The joy of homeownership!

     We have lived in our new house up here on the south hill for just over a month now and the lacking of updated posts to this blog are a pretty good indicator of what we've been up to in that time!  We didn't get much time to put off projects after moving in as our insurance company required us to install handrails around the stairs in the front and back of the house.  After researching wrought iron and a few other options we decided to think outside the box a bit and fabricate them out of black iron piping.  Thanks to running miles of this material in my former career, this project went really well!  We were so excited about the results of it that we immediately jumped right into more!

     The next challenge we tackled was the dilapidated tile in front of our fireplace.  This project could have easily been put off until this fall but we came across a screaming deal on the tile we wanted to use at our local Habitat for Humanity Restore.  Since neither one of us had tiled anything before we were slightly apprehensive to get started but much like any project we start on our house, once you get started your committed!  Although the tile took much more effort to remove than we expected, the rest of the project went pretty well and turned out good.

     So feeling pretty good about the first two, we upped our game and tackled a ground level deck in the corner of our back yard.  I figured with the early success form the first two projects combined with me having built a couple decks before, this one would go just as good.  I was wrong!  The framing portion of the project went pretty well but when I went to start putting decking boards down I quickly found out that I punched some numbers majorly wrong on my materials estimate as we only had enough decking boards to cover about a third of the space!  So I called around and found a discount lumber yard who had decking boards for about $3 less a board than Home Depot or Lowes.  We refigured the numbers and picked up the rest of our material and quickly finished putting it all together.  Now the hard part!  We had decided earlier to use a deck covering called Restore which is supposed to be basically like rhino lining for a deck.  It seemed like the perfect solution for minimal maintenance but we soon found out that we didn't have enough to finish covering!  So the next day I made another trip to Home Depot and picked up another box of Restore only to have the guy working the paint counter to tell me that Behr makes a product that works much better cause it covers more area!  I gave the guy my best "would have been nice to know yesterday" look and came home and finished the deck.  All totaled the deck took 7 days and went $250 over our estimated budget!  Needless to say our big projects have come to a screeching halt for a little while:)

     It hasn't been all work and no play however since moving in as I've been helping with Tatums t-ball team every week.  As you can imagine it's been quite entertaining each week getting to know her teammates and watching them have fun!  I am always fascinated by how quickly their attention can be diverted, from things as interesting as a kite being flown in the park next to the game, to as simple as the dirt underneath their little feet, there always seems to be something to distract them.  It has been a blast so far and were only half way through the season!  I only wonder how many of the kids will be just as excited about t-ball in four weeks as they are now:)

Remember, the house projects will come and go, the time spent with those that you love is what will be with you always!