Out with the old!

Last weekend, we had a garage sale. Above is the "before" photo of Max's clothes, shoes, hats, socks, etc. that he wore during the first two years of his life. It was SHOCKING for me to see it all. How could one little person possibly have needed all that? Two boxes of shoes??? He has tiny feet that don't grow! And we have two more big bags of gender-neutral clothes (not pictured here) that we put away for baby Lucy...

There was a part of me that was afraid to go through it all, thinking I'd probably get all sentimental and teary-eyed as I remembered the pajamas he puked on at my sister's or the outfit he wore when he threw his very first temper-tantrum. But sorting through it all reminded me that I am not a pack-rat and I just don't get sentimental about "things," so there were few tears. In fact, it was a lot of fun looking at his little outfits, thinking about how far he's come, and knowing that we should be so proud of the person he's becoming. And it was somewhat therapeutic to begin to clear out some space in our home--and our family--for our little girl. Just the first step in getting ready for the changes to come...

Porch Painting Progress

Lately, we've had a renewed zeal for home improvement (ha!) and some cooperative weather, so we've been tackling some of those outdoor projects we've otherwise put off for too long. In particular, we've paid a lot of attention to our porches. If you'll recall, we reconstructed both our back porch and our front porch last year. Our contractor used treated lumber for all of our new framing, so we had to wait a bit for the wood to cure before painting. After staring at raw, unfinished wood for a year, we decided* enough was enough and it was time to pretty things up a bit.

*Okay, by "we" I mean "Kendra." She seriously kicked me in my butt to get back aboard the home improvement bandwagon. I have spent the last year content with the current state of the Country Estate, which I would describe as thoroughly adequate. She, on the other hand, is always planning the next move--which is not a bad thing--and has no contentment with "thoroughly adequate." I've had my come-to-Jesus moment, though, and am back to work and fired up to get things done around the house. Until Mizzou football season starts, anyway.

While we haven't quite finished the painting on the porches, we are making solid progress. Some of the painting on the back porch will have to wait to accommodate our new garden, but we should knock out the bulk of it by next weekend. Here is a shot of the stairs and decking leading down to the patio:


Everything in white is newly painted. Okay, I know that doesn't look like much, but it is a pain to paint those damn spindles, and I'm glad that job is done. We will be painting the steps and floor a red color to match our front porch, which, by the way, now looks like this:


I just realized we didn't get a good "before" shot of the front porch, but let me tell you--there is a huge difference between now and then. Most of the stone columns you see in the picture above were buckling out, causing major structural issues. Due to this issue--or perhaps causing it--there was a giant hole in the ground under the porch, which I'm sure just pooled water, causing more movement, and further destabilizing the area. I'm no structural engineer, but that's my theory and it makes sense to me. To remedy the situation, our contractor propped up the porch roof with lumber, and then tore out the rest of the porch structure. He cleaned and re-laid the stones, rebuilt the frame under the floor (which was pretty well rotted and bounced when you tried to walk on it), and replaced/reused the old floorboards. He also filled in the hole under the porch to get water away from the house. The result is a porch that is structurally sound, safe to walk on, and pleasing (we think) to look at. Last week, after the powerwashing, we were able to finish painting the raw wood. Now, all that's left is to put on some lattice around the bottom and plant a few shrubs. We're crossing our fingers to get that finished by the end of July.

Powerwashing Momma

Just because I'm nearly 6 months pregnant doesn't mean I'm not willing to get my hands a little dirty (or wet).





I spent the better part of last Sunday afternoon powerwashing the front and back porches and some of our window trim in preparation for painting (hopefully this weekend if it stays dry). The fella from Sherwin Williams SWORE to me that the paint I bought was "self-priming" (in fact, he refused to sell me primer), so two coats should do it. Then we can put up the lattice on the front porch and FINALLY start landscaping. I also washed the back patio so we can re-level some of the stones and sweep some new sand into the spaces between the pavers.



And, of course, I also took time out to play with my favorite little guy!

Happy Fourth of July.

Joe Dirt

Hello? Is anyone still there? Anyone still reading? If you are, I salute you, and apologize for not posting for MONTHS. I'll spare you another "we're going to resurrect the blog" speech for now. That's the intention, but that was also my intention when I last posted in January. For now, I'll just bring you up to speed on the latest activity with the house.

As you can see from the opening pic, we're spreading some dirt. Correction, Joe's spreading some dirt while I sit on the patio and blog. He doesn't want a 5 1/2 months pregnant lady hauling around a shovel and wheelbarrow, despite my protests. So I guess that brings us to the first update--we're expecting another baby in October. And it's a GIRL! Maybe my nesting instinct is kicking in already, but I've got a lot of plans for this house over the summer...

A few weeks ago, we had some old concrete removed from the yard and a couple of new walkways poured--one in front and one in back. That's where the dirt work comes in...filling in the holes and around the new concrete.




They look great and were MUCH needed. And after never planting ANYTHING in my life, I have even tried my hand at a tiny bit of landscaping and planted a very small garden outside the back door (more on my adventures in gardening in a future post). It is finally getting to the point where we can sit back in our new patio furniture and enjoy our yard!



So, what else is on tap this summer? Painting the front and back porches, installing lattice around the front porch, new trim in the downstairs bathroom, a bit more landscaping and a LOT more dirt. Oh yeah--and Joe has taken out one of our downstairs windows to begin his ambitious project of restoring all the original windows in the house. I'll let him tell you about that later...

Max is 2!

 

This post is a little late, but our little Max turned 2 on the 11th! We had a FUN celebration with almost 20 family members. Lots of food, cake, toys for Max, AND an American Idol Karaoke tournament for the grown-ups after Max went down for his nap.

