Abby's birthday part is a little over a week away and Ryan and I are hard a work trying to finish the last big project. At the beginning of summer we sat down and made a list of the projects we wanted finished before we had Abby's party. Now, all this work for a 1 year old seems a little funny, I know. But, it's more than that. For many of the people coming, this will be the first time they've seen our house. We moved in less than a year ago and we're sort of doing a combo birthday party/housewarming party. Ryan wanted to do a full blown housewarming but after some convincing we decided one big party was enough for this summer.
The other reason for the list is that we've got to have priorities right? We've found that we tend to bounce from project to project without a real direction if we don't have a list. And we end up having half the supplies for half the project so we decided to pin down the things we wanted to accomplish this summer and gave ourselves a deadline of Abby's party.
We've done well. We've mulched the majority of the yard (we'll need a few more yards of much in the spring to finish up), we finished the master bathroom, power-washed the deck, got the pool up and running, and now, the very last project is the gazebo.
I didn't talk much about the gazebo when we first moved in but we've found that we really like this space. We aren't crazy about the arrangement of the decks/pool/gazebo, which you can see in the very first picture, but for now we aren't planning to re-deck so we're keeping what we've got and improving it.
You can see that they did a terrible job of painting the ceiling in the gazebo...I think they used spray paint...and in the worst color I could imagine. Then, it seemed like they maybe left the windows open and it rained, ruining the walls that used to cover up area under the windows. Who knows...that's just a guess. This is what it looked like when we moved in.
The wiring was all wonky...as it is in the entire house so Ryan spent a few days redoing that. We added a few switches, and a few outlets, and wiring for a TV!! We're going to put a TV in here for Football season. Can you see it now? A nice cool fall day, a few friends hanging out and the Packers kicking the Bears butt on the TV in the corner? I can already envision it!
Check out that crazy salmon pink/orange color! Isn't it terrible? Oh, and! That's the fan from our master bedroom. It's still ugly, but it's so functional here. We love having it there to help move the air around.
So, our plan:
1. Rewire and get ready for a TV - done
2. Replace the boards under the window and between the windows - done (see picture below)
3. Repaint - We're going to do the walls white, and the ceiling a pretty blue color.
4. Add crown molding
5. Repaint the fan
6. Hang TV
7. Furnish!
So, you can see from the above picture, that this is a work in progress. We've got all the pre-work done and we are ready to paint this weekend! Barring any huge disasters we should have this baby painted and maybe the molding up before the party. Right now we've got a big 8 person outdoor table that we've been using inside here but I'm thinking of changing things up and making it more of another living space. We've got an extra futon in the basement that I'm thinking we can re-cover and move out here. Then maybe a little love seat, a rug and a small bistro table with two chairs. We can use TV trays or maybe a coffee table for eating off of, but I think we can make this a comfortable, functional space really easily.
I can't wait to show you how it turns out!!
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