Evolution of the Front of the House

I'd like to tell you that I have been amazingly productive this 3 day weekend. But that is not the case. Instead, this has been my view for the last 3 days

I've been at the A's Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and I'll be there again today (and Wednesday). So while my housework is at a zero, it has been an amazingly fun weekend: the A's have swept the Red Sox and have won 9 in a row, they're within striking distance for the division lead and the atmosphere has just been awesome. The A's have had a lot of fun this year and this weekend especially, which culminated in Terry Kiser who played Bernie in the Weekend at Bernie movies coming to the game, throwing out the first pitch and being celebrated (many players use "Bernie Lean" as their walk up song and it has sort of become and anthem for the A's, they're even in the music video)

(image found here)

Yesterday was also Breast Cancer Awareness day where 500 breast cancer survivors formed a ribbon on the field and were celebrated throughout the game (it's one of my favorite days of the year at the A's)

It's been a pretty awesome 3 days. But I've been too busy to write up posts about how productive Chris has been, so instead, here's a pretty awesome post (at least I think) about the amazing transformation of the front of the house.

When we first moved in, winter of 2009

Then we took down the awful monkey tree. Chris and I have a rule that we don't cut down trees that are older than us unless there is a legitimate reason (and extreme ugliness isn't one. Unfortunately). But when our neighbor let us know the tree was ripping up her driveway we barely let her finish the sentence before we ran for the chainsaw with the help of some friends


About 6 months later in December we got the house re-roofed (by Berkeley Roof Services, who I hate)



The house sat just like that for about 1 1/2 years until April of last year when we started prepping for it to get painted

And then in June of 2011 it started to get painted (one of the few jobs we've subbed out)


While the house was getting painted we also replaced the window

And when the house was finally painted I was so so so so happy

And then we started ripping up our concrete patio on the way to creating a paver patio and made a bunch of dirt

We corralled all the dirt and made a raised bed (but still had a ginormous pile on the other side of the yard until the best craigslisters ever took it away)

Then our yard sat with a black tarp over the raised bed for 6 months. And amazingly our neighbors were still wonderfully nice and encouraging the entire time despite the fact that our yard looked like it had garbage on it

Then in June I (purposefully) killed all the grass

And then we ripped it all up and made the yard look like shit on the way to installing a bunch of necessary drainage

The yard got prepped with a bunch of landscaping cardboard that we used for weedblock

And we planted the front in two separate rounds, the first more foundational stuff with just me and Wendy, and then round 2 we rocked it out with the help of my dad, Wendy and 2 friends and got it looking BEAUTIFUL. There were all the last finishing touches and FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY we shared our awesome "After"

It's pretty amazing to see all the crazy stages the front of the house has gone through. And I'm sure our neighbors are happy to not have to look at: a partially dead yard, a partially roofed house, peeling paint, tarps over dirt....the endless list of ugly that the house has gone through. Now it's pretty :)

If you want to see our similarly awesome evolution of the back of the house, check it out here.