the house.

This picture shows what is now the living room. J.D. took the two kitchen windows out and we left that open to the living room. The screen and porch doors came off to the porch and a solid wall went up there with a door that opens to the porch from the living room.

This is another view of what is now the living room with steps down to the master bed room.

This is a view from the front. Throwing in an interesting tidbit here. Before J.D. started construction on this addition, pretty much of what is now our living room was once the deck. As I was sweeping the deck off one evening, I caught a glimpse of something move under the deck. I was pretty certain that it was a snake. I called for J.D.and he confirmed that yes, it was a snake. He got his Brier knife and jabbed it down between the wooden slats of the deck several times. The snake kept moving around until we couldn't see it any more. I figured J.D. might have nipped it a few times and it had slithered away, perhaps back to the woods. The next morning we found it laying dead in the yard about 50 feet from the deck. It was a copperhead and had probably taken refuge under the deck when the bulldozing was going on.

J.D. got the frame work done for the walls and waited for Chris to bring a couple of his friends by after work to help raise it.

From this point on it surprised me how fast things moved along. Of course part of the reason for that was most likely the fact that once J.D. starts something, he stays on it like a man possessed.

In 2003 J.D. retired and we moved to Ohio from Louisiana. Our original plan was to travel and live in a camper for a few years and see the country. So a couple of years before he retired we decided to buy a camper, park it at a camper park and live in it to make sure we could deal with living in such close quarters ( figuring we would have the camper paid off by retirement time, that way too). We did fine living in the close quarters.

I don't even remember now why we decided to buy property and settle down in the first place instead of traveling. The fact that this house was quite small didn't bother us. After living in a camper for a couple of years the original size of this house felt huge to us.

Things started feeling tight when the grand girls would come to spend the weekend. We had one bedroom at the time and a very very small living room. The girls took turns with where they slept. All except for Britt of course. She laid claim on sleeping in the recliner. With that settled Alley Oop and T~Bear took turns sleeping on the couch and sleeping on a pallet on the floor. When we packed 6 adults and 4 children into the house it added up to needing some addition work to the house.

This is a side view shot of the house from the parking area. Since this picture was taken I have painted the pergola brown so it wouldn't blend in with the house. The small building off to the right of the pergola is what we call the bunk house. From what I understand the previous owners built it to be a wood shed and before it was completed they decided to make it an office/sleep over spare room instead. Since we moved in it has been a storage area, but we are slowly sorting through and thinning out what we had stored there. Hopefully someday it will once more be an office area.

An up and coming project will be to add a side deck from the pergola to the back of the house. With this idea in mind that is why J.D. added a single french door leading outside from the master bedroom.

In this picture you see the finished (Did I say finished???) product of J.D.'s labor. I helped with the staining, the painting and holding things in place while he attached them but the fact remains, he hammered every nail that went into this addition. The man amazes me.

Don't wander off too far because I'll be sharing some more photos with you in the next few posts. Until then have a great weekend.

Time For Grass

The house and yard looked so much better once the bulldozer had done it's work. Now comes the fun part. It was then time to plant that grass seed.

I even found a spot to plant a small flower bed in the front yard.

Planting the grass seed wasn't a simple matter of throwing the seed out and letting the rain and sunshine do the rest of the work. (Laughing at the thought of something being done simply around here). Before the seed could be planted all of that dirt had to be raked, groomed and smoothed out.

This wasn't a small job either because it also involved picking rocks (most times big rocks) out of the dirt and chopping roots with the hatchet that were sticking up out of the dirt.

I couldn't begin to tell you for how many months we picked up and dug rocks out of the yard. I had begun to think we hadn't created an ordinary yard. No, I was thinking we had created one heck of a BIG Rock Garden.

But look at the end results. We have Grass!! Pretty Green Grass coming up every where we looked.

With the yard cleared and grass growing where once there were rocks, brush, tree stumps and briars it is time to look around and decide what our next project will be.

No problem...... We can do that! We needed to find a solution to our laundry situation. If I had a preference I would prefer to have a wringer washer, but as hard as we tried to find one, there just was none to be had in this area. I tried going the laundry mat route, but that was a 30 minutes drive one way to the closest one. I would sooner haul the clothes to a creek and beat them with rocks than to deal with an hour drive to do laundry. There was no place in this house to hook up a washer or to plug in a dryer. Again, no problem...... J.D. got his tools together, some material and enclosed a section of the porch in the back. He ran the electric, fixed me up with a water source and all of a sudden there was a laundry room.

Next came our plan to add a bigger living room and a master bedroom on to the house. J.D. got on his computer and drew up the plans on his Auto Cad program. That meant doing away with the existing side deck and the side entrance to the porch . Guess what!!! No problem, this is just another example of what this talented man that I am married to can do. Until he got this small deck built, he had put up a few temporary steps from the porch. There were no hand rails and when the grand daughters would come out to stay over, poor little T~Bear was so unsteady and shaky going up and down them. The next time she came out after J.D. had finished the deck and steps, I took her straight to the deck to show her what Grandpa had made for her. She took it all in with wide eyes and a great big smile and said. "You know Grandma, my Grandpa is a Genius!" I certainly agree with her on that. He is that and so much more.

Tomorrow we will stand back and watch the room addition become a reality. Until then wishing all a blessed Friday!