Outdoor Projects!

We've been busy little bees around our house in the three months since we bought it.  Much of what we've been doing is painting.  Before moving in we painted the family room, eating area, kitchen, den/playroom, Kayda's room and Dillon's room.  Since moving in we've also painted the downstairs half bath and started painting the entry area/stairs/hallway upstairs (though the task is daunting so we're procrastinating it at the moment) and we just bought the paint for Carson's room.  I have this thing about the kids' rooms being THEIRS before they start using it and since we're getting ready to work on moving him out of our room it's time to paint.  I'm 99.9% sure that his room will be painted before we even pick up a brush for the entry way again!  

Anyway, we've also been loving on our yard a bit.  I added some bulbs and weeded, unfortunately it will be a long time until my gardens will be as manageable as our old house's gardens.  The bank did a nice thing and put down bark for us... right over the top of years of weeds.  Gotta love it.  One of the things we knew we had to get done and quickly was the fence.  There were no side fences so that was our highest outdoor priority.  They got done a month or so ago.  

The next thing to go was "the pit"  This area was once the home of a shed, which someone stole while the house was sitting empty for a year plus.  While it was a wonderful play place for the kids (they spent hours there) it was incredibly ugly.  So it was time for it to go.  

 The Pit

 The previous owners also made a very poor attempt to expand the patio by laying down pavers.  Of course they didn't even bring them up to the height of the actual patio and they were each a step down from the stone before it.  It was completely unusable.  So we decided, "hey lets put them into one level space and expand our patio that way, we'll take the grass we pull up and move it to the pit.  So...

 Step 1: Rototill the pit to get it ready for grass.  That was NOT fun!  There was so much stuff buried under there!  I would be going along and "Whoa that rocks pretty big!"  or "Is that a rotten two by four?" I even found a deflated ball buried in there.  Carson decided he should be operating machinery too and joined me!

 Step 2: Move the grass we could and seed the rest.  We weren't able to save much grass.  But it looks much better!

 Step 3: Rototill the new patio area.  We then continued to rake it out and tried to make it a cost-free project by laying the pavers down on the dirt.  Unfortunately we have the rockiest soil ever!  So we got frustrated and took a break.  

 Step 4:  Switch to making a new digging space for the kids.  They had so much fun digging in the pit that I wanted them to have PLENTY of room to play in the sand.  We decided to expand our sandboat.

 Step 5:  Fill 'er up!

 Step 5: Step back and glory in the awesomeness!  Who's coming to play?

 Step 6:  Pull up the pavers we already put down, rake it out, compress and dirt and cover with the sand remnants.
Step 7:  Put in the pavers, sand in between and cover the edges with rock.

Perfect, we have doubled our patios space for next to nothing!

Pretty awesome!  Now I just need to build a picnic table!