Progress with the house

So I thought I'd post a little bit on the progress we've made with our house. 

Here's a little of what it looked like when we moved all our stuff out of our storage unit:

Unfortunately, I did not get a "before" picture of the yard, but Doug and Nancy came over while I was working late one day and helped John cut back a lot of the stuff in the backyard. That took a few loads in Doug's truck to put in their dumpster!

After aggressive pruning

We wanted a little something done in the yard, so we put in a little flower bed in a spot that we aren't going to be messing with later (we want to terrace the upper part of the backyard). It's a little bright spot in a disaster of a backyard.

We added more flowers and plumerias and installed a drip system so it doesn't die when we go on vacation (though a couple seem to be dying anyways...). We also added a gnome. A homes not a home without a gnome! We're hoping it will scare off our annoying neighbor's cat.

Next to the flower bed is a grape vine that was there before. We put in a new trellis since the existing one was falling apart and we have bunches of grapes coming in.

So back inside the house, we put in a new kitchen facuet when we moved in. More recently we replaced the ceiling fans in the sun room and got a new range in the kitchen. So far I feel like we've done very worthwhile upgrades. Next one we need to do is the bathroom light fixture since only 1 socket works without exploding.

Here's a big reason we just wanted to replace them

the old range

our beautiful new range that I love to cook with

We've also gotten a lot more organized. We cleaned out the garage that still had stuff from the previous owner so we could put our stuff in there. 

what's left of the boxes in the sun room

we've beefed up our food and appliance storage

The only furniture we bought was a reclining loveseat and a desk and bookcase.  We got the loveseat used for $200. You can hardly tell it's used and we love it! The desk was a priority since I need a spot to study for the PE!

So in the front yard, we decided to tear the front beds out completely except for an area of rose bushes. We did each side of the house on a different day. And there was a lot of crap to pull out.

the pile

a couple of the rose bushes in the back came back nicely from getting pruned

We feel like we've made a lot of progress so far to make everything how we want it, but still have a looooong way to go. After we get back from Lake Powell we have to look into fixing the insulation on the west wall and/or getting the AC fixed. I don't know how many Home Depot receipt surveys! I sure hope we win a gift card from one of those!!