The before: Chicken coop and day lilies

This space on the side of the chicken coop has been bugging me for more than two years.



I planted day lilies on the side of the girls' house, and they do great in the spring because they get all the rain that runs off of the roof of the chicken coop. Then we hit the dry season and I have to water them, but the water runs everywhere but where it needs to be and I end up with more weeds than flowers.



For years I have planned to build a small rock border around it to hold in the water; it's a great use for some odds and ends rocks left over from the rock wall I built at the front of the house several years ago. Two years ago I was too busy with the backyard to work on it, and last year I was too busy with Lachlan to work on it. And so this pile of rocks has been sitting there for years, which is really quite embarrassing when I think about it.



But this year Lachlan LOVES to be outside, so I am finally getting to all the unfinished projects outside. And this weekend, this is my project. I am going to finish the little border around the flowers, and if it doesn't rain (the skies sure look grey!) I'm finally (!) going to paint the trim around the chickens' door. If I don't have great "after" photos by early next week, please feel free to leave a comment chewing me out. :)

Where in the world is Melissa?

Sorry I'm back to being a bad blogger again. Things have been hectic for awhile. The husband has been in Australia again since mid-January, and between keeping up with orders for my shops and chasing Lachlan around (wow, he loves to be chased!), I haven't had a lot of time for much else.

My mom is here now and has been entertaining Lachlan while I try to catch up on things. She's also spending Lachlan's naptime helping me get ahead on packaging items. I recently got a shipment of more than 16,000 new bags, and she's packaged up nearly half of them already!

I was starting to really make progress on things, but then the guy we hired to build the new space in our workshop had to leave before he could paint it. So now I'm spending several days doing that. I started priming it last night and will finish that this morning and then hopefully paint it this afternoon. Tomorrow I will hopefully do the floors and repaint some of the new shelving I got from Habitat for Humanity. Hopefully next week I'll be moving in. YAY!!

Here are a few pics of it this morning. It's come a long way, but still a lot to do!

I hope you all have a great weekend!

Kitchen before and after

I've been so busy with Lachlan and entertaining friends, family, and my visiting mom (who is a first-time Grammy!) that I don't have many exciting things to report here. So I thought I'd take this time to finally get around to showing you some of the before and after photos of our remodel.

We worked on our kitchen first, in the fall of 2007. We ripped everything out, reconfigured the layout, walled off the pantry to give more closet space to Lachlan's room on the other side of the wall, added a window on the far west-facing wall, removed a wall separating the kitchen from the living room, and added a large breakfast bar that has become the main gathering place for us and visitors.

The kitchen is basically done at this point except we still need to install the trim pieces at the bottom of the base cabinets. I took the "after" photos on the morning I left to have Lachlan. I knew it would never be this clean again, so I had to get some photos!

The kitchen is at the front of the house, to the right as you walk in the front door. We talked for awhile about moving it to another part of the house, but the house sits on a cement slab and the thought of having to cut up all the concrete to run new water and drain lines wasn't very appealing. So we decided to leave it where it is but try to make the most of the situation.

The old kitchen cabinets and appliances used to be right in front of you as you walked into the house, with a small dining area at the back. The kitchen was painted a dark sage green and was really, really dark.

Before:



After:



We pushed all the cabinets and appliances to the back of the space in a U-shaped configuration. We also added a window to the back wall, which is the single best decision we made in the entire house. Now we can sit at the breakfast bar and watch the spectacular sunsets out that window.

Before:



After:



We replaced the white ceramic tiles and dark green paint with saltillo tile and a paint color called Tan Wrap that has been described by some as the color of vanilla ice cream. We installed lots of recessed lights in the ceiling (I hate a dark kitchen) and ran electrical wires to add under-cabinet lighting at some point in the future. The light maple cabinets were replaced with cherry cabinets with a light finish. The addition of that huge pantry is the second best decision we made! Finally, we replaced the gray formica countertop with a granite that is cream, peach, and gray, with splashes of a burgundy color.

Before:



After:



I'm super happy with how the space turned out, and it's the one space that consistently gets the most compliments from people.

