We had a very busy weekend around here. Gus had the last three performances of his latest play, Schoolhouse Rock:

 

(he’s the one on the left, in the green bandana)

Dave took his school’s math team to the state tournament….an all day affair two hours away. Go Bears! Only around 40 teams statewide get invited to the state tournament, and this is the only second year this school (and thus this math team) has been around, so it’s a pretty big accomplishment. I’m very proud even though it meant our swing set didn’t get finished. They won a trophy for best scoring AAAAA team that didn’t finish in the top 5, a category only a bunch of math geeks could come up with:

AND…..Gertie got adopted! Her new family drove all the way from Asheville to get her. They’re taking her on a fishing trip on their pontoon boat next month. Yay Gertie!

So what with this, that, and the other….we didn’t make much progress on the 800 projects we have going on around here.

So I figured probably the best thing to do would be to write a post about MORE projects that we need to do. Because there’s no such thing as TOO overwhelmed, am I right?! I am not right.

But this post is long overdue. I wrote the list for the downstairs nearly a year ago (which means it’s about time to revisit it and see where things stand….that should be coming up this week or next) and about the upstairs back in October. I was originally going to include the basement in this, but I really have no idea what I’d say about it. I’d love to finish the basement so that we could have a fifth bedroom and a playroom/kid hang out room, but I don’t know if or when that’s going to happen, and I definitely haven’t gotten as far as coming up with any concrete plans for it.

Anyway….outside!

Front of the house:

1. paint all the trim around the front door

2. paint the metal railings

3. paint the shutters (eventually….maybe THEY can be dark gray, and then the door can be a more fun color)

4. new front door (eventually)

5. make the landscaping out front more exciting–more cottagey? some edibles?

6. make the grass in front be actual grass instead of mostly weeds with some grass thrown in. Maybe we can pay someone to do this? We don’t seem to be any good at it. I feel like once grass is going there, it will be relatively easy to keep going, because it’s so sunny and we get so much rain.

Backyard:

1. finish the swing set!

2. a sandbox or sandpit maybe: I put Abe in the sandbox at the park the other day, and he was not a fan. So, umm, maybe not.

3. build a patio: a simple one….probably just level it out and put down pavers near the porch somewhere.

4. make real wooden chairs for the firepit: might paint the plastic ones we have fun colors in the meantime. Or we might decide that’s an awful lot of spray paint. oh! but maybe with my new paint sprayer?

5. fence around the garden area to keep dogs/cats/other assorted critters out

6. garden expansion: we have one lone garden bed out there now. I want to enclose a big area so it can gradually grow.

7. fruit trees: apple? pear? peach? all of that? the yard is big and treeless. It should be earning its keep by making us fruit.

8. chickens/chicken coop? maybe? we had chickens at our old house, and I THINK I want them again. Possibly next spring. Possibly not.

Deck/Porch

1. have deck rebuilt: pretty sure this one’s a gut job. It’s pretty old and rickety and the wood hasn’t been taken care of. We’ll see if whoever rebuilds it (we’re pretty settled on not doing it ourselves; we think the time we’d save having someone else (i.e. someone who knows what they’re doing) do it would be worth the money) can salvage some of the wood. We also want to change the footprint slightly; there’s a weird gap of a few feet between the deck and sunroom right now that we want to close by extending the deck.

2. take down screens to make an open air covered porch where the screen porch is now: we don’t really need a screen porch AND a sunroom; we feel like opening it up to the deck will make it feel like one bigger, more functional space

3. paint or stain all the wood on the porch

4. new ceiling fan

5. something with the floor: maybe tile? if we can bring ourselves to tile again. I’d like to maybe do slate again, but the cheaper slate, since it doesn’t need to be as smooth and even out here as it does in our bathroom.

6. furniture: maybe a seating area in the covered part and eating area out on the deck. We already have two patio dining sets. We’ll probably keep those, maybe with a coat of paint.

7. plants? probably we should have plants!