backyard manicure (or pedi?)

right before thanksgiving we gave the backyard a serious manicure. it was looking pretty drab and had again just turned into a giant dirt pile. 

so we went about raking all the leaves and sean cut down a few trees that were in the way.

we wanted to put down rye seed because we know it grows fast enough to make our yard look nice in time for sean's family that visited over thanksgiving, and it would buy us some time until we decided what to really do. we also decided that we wanted to rock some areas that get a lot of doggie and human traffic. and came up with this:

the first picture is a lot nicer since the grass started growing through the rocks! and leaves continue to fall. but it gives you a good idea of what it looks like now.

diy house skirting

ever since we had the foundation repaired on our house (which was when we moved in!), we've had no skirting. which meant it looked like this all over. it's quite hideous, and on top of being ugly - it made it so we didn't  have a sealed in backyard. the dogs would go under the house and right out the front. which wasn't an issue for willie, but riley is a bit sneakier and would take herself out for the day.

these are pictures of the side of the house. i lost the photos of the back. but it looked very similar to this.

we debated on what to do for a while. traditionally, pier and beam (meaning they are not built on a concrete slab) homes are skirted with stucco. this process has become kind of an art form and we were quoted $6000 to do ours because of the time and skill that it requires. we were slightly overwhelmed at the idea of trying to do this ourselves, though we did consider it for a while. after lots of internet research and talking to guys at homedepot, we decided to go an easier route.

we used textured and primed hardiboard. it comes in sheets like this, and is essentially concrete made into boards. it doesn't ever rot or disintegrate, so we thought it would be a good (and much cheaper alternative). 

here's what it looks like in boards:

we went about priming it again, measuring it, cutting it, installing it, and then painting it again.
here's a picture of the back yard in progress:

sean removed the bottom piece of siding since it had rotted some, as well as all of the framing pieces for the doors, and the gutter in preparation. we also dug deep ditches where the skirting would be, since it's supposed to be 6-12" below the surface to hold out water.

our awesome neighbor had some siding she wasn't going to use, so we used that as our replacement.

 
here are some photos of how it looks all painted

we're quite happy with the way it looks. (sean framed out underneath the door for now, but we eventually plan on building a deck and walkway from the door, so that will be covered.) 

we plan on pressure washing the house soon, and then painting it. then we'll install some plants and rocks where all of that dirt is now.

the total cost for the hardiboard was about $450, and we might not even use it all so it might end up costing us less than that. quite the savings, and i think it looks great considering it was way less expensive, and wasn't too hard to do.

total cost: about $550 (including hardiboard, primer, paint and nails)

savings: about $5450

time spent: it took us a weekend of hard work to complete the backyard portion (we still have the two sides of the house)

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a very long awaited update

we haven't been doing much around here, that's the truth. sean started coaching baseball at lake travis and ive been kicking it. (look at that cheese smile on the left end)

he's been loving it, but it's oh so time consuming. which has left us only sundays to relax, so there hasn't been much work going on. we've got a few small things...

i made bagels and homemade veggie cream cheese

we have done some gardening projects and i have an update on how things are looking outside. spring came and went around here.

as you can see, i've planted, raked, and replanted grass seed many times. lovely little patches. this is my latest attempt to keep the dogs off.

above: watermelon

above: pumpkins

above: herb box

we also hosted a birthday brunch for one of my best friend's stephy. and i picked up this steal from ikea in preparation. $100 for a table, two chairs and a bench.

in the upcoming weeks we'll be aiming to finish our bedroom. i can't believe it's been this long and we haven't done anything. i've put up vaseline on the construction adhesive, so in about a week we can start scraping away.

and there's a chance that you'll get a sweet photo of us both wearing overalls knee deep in insulation and rat poop soon. the ac duct work in our attic needs replacing, and sean's pretty much convinced me that we can do it (and save about $1700) in a weekend. i'm really going to have to put my big girl pants on for this one, the attic is pretty much no man's land to me still.

we introduce ... the guest room!

we have been working our butts off around here. and finally are almost done with the guest room!

