Let's take a journey back to the days when the Looch and I drove all around Nashville with our new friend slash realtor, Just Joe, searching for *that perfect home* to call our own. William Chance answered that call, and we became the proud owners of....this:
"Oh, it has GREAT potential!"
"A fixer-upper? What FUN!"
Check out the sweet green-house window coming off the kitchen. And the dead tree perilously close to the house. Oh and if you squint really hard in the first picture? Yep, that's a 1950's fridge adorned with Titans stickers and filled with Miller High Life. That Chance, he was a classy guy.
The house was immediately painted, windows replaced, roof re-shingled, lawn mowed, trees trimmed. Fast foward to this summer, herein named "The Summer Heidi Decides She Can Remodel Her Entire Backyard With Only The Help Of Her Parents and Sometimes Maybe Her Brother If He's In A Good Mood. Oh And Home Depot."
First up on the to-do list? Rip out the old, cockroach infested hot tub. Here are some before shots of the porch before we demolition derby-ed it.
(Here's when I grabbed the sledgehammer, climbed up onto that ladder, and released all my pent up rage over the fact that I live alone and Ryan Seacrest isn't here to help although even if he were he'd be too short to do this task but maybe he could stand on the steps and narrate the whole thing. But now that I say that I'd rather have Tom Hanks do that because seriously who WOULDN'T want Hanx - thats how he signs his tweets - narrating your life?)
Oh look! Our neighbors have pretty flowering trees lining their manicured driveway. Bet they're thrilled with THEIR new view.
After that we all retreated into the house and died from heat exhaustion. *Mental note: don't wait until the middle Tennessee heat index is at record highs and the janky thermometer on the porch you're renovating reads in the triple digits to start outdoor projects.
Moving along. The next project was to strip and re-paint the concrete area of the porch. Remember those earlier pictures? Of the nasty brown carpet? Turns out not only was it hideous, it was also infested with fleas. After a particularly brutal battle with those little black jumping beans, the porch was left with exposed concrete and 50-year-old adhesive slathered all over it.
Adhesion primer to the rescue! That magical concoction saved the Looch and I hours of scraping and scrubbing and ended up covering the surface beautifully.
And....MAGIC! A coat of grey porch paint, and that project was checked off the list. Notice the ground at the bottom of the steps. Keep that in your moustache and save it for later.
OK so here we are, a few weeks later. Remember the ground at the bottom of the porch steps that was overgrown with crabgrass and old pavers? This is the part in the story where I woke up on Saturday around 11am and decided I wanted to rent a tiller from Home Depot to work on the walkway. But then I remembered that I a.) don't know how to work a tiller and b.) couldn't do it if I tried. Just when I had them convinced I was ready to take a break on the projects, the phone rings and - TRICKED YA! - the parentals were swindled into another project.
Good thing Dad spent his summers on that farm in the Motherland, right??
Weed blocker was laid down...
Edging hammered in...
Pavers placed and spaced. Pea gravel spread...
And why not? Let's tackle that weird area in the corner of the house that used to have a dead tree planted there. It'll be SUPER FUN and NOT AT ALL difficult. The Looch'll break out her jingers. (If you don't get that joke, you clearly don't live at my house where the only channels we watch are Comedy Central, G4, and Spike. Oh yeah, and E!. Obviously).
Walkway: Complete. Another check mark!
This weekend is a long one - Labor Day - so we're moving to the other side of porch and re-decking where the hot tub used to be. Not naming names, but I know two people who will be THRILLED when this marathon of projects is over.
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