Curb appeal

After more than a year since I first bought the church, she is finally getting some curb appeal. Rich is moving along on the stone wall and when I get up there on Friday, I should have really nice stone steps installed.

I finished the painting and staining of the front porch. I bought post caps (from DecksDirect, the nice folks who helped me select the low voltage lighting). I painted them and hopefully David will have them installed when I arrive.

Deb brought over a variety of sprinklers for me to choose from. I was happy to see that there was a sweet little sixties number that matched the color of the front door. It works like a charm but I have a sneaking suspicion that one might not be allowed to water their lawn in the village of Coxsackie. I never see anyone else's lawn getting watered with a sprinkler. Perhaps I'll ask the mayor.

And look what I saw! Baby blades of grass!

In what will be the biggest event of this week's renovation is the finished installation of the new patio door on the North side of the house. David had just screwed it in for last weekend so I could see the placement of the transom but it was not functional. Over the course of the weekend, I wished that it was operable about twenty times! I'm looking forward to being able to enter and exit from right off the kitchen.

Next blog update: Gail tries to lay a brick path.

Around the Perimeter

All of the work at the church this week was around the perimeter. The deck was getting the Atlantis Rail Cables and the front was getting landscaped. There was a lot of distress when I created the driveway last year. A lot of tittering about "paving paradise." The fact is that I had to install the driveway to allow the machinery to get onto the land to replace the foundation. Whether it was going to stay or not was completely up to me. After living with the driveway for a few months I kinda grew very fond of it. I was always carrying a lot of things and now I always had a parking spot right by my front door. When my neighbor Wayne, who is a realtor, asked me if I was keeping it, I said I wasn't completely sure but I did like its convenience. He said it would increase the value of my house significantly. I began to think about working the driveway into the aesthetic!

So, yes, it was pretty. So pretty that it was part of the reason I bought the house. But I am certain that I will bring back it's former curb appeal and more.

Rich, my earth mover (I gave him that title) has started building the boulder/stone wall around the curve of the driveway and Deb, my gardener, has planted most of the hill and back to the deck on the south side of the house.

David was busy working on the deck. He had never installed Atlantis Rail before. When I asked him if it was difficult he replied, "It's monotonous." He did a fantastic job.

Today, Andersen will be delivering the final patio door and transom to replace the first window that you see on the right above. I'm turning that into a door so I can grill right off the kitchen and entry/exit on the North side of the house. David said if it came earlier enough, he might have it installed by the time I get up there tonight. Of course we are saving all the old wavy glass in the window so we will have replacement panes.

Here's some of the landscaping that Rich and Deb have done.

I sprayed grass seed around the front "lawn" and Deb said I might see grass sprouting in a couple of weeks! I can't wait to get one of those little rotary blade mowers that my Dad used and mow the lawn without any gas or electricity.

Sparky slept over on Friday and we woke up to a beautiful sunny morning. After our stretch and morning walk, he spent quite some time looking out the doors, watching boats go by on the Hudson River. He looks and plays dumb but I know he has deep thoughts...

I took the train home very early on Monday morning and got this beautiful view of my favorite river.