A Bunch of Miscellaneous

 

Because my life isn't only the house, here's a peek at what else we've been up to. 
This is Sport, who catches for his Little League Team.  He looks sad.  Trust me, he's not.  He loves to catch, and he loves this team.  I think I just got a bad camera angle.  

Here he is heading out to hit.

And here is the house!  With a new roof!  Can you believe it?  I went to work one day, came by the next morning on my way to work, and this is what it looked like!

Doesn't she look fantastic?

While the roofers were putting on the new roof, Dan and Chris were downstairs framing new walls.

They built out this nifty half wall to hide the foundation.

The walls are framed in from the OSB sheeting because the original foundation is thicker at the bottom than at the top.

Here I am putting some paint on a board.  Were doing samples to try to pick a new color for the outside of the house.  Originally, I wanted it to be yellow, because the  house has always been yellow.  But Chris wasn't on board with that, so we're trying some new colors.

And look who's come for a visit!  My Mom!

So here's one paint sample.

And here's the other.  I know, pretty similar, but this one's definitely lighter than the other, and I'm detecting a slight pink cast to this one that I am not liking at all.  As you can see, I make my decisions pretty quickly.  But we'll still leave them up for a few days so Chris can live with them.

Yard Clean Up

After the concrete pour, we're back to do a little tidying up.  

Here's Sport and the Big Dog with shovels, that's Chris in the background.  I'm not sure what he's doing, but he's over by the hose bib.

The boys starting on the dirt and rock piles.

And miraculously, its all done!  This was actually taken hours later, after much shoveling and raking, and tractor work in the back by Chris.   Not only were we moving dirt, but there was broken up concrete we had to take out.  Chris uncovered and broke up the remains of the original drainage system in the front yard, so we had to take that out.

So nice and clean!

Let's look at it from this angle.

An update on the  backyard.  If you look closely, in the shadow outside the downstairs door, we now have gravel, so the guys aren't walking through dirt and tracking it into the house.

Where you ask, did those dirt piles in the front yard come from?  Right here, the back patio!  It's now all clean, except for that little bit up by the garage, and a little by the fence.

Thought you might want to look at the back from another angle.  Don't those new windows look nice?

This is the dirt by the fence I told you about.  We might need that later for landscaping, so its a stockpile.

My gloves.  So you'll believe me that I was working.

Chris and the boys loading up the tractor to take it home.

One last look at the work of the day.

Me and my fella.  A much more realistic portrait than one from a studio.