Happy Friday

It's one week before what I'll now call "Grass Eve". Next Friday will be Grass Eve and Saturday will be Grass Day. This is a monumentous occasion for me, the fact that we're getting grass. We're going to have a yard that doesn't suck!! I don't know if you remember or not, but last October right around Halloween, I did a posting about how one of the neighborhood kids called our house a "ghost house." A little girl had left her umbrella in our yard and my husband was in the driveway as she went by on her bike and he asked her if it was her umbrella. She said, "yes! thanks!" and my husband overheard her tell her friend the following as they rode away: "Wow! Someone does live there! I have to tell Billy it's not a ghost house!"

Egad. My worst nightmare. We were the ghost house in the neighborhood! How mortifying!! We realized we had spent so much time working on the inside that we had to really get moving on the outside too. Boy are kids honest! That was quite a motivator. Well since then, our home has gone through quite a metamorphasis. We've painted it a pretty yellow instead of a crappy old cream/brown, and we painted the shutters white. We got rid of a very scary tall pine tree that was dying and trimmed back all our trees. We cleaned out the yard completely so that all the ferns and overgrown brush were eliminated. Now, it's a cute house with very crappy grass. Brown dead patches and weeds everywhere and ant hills, and very little actual grass. The heartbreaking part of it was two years before we moved in, the previous owners had actually put in all new sod. But it wasn't taken care of and the weeds and ants took over. I don't know why I didn't see this as a problem when I fell in love with the house; in fact, I overlooked a whole lot of flaws that my husband and I have had to fix over the past two years. I just don't know what it is, something happened when I walked through the door for the first time with the realtor. I thought, "This is it. This is the house." I could just tell. I don't know why. I went home and went to bed and planned out how to decorate every room in my head (and it is turning out just like I pictured--by the way). But boy did it need work. The carpets needed to be ripped out (my husband put down more wood floor), there was wallpaper everywhere, literally, (the doors, the sockets...), there was wood paneling in one room, the skylights needed replacing, we had to tent the house for termites, fix the roof, boy this is a long list of stuff. But I loved the layout. I loved that you had to step down into the living room. I loved that there was wood flooring in the family room. I loved that there were three large bedrooms, and the master bedroom was more like a "master wing" than a room. I loved the split floorplan. And I loved the location. Right in between my work and my husband's work. And near everything, malls, Target, good schools, the beaches, a great church. Our little neighborhood had a Main Street, with lots of trees and a cute little historic downtown area. And despite all our work, a lot more has to be done. This weekend, I'm giving the master bathroom a long-awaited makeover. The guest bathroom still has to be done (I flushed yesterday and the toilet handle broke off). We need to update the kitchen. Then little stuff, like fixtures and bookshelves.

I guess I grossly underestimated the amount of money we'd have to put into this house. My husband may secretly want to kill me. But I really do love it here. I love that we've transformed a ghost house into a cute little home. And next week, we'll the yard to go with it. I feel like all of our work (and money!) is finally paying off. After this, we can take our time on all the other stuff. It's a home! Finally!