Hard to believe that this time last year, Max was still crawling and saying probably only 10 words or so, and we were packing up our loft to start our new life here in Lathrop.

Seems so long ago, yet just like yesterday. What a difference a year makes...

Falling back...

So, Peaches readers (if there are any left). I'm going to pretend it hasn't been three months since we've posted on this blog. We had a TON of work done on the house over the summer, but did little ourselves. Joe started his business in July, and--in August--I added a day to my workweek to start providing PT services for Lathrop School District (in part to cover the cash flow deficit from the extensive house restoration and business start-up costs). Frankly, we're short on time--both to work on the house and keep up with the blog--and we've run out of money. So there won't be any major restoration projects on the table until the piggy bank fills back up (hopefully this spring, although Joe is less optimistic). In the meantime, I hope to keep up with the blog, but I will warn you in advance that it may be less about working on the house and more about living our life here in a small town and surviving our first full winter in our old home.

Which brings me to the real purpose of this post. The changing seasons. This afternoon, I walked outside and realized I couldn't see our yard anymore (see above pic). Before this place, I've never had a yard, let alone a tree. Who knew they dropped this many leaves in the fall? I feel like there's no purpose to raking leaves--just let nature take its course and let them decompose in the yard. Joe says it is what good neighbors do to keep leaves from blowing around in other people's yards. I don't know if Joe's right or not, but I do know that we don't own a rake. And I haven't noticed him rushing off to the hardware store to buy one. Do I really need to rake these leaves? Maybe it's another one of those jobs best hired out to a neighborhood kid. He'll just have to bring his own rake.

A tiny do-it-yourselfer

 

 

Before and After

Last Thursday, we hosted a house party for Kay Barnes at our home (yes, Joe and I are raging Democrats, but you can be assured that this is a bipartisan blog and we won't hold anything against our Republican readers). The nice thing about it--other than raising over $1000 to get dirty-dog Sam Graves out of office--was the compliments we got on the house, many from people who were familiar with the house and the shape it was in before we bought it. As I was telling Mayor Barnes that we used to live in a new loft in downtown Kansas City (which is where, incidentally, we saw firsthand what an excellent leader she is--now I promise I'm done with the political rants), one of our friends laughed about how funny it was that we decided to move from a 1000 square foot loft that required basically no DIY skills (or home maintenance for that matter) to a 2500 square foot DIY challenge. It made me laugh, too, but also made me think about how far we've come since we somewhat naively purchased this place. I think it's easy to get so wrapped up in the to-do lists that we forget how much we've done and how much we've grown and learned here. And since July 31 was our six-month anniversary of living in the house--and because I haven't posted for so long (sorry!) that I am backed up with pictures to share--I thought it would be fitting to create a sort of before and after "gallery" of what we've done so far! And as tempting as it might be to pepper the photos with captions about what still needs to be done, I won't. Let's just enjoy...

Our Home: A Before and After Web Album

New Job, or, Why We Didn't Post for Two Months

I figure I owe the loyal Peaches readers out there an explanation as to why the site went dormant for the better part of two months. On June 30, I quit my job as a fancy-pants lawyer for a large Kansas City law firm, and on July 7 opened my own law practice in Lathrop. So from about May 1 until July 1, pretty much all of our free time was spent getting all the ducks in a row to have the practice ready for business when the doors opened.

I am definitely excited about this new chapter in our lives. Working in the community in which I live is an important thing to me, and I hope that my new business can contribute to the Lathrop community. If any of you in Metro KC or Northwest Missouri have legal needs, well...you know what to do.

Return of Peaches

And we're back! It's been a while since we've posted, so we'll try to break up the progress into digestible "chunks" so the blog posts don't get too overwhelming.

The last update concerned the back room, which had just been returned to its former glory as a porch from its previous existence as a laundry room. Here is the porch, now that it has been painted and furnished:


Note the fresh coat of white paint, the painted gray floor, and the gray trim. We also found quite a score with the furniture -- $200 for the set at World Market. Needless to say, we absolutely love the back porch, especially Kendra. She would hang out there 24/7 if we put a bed out there.

While the progress on the back porch has been pretty cool, by far the most work has been on the back yard. The plan was to have a new patio poured, and we were leaning towards a stenciled concrete to make it look like a cobblestone patio. But before the patio could be poured, there would have to be a significant amount of old concrete to be broken up. There was also a large concrete block capping something, likely either a well or a cistern, and that would have to be addressed, too.

Well, nothing is ever easy when it comes to home improvement, and it took us f-o-r-e-v-e-r to coordinate with the concrete guy. Towards the end, we were getting the distinct impression that he was jerking us around. We didn't really appreciate that, so we cut him loose. While this threatened to throw us off our arbitrary schedule, we were prepared with a plan B -- we had a quote for a paver patio from our handyman extraordinaire, Art.

The first step was to break up the old concrete, and use the debris to fill the well/cistern/whatever. There is not, unfortunately, a clear photo of the back yard "before," but this photo gives you a flavor of what we (and by "we" I mean "Art") were dealing with.

In the picture, you can see the edge of the concrete cap on the right. When our contractor cut into it, it turned out that it was an old well lying underneath that concrete. It was one of those old stone wells (still spring-fed) that looked like it belonged in Buffalo Bill's basement:

It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.

With the well filled, the patio was laid in no time. We used a basic 6"x9" concrete "stone" paver laid in a sand base. This shot from our back stairs shows off the patio fairly well.

And for the parting shot, a quick contrast of the "before" and "after" on the back elevation on our home. First, the "before:"
And then the "after:"