here's a pic looking at the entry door:

another one but at a slightly different angle, and showing of my favorite dresser find 

and here's the view as you walk into the room. we're still in need of a desk, so im going to do a craigslist hunt this week. we're expecting our first airbnb guest this saturday. wish us luck!

a long overdue post

we have been super busy around here. which of course is my excuse for the lack of posts. sean started coaching freshman baseball at lake travis high (yay!), which takes up every week night and saturday so he hasn't been doing much housework. and of course, (most importantly!) we went on vacation with sean's family to bogota for his sister's (tana) wedding. it was awesome. one of my favorite parts was the day we took a trip to the salt cathedral. it was a little outside of bogota so we took a bus. the drive was beautiful and the sweet little towns that we drove through were awesome. here's us in the bus: (more photos to come once i get them)

other than coaching and vacationing, we've been working really hard on the guest room to get it ready for sxsw. last weekend i finished up the wallpaper (after a few mishaps) and then started working on the trim. here's some current photos:

(notice the bed all lopsided? i broke it today, in addition to getting spray texture all over the place, getting paint in my delicious coffee, and then spilling a can of paint! argh. i'm quitting and shopping the rest of the day).

(there's that hat again!)

obviously still lots to do, but i think it'll come together by the end of the weekend - or that's my goal anyways.

and here's the star of the weekend so far. i treated myself to this beauty last night. i just fell in love with her. she's gonna go in the guest room for now - but i think she'll end up in our room soon.

some scraping, gardening, and bottling

a couple of days late, but it's here! the next post ...

we spent the past weekend working on the guest room - scraping walls, burning fabric off the walls and painting. our first task was to get all of this construction adhesive off of the walls. the picture below shows it on one part. imagine this all over every wall. super big pain in the ass.

and here's the fabric. also imagine that all over the walls underneath almost every nail. another big pain in the ass.

so we went to work.  the liquid nails website (construction adhesive brand name) recommended that we either use mineral spirits to remove the adhesive or vaseline. since we had vaseline around, i decided to try it out on one wall. i put it on and left it for over a week (the website recommended several hours to several days). and then this past weekend we went to scraping. this worked really well and it's what we are planning on doing in the bedroom. i think it works so well because it's thick and stays in place on the adhesive. we also tried goo gone - which was in a spray bottle and supposedly for heavy duty (doodie!) projects like this, but that didn't nearly work as well. i think because it's so thin and drips down a lot. we got a couple of fancy scrapers as well as a scraper that we had around and went to town. this was one of those classic projects where the non-fancy stuff works best. turned out the vaseline and the old scraper kicked the most ass. the new one was too sharp and kept digging into the wood. here's a picture of sean workin'. he has that thing over his face because of all the adhesive particles in the air. for those of you that don't know, sean's kind of a hypochondriac. he was convinced we were getting cancer!

for the fabric i bought a torch and burned all that shit off. it was really tedious and time consuming. but not nearly as hard as getting the adhesive off.

our original plan was to put up a chair rail and wallpaper basically the bottom half of the walls, but we changed that plan once we started. we decided to wallpaper one whole wall instead - the wall where the bed would be resting against. this was mostly because (like in the living room), the stupid construction guys put up a beam in the middle (almost) of the room, and chopped up one of the wood walls and did a super crappy job putting it back together.

sean went about putting up this hardy board stuff on the wall - so we could more easily wallpaper it.

there's the beam at the top in this photo below. and you can see some of the crappy job that they did with the wood walls.

after two long days and some cancer later ... voila! below is the wall with the hardy board (soon to be wallpapered), and the wall that we primed so far. much more to come this weekend in this room! let the fun begin.

isn't it cute? - we love how rustic it looks. can't wait to see it finished!

in addition to our work in the guest room. sean and i went to the natural gardener. if you guys haven't been there and live in austin, it's a super awesome organic nursery. they also offer free classes on different things - which is why sean and i went last weekend. sean has this obsession with all things alcohol (more to come on that later in this post), and really wants to try growing vines outside so he can eventually make wine. the class this past saturday was a vine pruning class and a basic introduction to growing grapes with two guys that were really knowledgeable. it was awesome. after a little while i got bored and decided to walk around. i have been thinking about starting a vegetable garden here on douglas street and recently read that it's time to start tomato and pepper seeds inside. so ... i decided to go to town and get some. i also bought a lamp and decided to go all professional. step one on becoming an amazing tomato grower complete! 

