Curb Appeal

On top of having lots of visitors in March, we have also been very busy with projects in the Home Improvement department. We took full of advantage of Tommy's electrical expertise while he was staying with us for 10 days. I took a lot of pictures but I think I'll break it up over the next couple of posts.

First we spent 4 days working on our flower bed. It needed a little curb appeal. Day 1 consisted of Alex and I scraping up the mulch in 40 degree weather and 30 mph wind. It took 8 fully stuffed out-door black garbage bags, 10 regular trash bags, and one garbage container to hold all the freakin' mulch that was compacted on our flower bed! 

Doesn't he look so proud? I call this one "Prince Alex in a Can".

Day 2 sucked. We were already sore from all the racking but we headed over to Lowe's to pick up 200 retaining wall bricks. Of course, we couldn't just load 2 complete pallets into the back of Tommy's truck because it was way too heavy. We had to hand load 50 at a time. I touched each brick at least twice. So 5 trips later this is what we had:

By this time it was close to 3 PM, but the boys decided to at least start on the first layer of the foundation. First you dig, then compact, then use the level and level it out, then place the brick to see if that's where you want it, remove the brick, then compact more, and level, and then add paver base (so that everything settles and drains correctly), then add the brick again and see if it's level, THEN you move on to the next brick. Repeat 200 times.

Day 3. Tommy slept in and Alex did most of it but he didn't mind so much because he likes most things to be done perfectly. Here's Alex creating a foundation:

A few hours later, Tommy woke up and joined the fun.

And finally, Day 4. All the mulch was put back into place and a few of the extra bricks were taken back. I think it looks great but I don't think we'll be taking on a project like this for a while. I completely understand why people pay to have others do it for them.