Wednesday, March 28, 2012

backyard overhaul: part two

Well, after seriously cleaning up the yard here and re-sodding it here we decided the next thing our yard needed was a pretty new fence so our not-so-little-anymore monsters can play outside in the sun all day. Remember when we got them here and here... wow, they were so much smaller!!

I digress... so we somehow conned my parents to come up for the weekend and the Kochs into helping us with yet another house project! We knew this was going to be a big one so Ryan and I both took Thursday and Friday off to get the job done.

Thursday was tearing out the old fence day. Ryan heard that if you have a farm jack it makes pulling out the posts much easier (then digging them out one-by-one). It really, really did! Unfortunately you cannot rent farm jacks, so if anyone needs to replace their fence sometime soon, call us, we have a farm jack you can borrow. We even got Kyle to come over and help with the demo!




Farm jack

Temporary yard for the puppies

Trying to get a picture of Murphy napping but Kali decided it was her moment to shine

This is the sleepy guy I was trying to capture


Day 1: no chain link fence left

Friday was post setting time and oh my was that an ordeal. So, did you know that to set fence posts you have to dig holes 3 feet deep?!?! Well, needless to say, we had a tool to help us with those too. We rented this one person auger which was very effective but also took two people to operate. (And by people I mean Ryan, my Dad or Jim - that thing was powerful.) After digging all of the post holes we went to setting the posts with over 40 bags of quickcrete (those things aren't going anywhere). Luckily we had Carlo come over and share his experience with us, we were post setting pros in no time!

Auging: As you can see this was no easy task... but definitely worth it!


Thank you Carlo for your knowledge and letting us borrow the screw
gun (another tool we'd highly recommend for fence construction)!

Check out all those posts...


This was the most difficult post hole to dig... poor guys! They all took turns and we just had to watch.


Day 2: check out all of those posts

Saturday it was time to set the rails and begin on the pickets. We went with rough cut flat top cedar 6' pickets. We plan to stain and seal them at some point down the road, but that is for another post. This process definitely took the longest but was the most rewarding because we could really see the fence taking shape. This ran over into Sunday, but by early afternoon we were done. We now have a beautiful new fence, the pups are loving their new backyard!










That's a fence!
Murphy approves!

Thank you to our wonderful parents! As usual, we could not have done it without y'all.

backyard overhaul: part one

Spring is here! And in the spirit of spring we have been hard at work on our back yard. The first weekend in March we brought in 2 pallets of sod. It was A LOT of grass, but surprisingly it only covered about half of the yard. It was the side that needed the most help after all the construction. We've fertilized the other side and are crossing our fingers that last summer didn't kill it all.

See how little we had over there?!? We had to add some top soil to even things out.

So many holes, so little grass

That is just the first pallet

In the process of laying the sod

Check out that beautiful grass!!!

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

build-a-bed


Whaaaaaat? Y'all built that?!?!
Heck yes we did!


(Sorry - cheesy I know, but we're so very proud!)

Here's how we did it...



We started with coffee, some fabulous plans drawn up by my engineering husband and lots of lumber. We made lots of cuts and had our frame all ready to be assembled.


Then it was construction time.





It holds him!!

Then we started on the headboard. The idea for this Ryan actually found on HGTV.com but he then adapted it to fit our needs. (He made it fit better with the base to look like one piece and made it taller so we could sit against it and read.)



The puppies were not huge fans of the hammering


That is a bed people!!


Then it was time to paint. We also painted the bedroom set that we had in our old room. It used to just be a blah-ish stained wood, but now it all matches! And with some new pulls I think it looks really snazzy.







We were all pretty exhausted (as you can tell by our snuggling puppies and puffy eyes) after our weekend of carpentering, but as I may have mentioned, we LOVE our new bed!


More pictures of how the whole rooms is coming along soon!