Been a little busy

With all my long absences from this blog and my lack of visits over to your blogs, I sometimes wonder why any of you even show up, but I'm always thrilled that you do.

As always, there's a reason and this time I think you'll understand even more so.

Let me start with a cute picture and we'll go from there, because this isn't a post that's picturesque.

Bubba taking an afternoon snooze.

Okay, so here we go with the actual post...

This is a picture of the back of my home a few years ago.

Surprisingly bigger than it appears from the front, but not pretty.

That's why you've never seen anything except the front.

This view is actually the prettiest it ever looked.

But see the paint coming up?

Yeah, that's not the worst of it.

It was rotting, the nails and boards were coming apart and although it might sound fun, but wasn't for me... when you walked to the other end it moved. 

Also, there wasn't a way down into the main part of the yard unless you walked all the way to the gate that you can kind of see in the bottom picture to the left.

I lived with it this way for the last 8 years, hopping and planning that one day I could take it down.

Why not fix it or rebuild it?

Because, I found out that there was a flagstone patio underneath that was original to the house.

And if you know me at all, you would know that the wood porch was doomed from that very minute.

And so it started...

Just look at that darling step underneath!

You're probably wondering what that cage is for.

It was built for Bubba so that he can go in and out when he's not with me and not get eaten by random wild animals.

We're leaving the other side of the porch up until we get the top windows painted on the house, which are a lot higher up than they look.

Spraying off the flagstone patio...

Next the cage came off.

The house needs a little power washing, but it's not too bad.

And 4 or 5 of these still need to come out...

But overall, it's in pretty darn good shape.

Just a little patching here and there and definitely some deep cleaning.

We found a flower bed underneath all that dirt too.

We definitely have our work cut out for us, to make it what we want...

but I think the little house feels much better :)

Oh and because we're gluttons for punishment, we also have this little project going on:

More on that soon ;)

xo

rue