Easter Weekend

John and Dawn left Saturday after a full week of fun and work making progress in getting things ready for their move here this summer.   It was great to see them again and to be a part of their big adventure.  

After they left Paula and I went to my friend Sara's house and dyed Easter eggs using a technique involving silk scraps.   Sara is an artist who works with silk and she has a lot of scraps! 

You find an interesting scrap, wet it, and wrap it around an egg.  Then the egg and scrap are wrapped in a cotton square, secured with a twistie tie, and boiled in water and vinegar for 15 minutes.   When cool, the little egg packages are unwrapped.   It's such fun to see what the silk did to the egg.  

We loved this egg since it looked like That Handsome Dog Gus. 

We had a lot of fun. 

 Easter was a perfectly beautiful spring day and Ben and I went for a long bike ride.  It was the second ride of the season, the first having been on Thursday.  Sure was great to be back on a bike!  Ben is training for the Ride Across the Rockies in early June, but I'm just having a good time.

Memorial Day

The workmen left on Wednesday, just in time to get everything cleaned up for our Memorial Day picnic. It was a good time to finally take some "after pictures."

Here's "before."

And here's "after."

In a few months, we'll stained the wood, dark brown for the floor and railing top, and white for the railings.

I'm quite smitten with the new flagstone walkway/patio.

The curved walkway leads to a pad for the recycling and trash cans.

The new pond is going to go to the right of the curved walkway, where all this ivy is now. The pond man comes tomorrow and I can't wait to see what he says!

While Ben and I prepared for the picnic by cleaning up and shopping, Paul had his own work to do -- filling the many water balloons that the kids would eventually play with. Every now and again he'd take a break to have some fun.

Moving Along

Despite the storms that came through the area today, the contractors were able to move ahead with framing the new portico. Like many farmhouses, ours has a front door that no one uses and a back door that everyone uses; the back is the actual entrance to the house.

As we considered the new porch and deck design, we decided to go ahead and fix this entrance problem by adding a large portico so the entrance to the house would actually look like an entrance. Not only would people know where to enter, but we'd have a covering from bad weather, good lightning and a great feature to decorate at Halloween and Christmas.

So it's exciting to see our plans coming to life. There's six feet from the front door --oh, how nice it is to say that now with such conviction!-- and the steps, giving us a nice, wide space to come in and out of, to tuck a bench to set grocery bags and such while we unlock the door, and set a grill.

I really love how the angle of the new portico echos the angle of the roof line of the old entrance room. The columns won't end up so thin as they look now, as they will be "wrapped" so they'll appear more substantial. It's hard to visualize this now, but you just have to have faith.


It is easy to see that we'll have quite a bit more space on the deck itself. The old two-level deck has been replaced by a single-level deck and enlarged by three feet, giving us room for a table big enough to seat at least six, and maybe eight people. Ah, heaven.

Caution!

The outside of our house turned into a construction zone yesterday with the arrival of the crew which is going to implement the plans for our new portico, deck, patio, and rescreened porch.


Amazing how quickly the guys tore down what took us so long to build.

We had the front porch rescreened and painted almost as soon as we moved in, way back in 1985. That same year Ben built the deck that fit into the corner. I love this old photo of Ben talking with our old neighbor, Buddy, about the job.


The side porch was added when we put the second story on the house in 1995.

These old projects certainly got their share of use and are in sore need of replacement. I feel no sentiment at seeing them go; just excitement about what is to come.

The Contract is Signed

In the middle of this unsettled and busy week we met again with the design/construction company which is planning the remodeling of the porches and entrance of our house.

Originally they planned to start construction in June or July but, due to a delay in starting another job, decided they could start in early April if we could reach an agreement on the final details of the contract and write the initial check. This took a bit of work, but by Thursday noon the contract was signed, the check was written, and we were ready to rock and roll.

With any luck with the weather, we should be enjoying our newly screened front porch, new and greatly enlarged side and back deck, new entrance portico, and new back walkway/patio by mid-May!

Making Plans

Yesterday morning we met with the company that will build our new porch this summer. Their designs were very exciting. We'll rescreen and clean up the front porch, push out the side and back deck three feet to gain much-needed living space, and add a brand new portico over the entrance to give us shelter from the weather and to better "mark" that door as the entrance. It should be wonderful. Sigh.