A Few Home Upgrades

We're getting closer to the much awaited birth of our lil Bean, and have gotten the home improvement bug. Not quite to the level of a few of our friends (TW tore his house completely down to the frames), but still enough work to keep us busy and sweating on the weekends. Here are two of the more major projects we worked on.

1. A new deck!!! We've been wanting to add a deck for a few years now, so this is a very welcome addition.

Here is our back patio before building.

Another view of the patio - you can see that there is barely enough room for Tica

And a view of the house from our back fence line

We are still waiting on the wrought iron railing, but here is the semi-final deck. We cut one of the side railings on the patio off and added access to the deck via 3 steps.

We also added another access to the deck from the landing of the existing stairs.

And finally, here's a view from the back fence line. As you can see, it's a pretty tall, so we're considering a small privacy fence so our neighbor, Lynn, doesn't feel as if we're stalking her

Now all we need are some cheap chairs, and some guests!!! Any takers?

2. Painted and added chair rail to the nursery. Tica is really the design inspiration behind this room. She chose the colors, ceiling fan, and the chair rail, and even a really cool light switch cover.

Before . . . drab, boring beige . . .

After . . . fun, gender-neutral, bright colors. Hopefully Bean likes the light!

We're really excited (and exhausted) about these new upgrades. Mostly because it means we are a few steps closer to being ready to receive the newest member of our family!!