Guess who's bat... I mean back

 Seriously. Sigh.  

My brother was in town visiting for his friend Renee's wedding. Alok was walking the dogs when he saw a bat flying inside through our front window! While I'm not amused by the bat, having my brother from NYC carry part of a Tupperware container and a tennis racket to defend against the bat was slightly amusing: 

Here is a blurry, not amused Alok afterwards, who may have decided that he wanted to move.

That's all for now.

Jessica

We're here.....kinda

Some day in 2013.... I have no clue when we did these things.  I blame the baby who is nearly 11 months old and doesn't sleep for more than 2 consecutive hours for my lack of orientation to time and the lack of work on the house.  That being said, we have made some progress.

First things first, upon moving in, we had the lovely cabinet pictured here, although it was next to the fridge:





The previous owners had 2 things in it: a fly swatter and a picture of George W Bush (you know, the essentials).  Alok decided to clear it out and make it into a spice cabinet. 

Here it is before (and our lovely area that was full of spices in the kitchen):

Here it is after:

Pretty nice.

Alok also had the idea to have drywallers patch up every nick in the walls after they were painted.  Needless to say, he regretted that decision (and it may not have gone over well with me either). He finally got motivation to paint these places (here is a sampling) 

And here he is at work:
 

Creepy!

 

Needless to say, this is something he dreaded for about a year and took under 30 minutes to fix all walls.  We also had the outside painting finished, but more to come on that when I don't have a screaming baby....

Jessica

"Patella! Some man is tearing up your yard!!"

August 2013

Not shockingly, progress on the house has been SLOW!  Everyone thinks we just stopped the blog, but really we only blog when we work on the house.... so that should tell you something.

Over the past month, we have continued to attack the yard.

Here is was before the current work:

Notice the lovely Koi pond:

And here the tilling begun: (My friend's daughter was over and yelled to me in a very concerned voice- "Patella!  Some man is tearing up your yard!!)... (Patella is my derby name)

Notice the lack of a koi pond. We finally filled it!

After it was all tilled, Alok got to work laying grass seed (there is he is down below):

Well, this area was just ripped up and we didn't plant anything:

Anyone remember the hay debacle of 2011?  Alok put down a reasonable amount this time, although he still had to return 6 bails.  Here is the grass starting to grow:

In other outdoor news, we are also getting the rest of the outside of the house painted at the beginning of September!  Alok had to fix the porch (aka the bat lair) outside our front door. He's been dreading it for months, but it went by very quickly.

Here it is to start:

Here it is finished:

Ummm.. yes, we know that isn't straight. He is adding molding. So, I guess it is almost complete. 

In super awesome news, this guy is mobile and is also 9 months old. AH!  Anyone have any idea to childproof a house from 1886 that is being remodeled..... this should be interesting



Hopefully we will be back soon!

Jessica

Guess who's back....back again

July 6-7, 2013

After months of not working on the house, we are finally back at work (or at least we were for a weekend...and then it took me another 1.5 weeks to get around to posting the blog).

Our back yard has been a bit of a jungle as evidenced by the pictures below (I have been writing psychological reports all night, hence my wording choices).  We finally decided to recruit some willing friends that we could convince to help and get at it!  Here is the yard before/after (and before is after Alok did some work):

Our big helper (did I mention how we haven't worked on the house since he was born!? There's a reason for that!)

Northwest side of the house... ummm... after looks the same (we didn't get it all done!)

Looking south on the east side of the house before

After:



 We actually uncovered all of the stone here and even found an old carrot in the ground. This is a 3 leveled area and must have been an old garden.

East side looking north before:

After:




East side before

East Side after:

 
Front before:

Front after:

 

 

East side before:

Working on the east side:

pulling ivy off trees

WAIT?! We have neighbors ;-)



The east side after:

Koi pond area Before:

 


Clearing out the koi pond area:

Koi pond area after:
 
BTW, we are not keeping the pond.  As much as I love drowning hazards/dog pools in the middle of the yard
 

A 2.5 story weed:

TIMBER!!!!
 

Lots of weeds

Alok also got the chance to use his truck, which he convinced me that we needed to get for the sole purpose of taking brush from the yard to the .... well, wherever it goes!

North side of the house before:



The process:
 

North side after:

Garage area before:

Garage after:

Our curb after :-)

That's all for now.  Hopefully there won't be another 5 months before we do any work on the house :-)

Jessica