Look What My Honey-Did!

Every summer, Adam takes time off and tends to things around the house. It is really nice! What a lucky lady I am.

About two weeks ago, Adam began his honey-do week :D Here's what happened:

1. New stoop

The concrete dudes showed up to replace our stoop. Finally! My honey supervised and documented. Here are some pics:

The breakdown of the stoop:

A pile of rubble:

Since they were out, Adam had them look at some other concrete behind our garage that needed some TLC...

And made the executive decision to have them replace a few of the back pieces too. Here they are, forming the front stoop:

And, the work in the back:

And pretty new concrete:

Here's the new stoop:

And a week later, after my honey painted the rails white:

Nice job Adam!

2. New foyer tile

I've been wanting to get new tile for the foyer, so my honey phoned up his cousin Jay, who you might remember from the shower tiling in our upstairs bathroom.

We picked out some tile from Home Depot and Jay came over to beautify. Here are some pics...

Old, smelly tile out (Can tile smell? I think it can. It smelled funky when you walked in our front door. Like hot crayons):

New tile going down:

Adam also got assistance on putting our trim back up:

The finished tile!

Close up:

Awesome job Jason!

3. The deck!
This is a biggie. You might remember that last year, around this time, Adam stained the deck for my birthday. Well, for some reason, through the winter, the stain didn't hold. Adam decided he would try again. This time, we decided on an opaque red stain. And, this time, Adam's bro Joe was roped in to help.

The power washing:

A long day of painting:

And voila!

Red deck, from the yard:


I was afraid with the red siding, that it might be a little too much red. But, I like it. Way to go honey! And Joey too!

4. Tire trampled grass
I was avoiding looking at our side garden because the tire tracks from the neighbors cars made me sad. My honey offered to lay new sod. Isn't he grand?

Sod is hard work.

Digging out the tire tracks:

After:

And this past weekend (working on getting those brown patches in):

5. Bookshelf
Adam continues to work on the display of his pride and joy. Here is a beautiful red shelf he built to maximize the space on top of his comic drawerboxes. I think he might love this shelf more than me.


6. Off topic: The LEDGE

You might have heard about The LEDGE at the Sears Towers... excuse me, Willis Tower. As you might know, I work in the building and last week, building tenants were given a sneak peak. Pretty freaky.

Here are a couple of shots:

I'm floating!

More soon --
C + A
(4780)

Yard and Garden Update!

Hey Party People!!!

T-minus 1 day to demolition! Holy cow! I am so exciting I can barely contain myself! Woo hoo!

We WILL send off the old kitchen in the most appropriate way. However, first some updates on our Grub problem!

FRONT YARD:
Well, I think it is safe to say --- the Grub killer worked!

Here is a picture of our front yard about 10 days after seeding:


Some little grassies are coming up:


Here is the yard yesterday, about 6 weeks later:


Very nice! We do have a fair amount of weeds in there, which we will try to remedy this week.

So, props to the 69% of you (9 folks -- ha ha) who voted in our poll that our grass would come back!

Also, FYI:
For those of you in Illinois at least, about this time of year -- June 15 -- is when you should grub protect your yard (according to the nursery here in town). See, beetles come, lay eggs, then next year, you have grubs and your yard is kaput. So, we will be putting down grub killer tomorrow!

FLOWER BED:
Remember last year, in July, when we planted the perennial garden along the side of our house? Here it is, at the beginning of June, after I cleaned it up:


And here it is today! Unfortunately, our peony already bloomed, so you don't see it here:


But here are some of the other beginnings of flowers:

Two of our shrub roses didn't make it through winter, so I replaced those last week. More pictures to come.

Another small tidbit: As mentioned, when Adam finishes events at work, he usually will bring me a flower arrangement from the event. Here is the latest, a FREAKY HUGE basket filled with house plants:


I am now desperately attempting to keep the plants alive. Wish me luck -- I have a purple thumb. Also, to show the size of the basket, see Exhibit A below:


That's all for now folks!

GRUB HUB!

In year one, we had the attack of the carpenter ants. This year: you guessed it -- Grubs! And maybe, a mole.

Our front yard had been looking pretty sickly. So, we took a picture and brought it into the local Nursery:


The Nursery guy said: "That grass is dead and it ain't comin' back."

He said we probably had grubs. When we described the ground's bumpy texture, as if someone had been digging it up , he said "You probably have a mole. Moles work close to the surface and are looking for meat".

Apparently, to moles, meat=grubs. Hooray for us. Moles are freaky.


So, a day of shopping turned into a day of yard work. We collected our supplies and set out to digging up the front yard. Boy, was it good times. I got the luxurious job of raking out the clumps of dead grass while A overturned the soil (eventually A helped declumpify).


Sure enough, we's gots grubs. Yum.

Here I am after the discovery of one of several bazillion grubs:


Grubs are pretty gross looking. For awhile I was collectin' my grub friends in a bucket, to see how many I could collect. After hours of this, I got sick of that game (not to mention, disgusted) and dumped my squirmy buddies in a bag of dead grass. GRUBS: you made the bed, now lie in it!! Darn you grubs!

Three grueling hours and six Advil later, the yard was successfully dug up, seeded, grub protected and fertilized. Here it is, after:


Now it's just water and wait.

We should see some new grass in about 10 days, if this works. Fingers crossed! The neighbors are probably so glad we finally did something about our disgraceful yard.

In kitchen news, today our shopping plans commenced and we were off to the tile shop to select backsplash tile. Jamie the tile lady helped us pick out a super contemporary tile that I am pretty pleased with. Here is a picture of it in a sample room (tile behind toliet area):



Here is a close up of the mosaic:


We will do the top half of the backsplash in the above mosaic and the bottom in big blocks of the same tile, to save our budget:


With the wizardry of Photoshop, I have created this picture of what our finishes will look like together:


Pretty sweet. We are getting excited.

No permanent decision on the floor, but we are thinking it might be this:


We know we are getting a Wilsonart floor, which is a floating, tile floor. This color is mostly grey with a little bit of warmth in it. I think it will compliment the other finishes well.

I think that is about all for now... we'll be back in at least ten days with an update on our grass (see NEW POLL above)!! Wish us luck!

C + A

PS: Still waiting to find out the answer about our LG appliances....