Why didn't we do this sooner?

Don't you hate those projects that you avoid and put off because you think they will be a pain or take a long time to complete...and they weigh on you and hang over you. Then you get your act together to do the project and think...why didn't I do this soon?One of these projects for us was relocating the fridge in our kitchen. We lived with the old configuration for 6 months (complete with bad sponge paint job!):




















Over our winter break I painted the top half of the kitchen with the extra paint leftover in the basement and J installed a new outlet so that we could swap the fridge and the storage cabinet. (The door frame that you see in the photos is the same door frame -- for a frame of reference.) We also installed some new shelves for additional storage. Now we actually have accessible workspace near the stove. When didn't we do this sooner? LOVE IT!

I'll take "Unidentified Shrubs" for $300, Alex...

Does anyone know what this shrub is?? We have two of them in our backyard that we "inherited" from the PO. I love their light green leaves (which turn yellow in the fall) and we had the most pleasant surprise this spring (the last two weeks of May) when these these beautiful little white flowers bloomed, with their lovely, light, sweet smell.

I want to keep them, but they are planted too close to the house and really need to be moved. I don't want to kill them -- so I am hoping to figure out what they are so that I can figure out the best time to transplant them.

This Barberry bush, on the other hand, could die for all I care. In fact, that would make my life easier. It is also planted too close to the house and is becoming obnoxiously over-grown. I hate pruning it because of the thorns and my half-hearted efforts are further dampened by the fact that we are leaning toward just cutting it down and starting over...if only I could decide what to put in its place (oh, and had the funds to purchase whatever we settle on).

(On a side note, in this photo you can see evidence of several other projects -- our steps, which need to be cleaned off and/or repainted and the railing which needs to be repainted ; and the piles of dirt under the bush which are left over from a different project and will be used when we try to reseed a couple sections of our lawn.)

Garage Plans

For whatever reason I can't get my act together and photograph the projects that we have been working on, but I do have some photos of the big project that is looming this summer: The Garage.

We knew when we purchased the house that the roof on the garage needed to be replaced along with the gutter (why they didn't do this simple project a few years ago when they did the roof on the house is beyond us -- and our neighbor that J has discussed it with). The gutter, which you cannot see on the other side of the garage, is also falling apart and hanging on by a thread. (No, our garage stucco is not two different colors -- what you can't see "off stage" to the left is the sprinkle that is watering our garden and half the garage in the process). This has always been on the list as a project for this summer. My dad has offered to fly out and help us with it, but due to scheduling conflicts this actually won't happen until September, as the only other option was July and none of us wanted to re-roof a garage that gets no shade cover in the middle of the summer.


The other part of the garage which needs serious attention is the trim. A majority of the trim around the roof is rotted and needs to be replaced. The rest of the trim looks like this right now:


With the most attrocious portions being around the garage door, which gets the harsh south sun and no shade cover, and the threshold on the back entrance to the garage -- which has actually completely crumbled and fallen apart in the last month:


Part of the reason for the sorry shape of the trim is that the previous owner did not prime before she repainted the trim on the garage or the house (nor did she prime any of the trim inside, which has created ANOTHER summer project to be discussed later). However, I can't hate her completely because bad paint job or not, she did cover up the PO-once-removed's Pepto Pink trim:


I would rather look at the peeling blue trim than that nasty pink any day, so I curse the PO a little more quietly than I would otherwise.