i planted black krim tomatoes, brandywine (red and yellow) tomatoes, golden california sweet peppers, yellow pear tomatoes and sweetie tomatoes (cherry). 

wish me (and them!) luck!

and last but not least ... i bought sean a beer brewing kit for xmas and a couple of weeks ago he started his first batch. i bought him one of the easy kits for his first time as this was what the guy at austin homebrew suggested. sean let the batch ferment for about 11 days and then last night we went to bottling. here's all the bottles sterilizing.

and here's sean's first homebrewed beer! he did the Cooper's IPA. he mixed in some sugars to carbonate the beers and has to let it sit in the bottles for a couple of weeks now. should be ready when we get back from columbia!

hopefully we'll have a beer party soon if these suckers turn out!

happy wednesday! the perk of doing a post this late is that now the weekend is so much closer! cheers to us hopefully having a finished room to show off!

new blog name

okay, so i have a post coming up this evening but in the mean time i have been thinking. this blog needs a new name. i didn't really think much about it when i started this - but it's really boring now that i have started to pay attention to it. i have been thinking something with the 'austin' in it. and of course home related. my first thought was to call it 'money pit: austin' because of all the jokes our friends made when we were buying the house (for those of you that don't get the reference - don't worry because i had no idea what people were talking about - it's a movie from the 80s where tom hanks and shelley long buy a house that turns out to be kind of a disaster). anyways, that's all ive got so far and i dont love that idea. any suggestions?

new year's resolution: update more. so far: fail

so i know it has been forever since we've updated (note: i also said this in november). but this is for real. im turning over a new leaf and promise to update more. so to start here are a few things that we've been doing on douglas street.

i reupholstered our dining room chairs. one the right is an old one (that sean put a hot tea pot on and successfully burned a circle, and on the left is a new one. it was super easy. involved some on sale (thick) fabric from hancock fabrics and a staple gun.

we (aka sean) stained the ceiling in the man room. this involved hours of sean painting the ceiling and a couple of cans of stain. pretty easy (coming from the person that didn't do most of the manual work). but i think it really cleaned up the room nicely.

if you remember, it previously looked like this. i finally finished painting the posts in front of our house that sean built. and then guided the plants up them so they can start growing in that direction. (note that beautiful crack? don't worry, i have plans).

as one of my christmas presents sean built some frames for my diplomas. here's the uf one (go gators!). isn't it pretty?

here's the start of what is going to be the upenn one. (and there's sean in his christmas pajamas chatting away on the phone.) as you can see in this picture, we had a ton of leaves fall in the last month and they really took a toll on the grass.

new update! here's the penn one!

monica and i went to a compost class put on by the city of austin. it was awesome. and the teacher was hilarious (possibly more hilarious to use because we hit up the blue dahlia happy hour before hand and had some of their $3 glasses of wine, $4 apps, chocolate cake, and ravioli - and yes in that order!). as a bonus we got a free kitchen compost collector. i would highly recommend it. as a follow up on saturday i went to the habitat restore (awesome, if you don't know that it is) and bought some pallets for $1 each and got sean to hammer them together. so now we have a compost system!

here's a picture of kitty just for fun. she's getting more and more awesome by the day. she's napping outside in her bed here.

we cut up our christmas tree (or i asked sean to!) and then i glued the pieces to a board i had painted white. here is it hanging. as a side note, i did a terrible job hanging the thing the first time around and it almost took out our friend steph last night! eeek! steph, you should be glad to know that sean rehung it, and probably did a better job than me.

and possibly most important of all the things that we've been up to ... sean and i got engaged! get ready for lots of wedding craft updates. sean got the ring through our friend amy who takes pictures for an antique jewlery store in san diego. i absolutely love it. thank you amy!

ps - wow i have old woman hands. stupid florida sun.

so here is to a great start to 2012! oh, and i almost forgot a rat update! we haven't heard them in probably a couple of months. and the death toll is up to 15! woot woot! our neighbors even joined in the battle and probably have a tally of their own.