growing curious: progress

Sometimes it's helpful to acknowledge how far D and I have come in four years at this place. Yesterday, I was trying to describe to Lisa what parts of our house used to be like. Coincidently, this morning D sent me these old photos he found.

Up top is a picture of the front of our house when we were thinking about buying it. From the angle, it's hard to see how steep the grade from the street is. We were worried about rainwater flowing down to the foundation (it's a ranch house with a daylight basement, which you can't see from the street).

These two photos show our landscaping solution to the grade problem out front. We created the berm and planted all of this during the summer (dirt moving) and fall (planting) of 2006. Planting in fall is such a good idea. It gave all of the plants plenty of time to establish root systems before their first summer with us last year. We've seen tremendous growth. Also, now we have a better sense of where new shrubs are needed to increase our privacy from the street.

Here is a picture of the kitchen when we looked at the house before buying it. Somewhere, long ago, I think I posted a similar picture and description. The kitchen was filthy when we moved in. We found leftover coffee cans filled with bacon grease that had flies lodged in the muck. We found petrified waffle pieces strewn around. The cabinets were sticky-gross with years of neglect.

We couldn't use the kitchen until it was overhauled. It gave me hives to be in there. For three months, we cooked in the laundry room (which we re-did cheaply and lickety-split before we moved in). We set up an old refrigerator in the garage and a microwave near the washer and dryer. We washed vegetables in the deep sink.

It was hard for me to be without a kitchen. At the time, I was quite a cook (that's gone out the window since E came along), and it felt as though the very heart of the house was gone.

Here's a picture of the new kitchen (including messy counters and kid art taped everywhere). We knocked out the wall opposite this view so the dining area, living room, and kitchen all flow together now. This was the first project we did on the house (we still haven't finished the kitchen, actually), and it's helpful for me to see the difference between old and new today. Yes, there has been some progress around here.

Sometimes the remodeling and landscaping projects feel overwhelming. Very few weekends have ever gone by without some big project being worked on. We feel far away from our goals most of the time.

But today I'll stop, take a breath, and appreciate how far we've come. Later, I'll get to work outside. There's still weeding and mulching the berm to tackle today.

5 Comments

13 dumptruck loads of dirt
3 dumptruck loads of mulch
5 tons of 800lb boulders and rock
250 ft of drains
3 times of almost tipping the tractor over

Posted by: D | May 23, 2008 at 09:59 AM

However, not a day goes by that I don't look out the front window and admire the color and form of all the living things out there (no disrespect to the simple grass that was there before)

Posted by: D | May 23, 2008 at 02:12 PM