Swimming Pool

Well, the swimming pool....the one item that needed renovated that we all seriously wanted to get done first, but the whole being able to live in the house came up as a higher priority.

The words "swimming pool" was not really the right words that should have been used to describe what our pool used to look like and was definitely not somewhere I would want to swim in.

Here are some pictures of the pool from when we purchased the house...it was a swamp, piled high with trash, broken pool loungers and way too many frogs and other animals we were unsure of.

Above and Below - The pool when we arrived in October 2014

Below are some pictures of the work that Kevin and Charlie (with some help from Kevin's work friend Paul) completed.  The pool is 40 feet long by 18 feet wide and 10 foot deep at the deep end and 4 foot at the shallow end.

So with the new liner attached, the process of filling the pool started....because of the way you have to fill it up bit by bit to cut out holes for the filters and pump outlets, we had some challenges.  It took over a week to get the pool filled and ended up with algae.  However the right chemicals have killed the algae.  Below are some pictures taken once the pool was filled.

Erin and Jordyn...plus Charlies feet :)

Jordyn

 

Shelby taking a swim

Tracey cleaning the algae

Nearly there

We are still struggling with keeping the algae at bay, but plan to empty the pool before winter, refill and winterize.

Just ordered a cover...the costs that we have incurred for the pool are $800 for liner, about $200 in chemicals, $100 for the cover and $30 for winterizing chemicals.  Luckily our water bill has not increased because here we have a standard fixed city utility bill of $35 that does street lights, trash and water.  I am sure because of running the pump our electric bill will increase as well but have not seen that bill come in yet.

So next year I estimate that it will cost us about $300 to keep up and running for the summer.  Well worth it considering that I have spent an hour a day swimming since we got it set up, Charlie loves it, as does Kevin.  Tracey and Erin certainly spent a lot of time swimming whilst they were here too!

The Front Yard

We as a family have always enjoyed sitting down at the front of the house and to watch the world go by....

We had a porch when we lived on Harrison, but mostly used the back yard there because Charlie was so little.  Also, the kids just loved the trampoline.  My Dad can agree that the squirrels that lived in the trees there were rather entertaining...

When we lived on Twin Lakes we had a very small porch and the neighbors were far from friendly, so sadly we rarely spent time outside at the front of the house..

At Gloria, we had no porch so we had a swing in the front yard for some time and have lots of memories of sitting there and enjoying watching our cats and the kids playing in the cul-de-sac...

Here in Mississippi we are lucky to have a larger porch that allows us to have three chairs, a couple of tables and some plants.  There was a local flea market in town and we purchased three Adirondack chairs and the tables to match when we first moved here.  We also found an awesome garden center in Magee and got a green chiminea as well which has an awesome grape design on it - perfect for any wino!  It had a small amount of damage that is hardly noticeable so we got it for a cool $25.

I have lost count how many times we have sat out there to eat, have a glass of wine/beer or to just chill and chat...

So we have focused on working on the lawn and the footpath, although the path needs a little more work as some of the bricks have come loose.  But below is a before and after photo of the front footpath.

After

Before

The "lawn" and I use that word very loosely was mostly weeds and moss when we arrived covered with a deep coating of leaves (and a set of house keys somewhere Kevin).

Its amazing how quickly things grow here, you lay down grass seed and within a week you have 2 inch high grass.  So some before and after pictures.  We probably have cut down over 50 trees from the front yard that were in different stages of growing.  It was so totally overgrown when we arrived in October that we could not see the house.

We now have a lawn that my father would be proud of, however still more work to do around the big trees and on the north side of the front yard.  And of course, cant't wait until we have all the trim painted and the porch roof fixed.

BEFORE PICTURES

Overgrown and barely able to see the house

Overgrown front...the ivy on the left was all over the side of the house.

Sad and unloved.

A staple it seems for anyone who wants an ant free zone....

Finally, to make people feel welcome, we picked up an awesome sign that we have set up by the front path...

Kitchen finally complete

Our kitchen is finally complete (except two very tiny jobs left to do).

We took the kitchen from a grimy, bug invested space of nastiness to a cool, fun kitchen.  You have already seen some pictures that I posted of the kitchen when we purchased the house, and even some pictures of the process....but now the final results.

Here is a short reminder...

And here are the results...let me know what you think!

So our new fridge/microwave and dishwasher are shown in this shot...just love the bottom drawer freezer...Not sure why we choose orange for the walls, but we have always wanted orange somewhere in our house (even in Colorado).  Here we know that we will never be selling the house so its OK to have any color we want...surprisingly, everyone that has seen the color so far loves it.

