3 Years of Work

I just realized it's been 3 years since Nate and I moved into our home. As I look around, I'm pretty impressed, if I do say so myself, by all the work we've done to make our house a home. I'll try to detail some of our projects over the past 3 years but I'm sure I'll miss a few. This is how it all started out...

An empty lotMaking progress

Completed House

The backThe back yard

So I'll start with the changes outside, we've had the driveway paved, added a patio and a deck out back, put in several retaining walls and 2 sets of steps, put in a sidewalk, and added a railing to the porch. We've also done a lot of landscaping including. clearing a bunch of brush out back. I think we are almost done with the outside now it will just be constanly maintaining our landscaping and of course we will always have more brush to clear. Here's how it looks now:

Nate's magnificent retaining wall and our paved driveway.A flower bed out front with a pretty kitty.One of my prized hydrangeas out front.Steps and sidewalk coming up to the frontOur most recent project outside. Steps down to the back and sidewalk. We are still waiting on the grass to grow.Our deck, this we did not do ourselves. S&J Construction built it for us and did a great job.

Decks from the back yard with landscaping around

View from the deck, I don't know if you can tell how much brush we've cleared but we are making progress. You can see one of our 2 flower beds in the back yard too.


Our quaint patio, complete with fire pit.

My newest flower bed as seen from above on the deck. It's right beside our patio.

More brush cleared on the side.

OK, I'll stop with pictures of the outside, and move onto the inside. Inside, we've painted every room in the house with the exception of the upstairs guest bath and one guest room. We've chosen some bold choices such as red, terracotta, and deep blue and we have paired these colors with warm neutrals. We've worked for hours and hours finishing our basement, including a large living area, a "man" room for all of Nate's hunting and fishing things, and a full bathroom. I'm happy to report it's almost done and I'm thrilled with the way it is turning out. The projects in the basement that we still need to finish include: tiling the bathroom shower, putting in a vanity and toilet, building a bar or wet bar, and carpeting the steps. Let's see, what else have we done inside? We've added chair rail and crown molding in the dining room, tiled the kitchen backslash, finished the stair railing, changed door hinges to silver, added cupboards to the laundry room, and put knobs and handles on all of the cupboards. I'm sure I'm missing some things but you get the drift. A few pics of our work inside:

Chair rail and crown molding in the dining room.

The stairway, obviously, at Christmas

Living room in the basement, when we started we had nothing but concrete floors.

Another view

I don't know if you can tell from this pic but I'm trying to show the knee wall under the window.

It's been a great 3 years in our home and I'm very pleased with all we've accomplished. I don't know if we will ever run out of home improvement projects but we've at least crossed some off of the list.