Backyard Progress

For the last month, we've been working on the backyard. We've made some good progress, but not as much as I would have liked!  We completed a trashcan corral (I will spare you the photo's, it's a fenced off area inside our fenced in backyard and it contains...trash cans...) which I am thrilled about because we no longer have to store it in the garage. 

We also completed the last of the new fence.  This was the longest section, which spans the entire length of our house. Huge Kudos to my sixteen-year-old because worked with The Builder over three weekends digging new fence holes, pouring concrete, laying out the fence line, and getting it put in. And he did all the hard manual work, like digging fence holes and mixing and pouring the concrete. Since The Builder is only six months out from his last shoulder surgery, these are not things I we felt he should be doing.                                                                                                                                                     

Here we are on a non-rainy day (we've had a lot of rain this spring, not what we really want after Harvey...).  The fence really looks nice. We've added some Adirondack chairs that we purchased at Lowes. I really like the bright pop of blue back here.  We had a bonfire a night or two before this photo was taken and we quickly realized seating was a priority. We're running out of time for building the chairs on my project list, and that's OK. My family really likes these so this is a win-win!

Of course, the rest of the yard still needs work:

The view from the other side of the yard.  We were going to do a chevron brick walkway, but it will take more bricks that what we have and would more time consuming than we can do right now. So when the rain eventually stops, we're going to pull them out, till the area from behind the chairs back to the fend, and put in grass and a simple brick pathway. 

The other project we've been working on is using the weathered boards from the old fence to put a ceiling in the sunroom.

We're almost out of salvageable boards from the weathered sections of the fence, so the last little bit that's left in the upper left corner (not in the photograph) is going to be done with replacement board we used to patch the fence. Not the end of the world, but I'm hoping a vinegar bath will help them gray up like the rest of the boards.

So we still need to put about a dozen or so boards on the ceiling, refresh the paint in the sunroom, till up the backyard for the grass, and finish the brick pathway back to the dog run (this area is a swampy mess when it rains and a brick pathway would be a huge improvement!). Oh. And our other project. The pantry that we gutted when it started raining a few weekends ago. Stay tuned for that post!