A visit from the big O

No, not Oprah!  We had fun, visited a winery, ate lots of great Italian food, got him to help mount the flat screen TV in the bedroom and fixed the tears in his Biminey (sp?) cover.  It was a good weekend.

Carl the snake

Only our son will get the title.  For the rest of you, there was a coral snake found in our neighbor's yard today.  They are very poisonous.  My DH made me look at it so I would know what to watch out for and I may never walk around the yard in flip flops again. 

 It took all my courage to put my finger next to the dead snake so you could get an idea of the size.  Very Scary!

Baby Wood Ducks

We have baby Wood Ducks!  There were at least 11 in the beginning, now sadly, we're down to 6 or 7.  Nature at work I guess.  It's fun to watch the parents as they guide the babies, allowing them to swim farther away each day and then silently calling them back.  It's fun to watch.

The New Dining Room

Here's the new dining room with furniture in place.  Notice the copper pipe curtain rods my DH made for the room.  We love the "soft industrial" look and will like it even more as the copper tarnishes to a darker color.  

 See the new half wall on the right side?  The old kitchen steps used to be as wide as the opening, 5 feet at least.  After cutting them down both in length and width we had a drop off that needed closing.  Larry built us a half wall to match the other side of the opening.  We will likely put some kind of post up but aren't in love with the one on the other side so we'll wait to find other options.

 The chandelier will go when I find a replacement and the floor under the rug is the old and newly added concrete.  We'll live with that till next winter when we start the kitchen remodel.

The view out of this room is so much better than it was just a few short months ago.

The Deck is Done

Finally it's finished.  We said goodbye to Larry and Domingo this afternoon and enjoyed rocking in our chairs this evening.  It's a good feeling but there's still work to be done.

Notice there are no barriers between the posts and railing on the deck?  We're thinking about what we want to put up, in the meantime we'll try not to fall off in between.   See the bridge that connects 2 levels on the side of the house?  That was Charlie's idea.  We like it a lot.

 We could have a dance on this side of the deck!

 We'll be staining the deck with the same stain used on the patio cover.  We'll wait till the pressure treated pine dries out before we start.

 New Dining room addition from the deck

Our big deck

We're adding a wooden deck to the backyard that starts where the stone patio stopped and goes to the other end of the house.  It's 12 ft. deep out the sliding glass door and then goes out at an angle at the pecan tree to 16 feet.  

 The framing and posts go in

 Flooring starts and should be completed by the end of next week.  We'll have to wait till the pressure treated pine dries out before staining the wood.  When we do, we're going to use the same stain we used on the patio cover.

The Entry Patio

Here are a few pictures of our entry patio as it existed when we bought the house.  It was painted concrete that was supposed to look like wood beams in between concrete slabs.  It had as many as 5 different levels and seemed rather small.  The worst part of it was that when the pecan leaves dropped and were wet, the area was very slippery.  

 The above picture looks from the front door out to the garage on the left and driveway.

 Here's my DH working on the headboard/old door using the patio edge to trim the door.

 This is the new patio.  Our front door is just visible on the left and Charlie is doing the last step of acid washing the stone.  He's evened out some of the levels and it makes the space seem huge.  We love the look of the stone and will enjoy how non-slippery it will be if it ever rains again.