The Great Outdoors: Fence Addition Edition

Do y'all realize that we'll set our clocks forward in two weeks? That makes me more excited than that one time Chris brought me home a Kinder chocolate bar and my toothy smile knocked my eyes across each other for four whole days. And you'd think i'd be like, "Aw man, one hour less of sleep," but i've got kids so that one hour means dick to me; i've functioned on way less. I'ma do things with that one extra hour of sunlight. I'MA DO THINGS.

Like, yardwork, for example. I love doing yardwork. It's something that stays, you know what i mean? If i clean inside, i give it one hour until the kids rip it to shreds and i have to try to talk myself out of hanging from a doorknob. But outside? What're they gonna do? Throw dirt on it? Please.

Normally i like to do yardwork alone so i can punish Chris for getting full nights of sleep while i was up with the babies by making him stay inside and listen to my oldest ask him why he's not Momma. So i'm glad we got the big outdoor structures out of the way before we had kids so Chris could work his magic out there (i recognize fantastic talent when i'm married to it). Because it if were up to just me to build a fence, I'd just set up parking cones and call it good.

Onward. Before the kitchen overhaul(s), before the bathrooms, before everything except for the 67 gallons of paint that are holding this house up, there was the fence. Ah, memories...

Take a look into our backyard when we first bought the place:

Things to take away from this pic: No fence, no patio, deck made of shit, drainage cutting through yard

And here's the side of the house. We're very lucky to have an end-unit and thus a side yard.

Not pictured: My brother and i had previously removed an evergreen tree that reached up to 3/4 the house height and gutted out the ridiculous amounts of  groundcover that was against the house and extended all the way out to where you see the dirt/grass line.

The first step was to gather the wood.

The second step was the dig the post holes. We did rent a post hole digger, but it kept getting caught on enormous underground boulders/dinosaur bones making it more trouble than it was worth. So, digging by hand it was. This is me at my best wearing Chris' shorts and a wife beater. Please invite me to your wedding.

See that shovel? Shortly after this pic was taken, i stepped into a hole with my right leg while my left leg buckled underneath me to land on the sharp edge of that shovel. It cut to the bone, and instead of stitches, we just put a bandaid and some Neosporin on it. You should see the scar. And no, i'm not selling the rights to that story. It's all mine.

After building up the yard & moving the drainage over, we started to frame out the fence.

Then, board-on-board, we put it together.

(Those bushes on the left are no longer there.)

Derek Zoolander made an appearance.

And here's a shot from around the side of the house. That's a lot of clay. That clay cray.

Now that we have the fence up and we just need to cap it all off, I feel comfortable showing you comparison pictures.

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The tree on the right has since been lined and mulched, and a small trellis now holds the Columbine.

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 We mulched since this part of the yard gets trampled a lot and it's hard to grow grass in the shade.

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Much, much better.

The Crider Kitchen: An Evolution

I know you're dying to see more pictures of my kitchen. I sense these things, and i'm here to oblige. I hope you're ready for my Pictures folder to vomit all over the internet.

I don't have any pictures of the kitchen right when we moved in so you'll just have trust me when i say it was painted dirt brown with a big, dark, wooden valance/shelf right above the window and no blinds much to the dismay of my neighbors. (I was born without discretion, you see. It's my cross to bear.) There was also no hardware on the original-to-the-house cabinets. Lucky for the sellers, we're DIYers and we knew that regardless of the cosmetics - which can be always be changed - this place had pretty good bones, and that's ultimately what you want in a home. Write that down.

The pictures i DO have of the "beginning" kitchen start right after we painted it yellow and updated the light fixtures. Ok, almost all the light fixtures...we did end up replacing that hideous fan a short while later. This is also the only really good picture i have of our mustard yellow laminate countertops. 

The dining set belonged to my lovely great grandmother. It's now in storage as we thought it to be too big for the space.

A year later, we re-did our cabinets and countertops. Our cabinets were terribly painted; you could see brush strokes, there were drips, etc. Had new cabinets been in our budget, we would have gone for that. But they weren't, so we made do with what we had and just painted them.

The pic below is more proof that i (1) can get my hands dirty and (2) can get a really good tan if i want to. And yes, that's normally-transparent me in the pic below. This must have been the first year we went to the beach without children, when i was able to spend some time on the actual beach, thus allowing for the aforementioned tan.

We went with laminate charcoal countertops. Sexy, versatile, and within budget.

Shortly after this project, we repainted. Took it down a notch from dandelion yellow to a nice seafoam green. (Ha...The Curse of Seafoam...) Needless to say, it took us a minute to find our footing on the color front. (Understatement.)

 Then we re-did the floors on the entire mid-level of the house.

In an attempt to get a dining room table that made more sense in this space, we bought pedestal table from Ikea.We later Craigslisted it since it was a terrible piece of crap.

We took a long break after painting it seafoam and suffering through that round table. The next project happened during Christmastime in 2011: new cabinets, granite countertops, and a backsplash. For those of you that bear with my posts on Facebook, you might have already seen these pics.

Here are the new bottom cabinets sans countertops:

Once the granite countertops were installed (thus being the first thing we didn't do ourselves as it was literally impossible), we dismantled the top cabinets so we could hang the new ones. 

We ended up buying lots of backsplash sample. Subway tiles, porous stone, glass, etc. We ended up with this lovely mix that we got at Lowe's.

Once chosen, we dropped our kid off at the grandparents for a night and got to work. We knocked it out in just a few hours as we had tiled three other rooms before this one and weren't strangers to the process. I know my way around a wetsaw if you know what i'm sayin'. ...No but seriously.

 Normally i think it'd be dumb to wear a mask during this project, but i was five months pregnant with my second at the time and wasn't taking any chances. Better safe, yes?

Oh, and we also repainted (again!) to the lovely Chocolate Froth color you'll still see today.

The next projects, which you can read all about here, were the scarf curtain and the pantry doors where we went from floor-to-ceiling mirrored sliding doors...

 To custom-made bi-fold doors:

And yet another table. Third time's the charm.

Moving on to the most recent huge changes which i'm sure you're all familiar with, where we halved this wall, stained the banister, and repainted the hallway.

 That turned our kitchen into this:

So, here's what i should have done at the beginning of this post:

Surely, we're done with the kitchen. Right? ...RIGHT!?

The Reveal

Now that the wall is finished, lets clutter it up!

Ummm...our junction box covers have to be special ordered, so...you get the idea.

There's a ridiculous amount of light now. And i just love it.

"There's so much more room to do activities!"

Welcome home. 

Let's take a look back at our progress:

The phone jack is the only difference between this pic and the two pics above.

And you're not going to get rid of me that easily. A neighbor requested that i embarrass myself and post pictures of the condition of our kitchen shortly after move-in. So, grab your beer goggles and stay tuned.