Jun 18, 2009

Day One and Two Pics of the remodel

Here are some pics of day one and two of construction. It doesn't look like much yet, but it will in the end. Rain has delayed any more work, but hopefully tomorrow they can start again.

Day One....


My wonderful covered patio being framed up for the new kitchen. I sort of have mixed emotions. On one hand, I know I will love the new kitchen and on the other, I will miss sitting out there on warm sunny days.



Hmmm.... now what do we do????

Day Two...

Here it is all framed in. It sure looks funny, not to mention a mess everywhere. All the patio furniture is in the garage, so that's our new hangout until the deck is built here.


Our very good friend and Contractor, Kevin, really pooped after two days of working. LOL


My honey (on the left) and Jimmy, his sister's boyfriend taking a break. Supervising is such hard work.

Hope everyone is having ( or had since it's almost midnight) a wonderful Thursday.



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Jun 17, 2009

Kitchen remodel has finally begun!

We have been crazy busy the past week. I am sooooo excited that the kitchen/dining room remodel and expansion has finally taken off. They started at 8am sharp last Saturday and continued on Sunday. We are very lucky to have a close friend who is a contractor and is helping us out. We are doing a lot of the work our selves so the labor cost is minimal. We had the layout all done. I have been working with an amazing designer at Hope Depot and we spent two hours Saturday making changes till I thought it was perfect.....until Sunday when the walls went up and the subflooring and we discovered the back wall was only going to be 6 1/2 feet tall. Yikes!! The original contractor said it would be 7 1/2 feet and it gets higher from that point since it is going to be a cathedral ceiling. So of course I went in to panic mode when we started measuring and found that the cabinets would only be 8" from the counter top. I immediately got on the phone and called the designer and she fixed everything in about five minutes. Whew, that was close to a disaster as we thought we were going to have to tear everything apart and raise the roof. I will post some pics tomorrow. I got the paint and the glaze for the cabinets and will do a test tomorrow to see how it's going to turn out. Boy do I have a lot of painting to do, but I think putting a personal touch on the cabinets will make it very nice.

We also put up a privacy fence along side the pool and the gazebo. It looks awesome! I love, love, love it. Well, this is short, but I just wanted to give everyone a quick update. Stay tuned for pics tomorrow.

Have a great evening!

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Jun 7, 2009

Contact

Please contact me at the email below if you have any questions or just want to send a private note. Thanks for visiting with me!

simplysuthern@gmail.com
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Jun 6, 2009

Weeds Beware!

Today was just beautiful! Finally... I was really beginning to wonder if we were going to have any warm weather at all. Yesterday was cloudy and cool and it sprinkled on and off all afternoon. We did have a wonderful day though. My sweetie surprised me with such a wonderful birthday present. I have always wanted a dry sink. I was up at the crack of dawn to go to yard sales with my daughter and when I got home there was the most awesome dry sink sitting in the dining room with a beautiful bouquet of flowers waiting for me. He is so sweet. He had no idea what a dry sink was so he went to Piccadilly Lane, a local primitive and country shoppe, and told them he wanted a dry sink and didn't have a clue what he was looking for, but the fixed him right up.

Then he took me out to a wonderful dinner and we went out to celebrate! I couldn't have asked for a more perfect day.

Today was was a long, but very productive one. I bought a weeping pussy willow tree yesterday and went to pick it up this morning. My daughter came up to help me plant flowers and my beautiful tree in the flower bed beside the pool. We actually have been working on this bed for three summers. I told my fiancee that I wanted a "big" raised flower bed and boy did I get one! I came home from work and he had dug out a flower bed big enough to sit a house on. Well....not really, but it was huge. The first year we bought stone to put around it and with me working so much and not enough time to tend to it, the weeds took over. So last year we dug it up again and started over. I put garden fabric down and filled it with dirt. You are going to laugh as I should have known better, but he went out with the backhoe and got some dirt that was hauled in the year before and since it was dumped on top of weeds and grass, it was just a big mess. I couldn't weed it fast enough to keep the weeds out of it. So, I got frustrated and didn't do a darn thing with all last summer.

So now here we are Spring of 2009, I was determined it was not going to get the best of me this year. I downsized it a bit (you can tell in the first pic, where all the weeds still are) and spent two days weeding the darn thing again, soaked the heck out of it with weed killer for two weeks. Now we have a "weed free" bed, time to fill 'er up with flowers. We went to the nursery and got a dump truck of composted mix and came back and filled that sucker up again. (oh, and yes more garden fabric, two layers this time.) And off to the garden center we went again. Below are the results. I'm just so garsh darn proud of it. I need to get some mulch on it in the next couple of days, but I won this year! Weeds beware!!!









Hope you gals are having a great weekend. Until next time...

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Jun 1, 2009

Can you help me find a tart warmer....



Hi girls!
I need some help. I have this wonderful ceramic tart warmer that was a gift quite a few years ago from a great friend of mine. She got this on ebay and I haven't been able to find another one like it. It is my favorite. I love the way it comes apart (as you can see in the pics) in to three pieces. It's the perfect size and non-electric so I can put it anywhere.

Does anyone know where I can find another one like it? I have looked everywhere! Most of them are so small a tart wouldn't fit in it. This one is nice and large.




Thanks and have a wonderful evening!!


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