DIY & Project Update

Though we really enjoy a good DIY project, time just does not allow them to happen very often or very quick. Well, I should say, we do them really, really fast in the window of time we have to do them.  So here is a little recap of what we have in the works…

BEFORE

AFTER

I have been hunting forever to find something to replace that shelf.  I hate that shelf because to be honest, I don't really have anything that fits into those squares.  Then it just ended up being junked up by kid stuff.  So I am loving these cupboards where I can hide all of that.  I think I will maybe add a few more frames to the table and am still on the hunt for a chair (have been for months).  I just read something somewhere about home decoration, it's more of a marathon than a sprint.  I will agree to that.  I'm so darn picky that it takes me forever to find something that I like.  I was a bit nervous about this item to because I ordered it online, luckily it turned out fine.  Keith did not enjoy putting it together:)

OH, A CLOSET??? 

Let's take a look!  I'm super excited about this little project. I added these little shelves first, which was great!  Then I decided this would be a far better place to let the mail and all the in and out junk pile up!  It is no longer on my counter - huge win!!!!  I bought this rack so I could organize kids stuff, coupons, etc.  It could be fancier with fun labels and things, but it works for me.  I LOVE IT!

 

 TREES!

We try and add a couple new things to the yard every year.  It is quite toasty in our backyard so we thought a couple bigger trees would be a good investment.  We picked them out a while ago, but they were just installed last week.  Keith's grandfather passed away this summer and he was a farmer and a big lover of trees and nature, so we thought it would be perfect to plant this tree for him.  It is a red sunset maple and I think it will be beautiful in the fall.

And of course Grandpa Clarence's tree needs a sidekick, so we also planted a beautiful, silk ivory lilac that we can call Grandma' Caroline's tree.  I'm really excited to see how these change through the seasons, I think we will really enjoy them.

Also - we are finally done with the patio!  You are probably thinking that is old news!  However, if you were to ever look close there was a gap along the entire edge (child trap!) that needed seeded.  Keith did that last week as well.   We also added lights and pillar caps this summer too.  So now I need to think of some fun landscaping ideas around it.  The sun killed our orange chairs too - so if anyone has a great recovering idea let me know!

FINALLY - MORE ROOM FOR OUR JUNK!

We would really like to build a shed for our lawnmower / snow blower and the rest of the junk, but realize that would take us a really long time.  So in the short-term we decided to build a little loft in the garage. Luckily we have really high ceilings so you don't really even notice it.  We were able to take a ton of things off the floor and toss up there.  When we were in MN we had a two-car garage, so I though having a three car garage would be plenty big.  Well, a jeep, a riding mower and a bunch of other toys later, things are getting tight! Who knew?  We think we might be able to put the wagon and lots of other toys up here in the winter too, so that will be nice!  Now one of the next big projects on my list is to paint the garage.  This will not be fun.  Why on earth did we paint our garage white?  Good question, I wouldn't have if our builder asked us.

WHAT ELSE IS IN THE WORKS?

• Well, the basement stairway is halfway painted.  Seriously, I started a few weeks ago, haven't touched it.  We need the ladder and Keith to hold it, so that requires after bedtime painting and I am always too tired for that business.
• Staining the deck! After about 5 failed attempts due to weather, Keith finally knocked out the main deck boards.  Then I did a section.  We still have the stairs and some rails.  I told Keith it was his turn.  I just don't enjoy staining decks.  You know when you wish you had a smaller deck, when you are staining it!  Because it sucks! I spent like 2 days powerwashing it just to get ready to stain it.
• I would like to start getting a plan in place for the basement, so we can start exploring costs, contractors and the works.  We are not doing it ourselves.  Maybe some parts, but most we will not.

Major patio progress

Wednesday we had our driveway full of rock and Mark came back and brought it all back to the patio.  Even better - he brought five pallets of pavers to the backyard with a bobcat.  We would have been hating life carrying these big ones to the back.  So again- he is the hero of our DIY project.

Saturday I took the boys to Des Moines to run errands so Keith could work without constant distractions.
My mom was so kind to join me and help me keep the boys entertained because a majority of my stops were returns.  I was super annoyed because I left early -only to learn basically everything opens at 10.
I can probably better explain our trip by all the bathrooms we made visits in:  Babies R Us, Valley West Mall (2x), Jennifer's store and Josephs.  

Keith spent a majority of the day compacting the rock and then leveling the first row of blocks - this part takes FOREVER!! But very important to do right.  So everything else goes much faster once you have that set.  Sunday we were able to get the entire wall up and glued.  We have a couple pieces we still have to cut and are still looking for the right pieces to put on top of the columns.  We are going to hold off gluing the fire pit blocks down until we see how tall it is once we get the rest of the pavers down.  The worst part about this portion was moving the blocks - these ones are SUPER HEAVY!!!  Keith is hurting a bit after moving all these. If I weren't pregnant it would have gone much faster but I don't think it was in my best interest to move those.  So I glued and Keith put down the block.  At least the pavers for the patio are MUCH lighter weight.

This week we need to get sand and then next weekend we will do our best to get all our pavers down.  It will be a bit of a challenge because it is a large area and hard to keep the sand level if we are too slow!  

 

We are thinking it is a bit of a large patio!  No turning back now. It started smaller and somehow ended up bigger!  So hopefully it looks good when we are done.  We are pretty excited to enjoy some evenings around the fire.  Too bad our Russell Ave friends aren't right next door to enjoy.  