We had to use vinyl tiles on the floor...eventually we will put hardwood floors down once we have done some foundation work, but this is perfect for now.  I love how we put the tiles down...we put them down diagonally and rotated the pattern.  Makes the room feel much larger.

Of course, we also had to put back up our wonderful under cabinet lights.  All the colors look awesome on the glass tile back splash.

The cabinets have been cleaned, painted inside and then stained and clear coated on the outside.  We got some awesome brushed nickel handles that have a antique style, but are modern due to their color.

The hallway beyond the Kitchen going to Charlie's bedroom on the right, and the bathroom.  We plan to replace the bathroom door and get a handle to match the hardware on the kitchen cabinets.  Found a place in North Mississippi that sells old refurbished panel doors, so one day we plan to head up there to check out what they have.

Bell's picture has pride of place beside Charlies bedroom door :)

This picture shows the great job that Jessica and Sam did on the cabinet doors.  They are chocolaty and very rich in color.  We followed through with the brown colors in the glass back splash and the counter tops.  The bright orange on the walls and the awesome new windows brightens the kitchen up perfectly.

So, old kitchens typically do not have a built in trash can so I searched the flea markets for something that might work to hide our trashcan.  I found a box that was originally used to store sweet corn.  It needed a good clean and I used Olde English dark oil on the exterior.  Turned out perfect.  You can see the dogs water peeking around the corner, so I have been on the lookout for something that can hide the bucket but still give them all easy access.  Our little spice rack is holding the spices that I use the most regularly.  The rest are in a kitchen cabinet.  One of my favorite pictures is on the wall and finished off the hallway perfectly...Thanks Dana for the picture :)

Finally our new gas stove, which I love and a low hanging pot rack...so glad I can reach them all easily now :).  Don't you just love the purple lights :)

Awesome job all the way around.  Love my kitchen so much that I even like cleaning up and emptying the dishwasher!

So call out to Jessica, Sam, Charlie and Kevin on helping to get the job done!

The Mustang needed some well overdue love

We desperately needed to replace the roof on the mustang.  Hail damage and sun damage from Colorado had caused it to crack and leak badly.  We kept on meaning to replace it but just never seemed to get around to it.  So finally, Kevin decided to dedicate a weekend to the mustang and put on a new roof!  I have such a great husband that is for sure!

First Christmas in Mississippi

I thought I would post pictures of how we decorated the Living Room for Christmas.  This room is probably one of the rooms that needs the least work.  We have to paint the ceiling, strip and stain or paint all the trim and sand/stain/finish the floors.

The Kitchen Ceiling

See how disgusting and dirty the ceilings are/were...the previous owners must have been pretty heavy smokers...

The Kitchen

The kitchen was rather disgusting.  In fact it was really disgusting.  Your feet stuck to the floor as you walked.  The cabinets had years of grease on them and the windows were filthy...one of the windows was held in by expanding foam a previous owner had used to fill in the holes in the frame.

Inside the cabinets, the previous owner had lined them with a sticky back plastic film...hunter green for the sides/walls, and white with green flowers for the shelves.  You could see quite clearly where insects had walked. The smell was really not very nice.  We did our best to try and clean things, but soon discovered that just cleaning was not going to work.

Here are some before pictures of the kitchen.

Original dishwasher which even had some dirty plates in it...

An outlet and wall covered in fly droppings

A good picture which demonstrates the foam under the window and level of grim that was on the kitchen floor and cabinets.

Even with all the grim, I could still see that this kitchen could be reclaimed.  Eventually of course we will put in a brand new kitchen, but we were working on a budget and figured that at least the cabinets would work for us for a few years.

Just look at the color of the water in the red bucket!!!  Yuck!

Betty trying to clean the floor with her tail!

The fan with pretty gross too - we decided to throw away the fan because after trying to clean we knew that it was too far gone!

Below is a picture of Betty trying to hinder our chances of working on the kitchen cabinets!

So, Charlie, who is an awesome little worker, decided it would be his job to pull up all the nasty sticky linoleum from the floor.  He ended up having to pull up 2 and sometimes 3 layers of linoleum from the floor. I think it took him 3 days to finish. Once complete the floor finally looked clean, and then we moved onto the cabinets.  I removed the doors, and removed all the sticky back plastic from the shelves, walls, and drawers.
Again we were hoping to just be able to clean the doors, but we had to scrub so hard to clean, the doors were losing the polyurethane finish and were patchy and really did not look very nice.  For a couple of weeks we had doors stacked up on the front porch in varying levels "donedom".

Between Jessica, Sam and I we managed to get the all the doors sanded, stained and clear coated the doors, drawers and cabinets.

Below are some pictures of the kitchen in varying stages.