Spring time means yard work!

Two years ago I ripped out all of the shrubs in front of my house. They were the ugliest things ever. Around the same time I was doing that, a good friend was having her home demolished and rebuilt due to a fire. She was kind enough to let me come and take some of her cement blocks and also flowers from their garden that were going to to tramped on and ripped up.

We spent a long day digging up lilies, tulips, hostas and ferns and then replanting them at my house. They looked great the first year and also last year. This year they haven't all come up but I've decided that I want to add a few more. I'm thinking about some black eyed susans. I haven't gone to by them yet so I will update once I do this. 

Here's a bit of how it was before, after and now:

 As you can see in the second picture, my mailbox is on the railing of my front porch. Originally it was on the house but the mailman refused to deliver my mail after a while because I had a loose railing. I moved the mailbox to the front railing and removed the hand rail to go up the steps. The problem with this is that the mail would always get soaked if it was raining. Yes it has a lid on it but 9 times out of 10 it didn't close all the way with the mail in it.

Last weekend when I was adding the new fresh mulch, I installed a new mailbox. It's a regular type of mail box that you would see at end of your driveway if that is how your city did mail. I like this one so much more and I'm excited to also decorate it for the holidays and whatnot.

As you can see from the picture above, I have a second layer of blocks and added some fresh mulch. The mailbox is in and now I have a lot of clean up to do. Tons of pine needles are all over. I'm not sure if I will get to it this year but I have a large area next to the driveway that has pine trees that need to be trimmed, leaves that need to be raked and possibly mulch put down there.


Stay tuned for more photos later this spring/summer with more flowers and not just boring old mulch!

Small updates

I haven't been working on any big projects as of late. My last post I mentioned wanting to build a kitchen cart. That is slowly in process. I bought wood from Lowes last week and had them cut it down to size. However, one of the boards was really warped and not flat so I need to buy a little more.


Back in 2007 I came home from school one Saturday to find my bathroom was completely gutted and torn apart by the guy I was dating at the time. He wanted to redo the bathroom because we had a few loose tiles. This turned into, no tile, no drywall, no tub, sink, toilet, etc. Then it took forever to be put back together again. To the day he finally moved out, he never completed it. Long story short, this was a BIG issue and I won't get into all the drama there.

One of the random things left undone was a little cubby (best way to describe it) that he tiled instead of just doing flat dry wall. I never knew how to grout so it just sat there ungrouted. Once I discovered SimpleGrout the pre-mixed grout that I used for the kitchen floor I realized I could finish up some of the grouting in the bathroom! I had a little left over so I did that this weekend. I did not have enough to complete the project but it's amazing how much better it looks. I may hate how my bathroom looks due to the drama that it took getting it there but one day it will be 100% finished and I will be happy. Here is a quick during and after picture of the grout.

I started to grout before I took a picture so I snapped a quick one after I had started. This was a bit more difficult than the floor just because of gravity. Small pieces kept falling and pushing it into the cracks was a bit more time consuming but it went pretty well. I still have to do the top part and the sides of the cubby, along with a small strip of tile near the tub.

The other small update this week is I bought a new kitchen table! My kitchen is very small and I don't have a dining room so finding a kitchen table the right size has been difficult. The table that I have been using for the almost 10 years I've been in my house was actually there when I moved in. It always worked but was never my style and since I've been doing updates it's been looking more and more shabby and out of date. I think it's from the 90s. Little things like changing your table can make such a difference in looks. You don't always have to spend a lot of money or do big repairs to give your room a makeover.