Pictures of our hard work!

As a refresher, here's what the back of the house looked like .... and this was taken while the house was on the market. There's a picture below that shows how tall most of the stuff growing around the porch had gotten. Oh, and take notice of the huge evergreen tree/shrub on the far left of the picture...

Yeah, we finally went ahead and cut that tree down! Now we just have to get some grass to grow, and pull the stump out. (All after we rake all of the leaves that are falling like crazy now!) Next spring/summer we'll continue working on the "beds," if you can call them that, around the porch. I hope that this time next year, the picture of this same space will really start to look like a nice, manicured yard, instead of the crazy overgrown mess we bought into!

Ok, so I'd be lying if I said we both spent equal amounts of time on the porch and back yard this year. Well, I focused mainly on pulling out bushes and other "landscaping" while Joe spent way more time than I did working on the porch. Phase 1 is done (yes, it's now a multiple phase project!), which means that all of the wood supports have been torn down, rebuilt and stained, the porch has been screened, the ceiling has been pulled down and carpet (for now) has been laid. What's left, you might ask? We need to rehang the ceiling fan, which will require some rewiring, installing the new ceiling, and finishing some exterior trim pieces that just don't fit right. We initially wanted to lay tie , but for the time being decided to go with cheap outdoor carpet to make it look more finished. I'm also really excited about our new doggie door - it's doing a great job at keeping most of the falling leaves out of the porch!

Here's a view from the kitchen door of the porch. My camera ran out of batteries before I could take more pictures, but you can get the idea. And yes, every single one of the vertical wood supports were replaced. The only thing Joe left was the header...

The old porch.... (note how crazy the overgrowth is around the corner of the porch! It seriously looked like a jungle out there!)

So that's where we stand. And yes I do still need to post pictures of the bathroom, but I wouldn't say it's anything incredibly exciting. We're still hoping to find the time and money to actually redo it in the future, so we're not putting much into that space right now.

What's next, you might ask? Well, this winter we are thinking about rearranging the basement to do a partial finish of the space that doesn't get wet when it rains. Around here finishing basements into a "loft style" space has become quite popular and is rather economical. People aren't putting up ceilings; rather, they're painting the joists, subfloor and other stuff above, installing track lights, then laying inexpensive carpet, put up a couple of walls and voila! a new basement rec room. Someone in the past had done even less of a finish down there, but there are electrical outlets, along with all of our new basement windows that we had put in earlier this year. So we're going to explore this option as another space for us to hang out this winter.