Almost There...

This past weekend I spent at the Flea Market in St. Jacob's and thrifting with my BFF.  We have been friends for 36 years and had never gone away just the two of us.  With life and husbands and kids it just didn't happen.  But last weekend we remedied that and decided to make it an annual event.  No great things were purchased, just some small household items, and no pictures were taken...sorry!

Back at home McG kept busy with work and projects in the back yard.  I came home to some significant progress and was able to help him work out there on Sunday.

He moved my fountain over to the back of the house where it could be seen better. This is probably my favourite of all the gifts he has ever made for me.

He added a brick border along the garden by the back door.  He and our son spent Saturday afternoon digging up the beach stone at the home of some of our friends.  They were re-doing their landscaping and were going to get rid of the stone.  McG and our son dug it out of their yard and put it into a trailer, brought it home, and then proceeded to  pass it through a screen box to remove the dirt and then put it into our garden.

McG loves a bargain even better than I do, and won't hesitate to do a bit of work to get something for FREE!

He extended the stone along the back of the house around the fountain as well.

We need to finish up this area this week by adding a bit of sod.

Last week, he also started to paint the garage and he added the "jewellery" to the garage doors that we purchased over at Menard's in Michigan as well.  This hardware is magnetic so there is no drilling into the doors!

This is as far as he has gotten with the paint, but you can tell already what a difference the darker colour is going to make!  I'm excited to get the project done, but it will have to wait...we are having our annual Labour Day party this weekend...and there is lots to do to get ready!!

Progress in the Backyard

Well, when I last posted we were knee deep in some major fixing to the back of our home.
 It went from looking like this when we purchased the house last year...

To looking like this - mid reno...

We had taken down the deck to find that some of the parging on the bottom of the house was damaged.  McG had done the patch work and moved the stairs into place under the door, and we were waiting for the weather to co-operate so that we could get the last of the painting done.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and here we are all finished with the painting.

We are loving the contrast of the dark grey paint with the white of the window trim and will be adding an even wider white trim to the windows soon.

We are also liking how much bigger this area of the yard looks now that the deck is gone.  We didn't use it at all to sit on which is why we decided not to replace it and to just have the stairs leading down from the doorway.

McG added a rail to the stairs as well and will be adding another railing to the other side of the stairs. He also built a hose reel holder out of 4 x 4's.

Here's a look at the before and after of this area of the house...a GREAT TRANSFORMATION!!

We love how the new paint colour cleans up the look of the house and makes it more modern.  Stay tuned for a few more finishing touches and a FULL reveal of the back of the house!

Linking up @:  A Stroll Thru Life