 

Making Progress

I would say the hardest part of the patio project is complete!  Digging in the backyard has been giving Keith flashbacks to installing the irrigation system last summer - which will always be known as the worst DIY project ever taken on by the Bormann's.  Mostly because - this might look like dirt, but REALLY, it's much more like CEMENT.  

You have to dig down about 7", which equals A LOT OF DIRT.   Basically, this would not be complete if it weren't for my sister's fiancé, Mark.  Lucky for us he owns a bobcat / rental business and has all the things you really need for building a patio and is also has some super Bobcat Skillz!  He was so kind to meet Keith at our house one afternoon and Keith said it took him about an hour to dig it out.  Even with the Bobcat I'm sure it would have taken Keith a good day to dig it up.  The second thing - look at all that dirt!  They filled two of those trailers.  I was shocked when I saw it - it doesn't look like you could possibly dig up that much dirt.  The sweet thing about this- it was a hydralic trailer so they didn't even have to scoop the dirt back out.  So it is safe to say that if it weren't for Mark, we would be digging this thing until August!  

 

Keith had to hand-dig this small chunk and it probably took him at least 3 or 4 hours.  Finally he started to water it to soften the dirt.  Then we remembered from putting trees in last summer - to make any progress digging in our yard - you need a pickaxe.  Took three stores, but I found one at Home Depot.  Then progress went much quicker! 

So what is next?  This weekend Keith spent time tamping it down and working on leveling it out and making sure it slopes away from our house.  Now we are ready for the rock, which I believe Mark will be helping us out again.  From there we can finish leveling and it will be time to work on the wall / fire pit.  We also need to order the rest of the pavers this week.  Somehow when we squared off the patio we ended up getting an additional pallets worth of pavers larger- oops!  But it is what it is now.  Hopefully I will have more progress to share this week. We are at about 5 weeks until the baby is here!

Crazy Project Lady

Crazy Project Lady - that is probably what my husband calls me.  We have been working hard on the home projects - WE ARE DOWN TO 8 WEEKS.....8 WEEKS!!!  So we need to move on some of these things and we have stuff going on about every weekend in May, so it might be a challenge!  We have knocked out chunks of quite a few projects, but not many are 100% complete so i haven't posted pics.  The cabinets in the garage look great, but still need some organization and shelves.  I'll try and post a pic soon.  The baby room is painted, Keith has been working on hanging window treatments and I've been working on some final touches.


Patio progress has been slow, but I think we are finally making some ground (or digging some up).  Above is how we started - I know, very professional approach.  Hose, blankets, sandbox lid - you are going to want to borrow my supplies!
I was dead set on this seat wall with a seat and Keith finally talked me out of it since one little patio did not make us professionals.  (I still think we could have made it happen) So now we are onto a bit of a different plan.  Since we skipped the seat, we are still doing a wall, but switched to more of a square and will have a square fire pit now.  I think this will be easier and opened us up to more block options.

We finally bought some pavers so we could test out a few ideas and try to get a handle on how many pavers we will need.... A LOT!  So the wall will look a bit like this - on the right is the start of a column.  (FYI - if you are building a patio, Menards has these stones on sale this week.  We are purchasing the patio pavers from Country Landscapes in Ames, but using this for the wall and fire pit.  Did I mention these pavers are REALLY heavy!!! So I guess Keith will be moving all these ones.  

Now for the worst part of this job.... the DIGGING!  Digging 7" down into our clay - cement-like yard.  Keith went ahead and pulled up the sod so we could have a better idea of how it will look.  Tomorrow we are going to try and set some furniture out to make sure we like the size.  Then comes the serious digging and filling with rock and sand.  So more to come on this project.  It will take a while though!

This is a project I am so happy to have off my to-do list.  I have wanted to do this for about a year now.  I wanted to hang some of our favorite pictures of the boys, but I have thousands of pictures and it takes FOREVER to go through them all.  Then I should have put more time into it with a bit more editing and planning the sizes better, but I just wanted to get it done!  I had them printed on Styrene, which is pretty durable and shouldn't curl.  Then I hung them with twine.  I had planned on using a picture hanging wire, but the wire didn't lay as nice.  I wanted to do black/white because of all the color on the wall - but did end up with a glimpse of color in one.  It took me quite a while to get them lined up right.  At first I had them all in a horizontal line - but that was a bit overkill.  It was also a challenge because we are outside most nights, then once the boys are in bed I couldn't work on it.  The boys seem to really like them.  

 

It ended up being too many, so I hung this one behind the door.

 

Here was a quick and easy outdoor project the boys and I knocked out tonight.  We had clematis at our old house and I loved it!  It bloomed about all summer.  It didn't take off well until the second year, but then grew like crazy.  So I wanted to get it planted this summer, in hopes we will see many pretty flowers.

I bought this trellis, but after I jammed it into my SUV and got it home, I realized Keith probably could have built this for a quarter of the cost.  I guess we will say maybe it wouldn't have been the best use of his time right now and move on:)

Of course I had a couple great helpers.  They were impressed by the two snails we found.  And I was happy they didn't pick them up and agreed with me that they were gross!  

 

 

Looks like our trellis is a bit crooked.  

We planted these about two weeks ago, they are a lime green hydrangea.  It is really hard for me to not to attempt to plant more, but I just need to be patient, by next summer they will be quite big and fill up much of this space.  Someday I might add more plantings in this area - but this is as far as I'm taking it this summer!  Now I need to finish the other side.  I bought some grasses, we planted a tree, we just need a few shrubs and a nice day and we will be set!