Monday, May 31, 2010

VACATION

We just came back from our first vacation since purchasing the house one year ago, and we relished every moment of it! We had a wonderful 10 day adventure in the Pacific Northwest - Seattle, Olympic National Park, Vancouver Island, Vancouver, San Juan Island, and back to Seattle. Tomorrow we are back to our day jobs and back to the housework. Stay tuned for the "Front Yard Transformation: Fugly to Fabulous".

Friday, May 14, 2010

HofB Anniversary

It seems hard to believe that it's been almost one year since we purchased the House of BAM. That's almost 365 days of trying to figure out how to polish this gem-in-the-rough house. And so far, we feel pretty good about what we've accomplished on our own with a pretty tight budget.

But now it's time we take our brains and brawn outside. Why? When we walk from one end of the block down to our house, checking out our neighbor's property along the way, we simultaneously laugh and cringe when we see our place last. Our yard is FUGLY!

The best thing about the front yard is our old oak tree. As for the rest of front yard - it looks like a rough motley crew of scruffy vagabonds. There's a couple of weird, hacked-up ornamental bushes, a little maple tree out of place, an elm that insists on hanging out in the middle of the hostas and lillies of the valley, and a really dumpy looking dwarf spruce. Sorry fellas, you just have to go.

Plus, after the brutal winter, the walkway and porch have been reduced to chunks of cement just trying to stay together.

I have to admit that we were a little brilliant, because last fall we hired a landscape designer at Gertens to give us a plan on how to take our yard from FUGLY to FABULOUS, or at least to pretty good. We have the plan, and now that the warmer months of Minnesota have arrived, it's time we put that plan into action. Yeah, that's right, we're going to try to do as much as we can on our own. Stay tuned!