Casa de pollo

The girls are really excited to show you their new home.

Last month, my friends Young and Tony came to visit from Baltimore. Tony is known in these parts as the Construction Bandit, and he certainly lived up to his name! While Young was attending a conference in Denver, Tony was here working away on projects around the house.

During his visit, Tony got in touch with his inner farmer by working on The Chicken House.

Our original plan was to build the girls a new house from scratch, but after reality set in, I realized we could use an old shed that was already on the property. I'm not sure what the previous owner used it for, but it is incredibly well insulated with 6-inch thick walls. About a year ago, the husband covered it with some leftover metal siding from our workshop. We still need to finish the trim around the front door and paint it a pretty color. It's not painted yet because I can't make up my mind on the color...



I had a nice glass window that I had been using for a cold frame for the garden, and Tony was able to use that to give the girls a view out toward the peach orchard across the road. He even added a beautiful screen so that the window can stay open to give them more fresh air.



I put a roost under the window, so the girls line up on it and watch the world go by. Note that Tony even put nice trim around the window!





The husband used some small buckets and plant saucers to make an automatic feeder that is suspended from the ceiling so they can't get in their food and scratch around, and I have a similar bucket for their water. It's quite a handy system. I fill the feeder about once a month, and the water bucket about once a week.



The shed already had some shelves on the side where the window is, so we left these in place. The bottom shelf was intended to be their nesting area, and I realized the other night that instead of sleeping on their roost, the girls like to sleep on the upper shelves.



The part that the girls love the most about their new house is this screen door that Tony built for them.



It allows them to have more light and fresh air, but it also gives them this great view of the garden!



For now the girls are living indoors. We have plans to build a wire pen next to the shed so they can come and go as they please during the day, but a large branch of the apricot tree is in the way. As soon as I harvest the apricots, we'll cut off the branch and they can have a new backyard.

The girls hope you enjoyed this tour of their new house, and they express their sincere gratitude to Tony for giving them such a deluxe living space!!

In fact, they're so happy in their space, that they left me a present this morning. The first two blue eggs!!!

Day 415

My mom and I made a lot of progress on the house while she was here, including re-sealing the tiles and grout at the back half of the living room so that I could finally put down one of my carpets. Here's a "before and after" for you of the back half of our living room.

Before (yes, the house was that dark, with blood red walls and dark gray carpet):



After:





This back section of the living room is mostly done. I still need to swap out the almond receptacles and switches for white ones and put on new switch plates and covers, paint the trim around the windows, hang the new roman shades, and stain the doors.

We'll be getting a new-to-us antique coffee table in about a week (I can't wait to show it to you!) and I'm on the hunt for a new floor lamp to go on the side of the couch to the left of the painting. I'm also currently working on breaking the husband down to agree to move the couch to the long wall with the windows and replace it with either two new reclining chairs or a smaller loveseat. I'm also working on replacing my ancient TV with a nice flat screen, but the husband continues to resist. I think we are the only married couple in America where the woman wants the big flat screen and the husband doesn't!

I must tell you how nice it is to sit in that small corner of the house and feel like we finally are living in something that resembles a normal house! And Sadie wants you to know that she is still enjoying rubbing her grubby little body all over the carpet!

Day 394

I have a little more progress to report. The roof is done, the new gutters are up, and I am 95% done painting the trim around the house. Yahoo! Now we are focused on getting the fence up around the house by this weekend, because my mom is coming on Sunday night and is bringing Sadie's sister, Lucy! YAY! Sadie is very excited. I am even more excited that my mom is coming. I'm going to put her right to work on some projects around the house. Maybe we'll have a little fun, too!

So here are some before and after photos of the exterior. I can't wait for the official "after" photos once all the landscaping is done!

Garage converted to master suite:




West side of house:




Back of house:




Front of house:




Next month we'll hopefully be replacing the porch posts and sprucing up the ceiling of the porch. And yeah, I'll be getting rid of all those pots cluttering up the area around the front porch!

I'll be a little lax in my blog posting over the next few weeks as I get into super high gear on the house. Hopefully the "after" photos will be worth the wait! :)