Drainage issues

When they installed the parging stuff around our new foundation, the pipes don't lead downhill, so all the water it's supposed to be taking away from the foundation just pools around the door to our storage area.  This has bothered my husband for months, so we finally took it apart last weekend.  It was really difficult given the amount of rock they had strewn all over our yard before planting grass on top of it.  (Looking at it now, we can't believe we let them do this, but we so desperately wanted them to be done.) 

It took lots of pickaxing and shoveling and now we have a rock pile just as big as the one they spread everywhere!  But we also have nice downsloping drainage and a very pretty retaining wall. 

We're not quite finished - we are going to put another pipe right in front of the storage door that connects to the main drain along the side of the house.  There's also another drainage pipe on the right side of the door that leads under the foundation.  It was also angled upwards, so we dug under that and we're going to extend that drain pipe away from the house as well.

It's practically kudzu!

It's not really...we just have these ivy vines that go EVERYWHERE.  They used to be all over the back of our house (the people who lived here before us had trellises up and the ivy spread like crazy), which was cool and annoying.  It was cool cuz we actually had a robin build its nest there once, but it was really annoying to take down - it was wrapped under our siding, around our cable cord, and burrowed into our yard.  We removed all that a while ago, but we also had some in our front yard.  No idea where it came from, really.  But it was growing up the side of our porch and we spent a couple hours removing it, a bunch of other "jungle plants," and a quarry of rocks.  It looks sort of barren now, but imagine a nice big piney tree in the corner!  

Coolest blinds ever!

Cordless window blinds are the coolest thing ever invented!  I showed them to my husband last week and he was fascinated.  We bought one for every upstairs window we have.  :)  They're so easy and the light blockage is incredible.  The white ones softens the light let in while keeping the room bright in the daytime, and the dark one keeps the den pitch black, even in broad daylight.

Cleaning the garage

Our garage has been a disaster area ever since the addition started.  We couldn't find ANYTHING!  Stuff was thrown all over the place, we're pretty sure some of our tools are missing, and there was no space to do any work.  After a few solid weeks of cleaning and organizing and a few hundred dollars at Home Depot, here's what we have now!

New doorknob (I did it all by myself!),

Bikes on hooks,
tools in fancy dancy new toolbench,
bottles of chemicals, paints, and garden stuff on nifty metal shelves,
lawn tools on tracking thing...

We could fit our car in the garage now!