House Maintenance

We've been in our house over 5 years now, and unfortunately, that means we had some major maintenance projects come up all at the same time.  Last fall, you saw that we had our front door sanded, stained and sealed.  It still looks great!  That was project number one that sort of got the ball rolling.  Here is a picture of our front landscaping; you can see that our 3 big laurels got some sort of blight last year and never recovered.  This pic was taken the first week of April before our big oak tree bloomed (at the left side of the pic).

Here is a pic of the landscaping now; also notice we just had our driveway and walkway re-sealed so the stain looks brand new again! 

We've been unable to find any english laurels larger than these 3, so we have to start over and let them grow. Grrrrr....landscaping is so frustrating. It is not something that either John or I enjoy, so it usually takes a backseat to whatever else we have going on. That's why, as John put it, we've decided to let "Jesus take the wheel". Jesus is our new lawncare and landscape maintenance professional. Hallelujah. No more lawnmowing for JKK! This is very exciting news in our house.

This is a pic of the back of our house with our 2 new trees...they are October Glory maples and should bloom orange in the fall.  Hopefully one day they will also provide some shade. 

The last piece of news (which is the best piece of news!) is that we are building a sunroom onto the back of our house.  The builder is going to double the size of our existing deck and enclose it to make a super sweet sunroom full of glorious windows...and even better, full of air conditioning in the summer!  The back of our house faces west, so we don't get tons of use out of our deck in the hot months.  It is too much heat and gets miserable pretty quickly.  We've tried sun shades, but it still didn't cut the heat enough.  This way, we'll get to have the windows open and enjoy all the nice fall and spring weather...and still get use out of it in the summer and winter since it will have its own climate control system.  We are just so excited and can't wait for them to start, which should be any day now.  The builder assures me it will be done by Millie's first birthday party and we can enjoy it then!

P.S. - Save the Date for Millie's first birthday party: Saturday, July 7th!

P.P.S. - Please try to ignore my below average photography skills, especially in the pics above...thank you.