Small Changes and New Ideas

 Happy Thursday Friends! 

 

In honor of our wonderful country and the 4th of July holiday, Lance added a new addition to our front yard last week.
 

 

Our gorgeous new American Flag flying in our front yard brings a huge smile to my face everytime I drive down the street!  Crazy enough, when Lance began looking for a flagpole and flag to purchase, he kept finding that the flags (yes the American Flags) were all made in CHINA (or some other place that is not America).  Who would buy an American Flag from another country??  It just didn't make sense to us.  The Buckleys wanted an American Flag from America and thankfully my tactically savy husband new right where to look.

 

 

LaRue Tactical is a Texas based company that sells American made American Flags.  Anyone who enjoys military related items, guns, or tactical equipment will love this website!

 

A few other small victories of the past few weeks include:

 

We found some dining room table chairs that we love!!  We are saving up a bit before we purchase them, but I am thrilled we have a good idea of what we want that will add some great color to the beautiful grey walls in the dining room.

 

 

And remember that old white door???

 

 

Well we are starting the process of turning it into our new dining room table!  It may be hard to see our vision now, but we will slowly continue to share pictures until we have the finished product.  Below is an example of the first steps - removing the layers, and layers, and layers of old paint that are on the door.  At any hardward store you can easily find a good paint stripper.  At the Lowe's around the corner from our house we got a container of Jasco Paint and Epoxy Remover, brushed it onto the door, and started scrapping off the layers of paint.  It's a long and tedious process so it will probably take me another week to get it finished!

 

Once I have all of the paint off, and can see the beautiful oak wood that the door is made of, we will move onto step two - staining or painting the door a great color that will match the (eventual) dark wood floors we are planning to put in down the road.

 

We are considering either a dark mahogany stain or a dark navy blue paint color - which do you think we should go with??

 

As the projects continue to move along, we are realizing more and more how thankful we are for this house!  While homeownership has already had its bad/hard days, as with most situations in life, the good days are greatly outweighing the bad!  One of my particularly favorite things about our new house is the wildlife around it!  For example:

 

- We have mallards that fly down our street on a regular basis and just chill in our neighbors yards

- we have blue herons that frequently fly throughout our neighborhood and live in the creeks that run through the parks

- we have rabbits EVERYWHERE - we were outside walking the dogs for about 20 minutes around the neighborhood two nights ago and I counted 18 rabbits!

- We also have a birds nest right outside our dining room window: 

 

 

At first I thought this was just an old nest, because I didn't see any activity around it for a few days.  Boy was I excited when I saw the mom and dad birds sleeping there a few nights ago though!  And then I actually saw the babies!!  If you look closely, you'll see that there is a tiny beak sticking out of the nest that I have circled in orange!  A few days later I was watching the nest again and was thrilled when the beautiful dad (who is a red bird!) flew in with a HUGE green worm (or maybe catepillar?  All I know is that it was very large) and started feeding the baby birds.  It was the coolest thing I have ever witnessed from a foot away!  After living in the city, getting to see the beauties in nature around our house on a daily basis is truly a blessing.

 

 

I hope everyone had a wonderful, safe, and patriot 4th of July holiday!!



All for the dogs...

I'm back!  Sorry for my absence these past few weeks - this moving thing is hard work and incredibly time consuming!  Lance and I have been busy trying to unpack, get settled, and of cource, dive into all of our projects.

 

We also got a heaping dose of "Home-Owners Reality Shock" during our first full week owning the house when the air conditioner, garage door, and pool pump all decided to break!  Joy!  But we handled it well, bought some fans, and had a good excuse to not complain about how hot it was outside :)!

 

Those of you who know us well already know that Kimber and Delta are the center of our lives.  So it shouldn't come as a surprise that everything we have been working on since we moved in has been to accommodate our puppies.

 

The biggest project we have been trying to complete is installing a new back door, installing a doggy door into this new back door, building a fence for the dogs to have a "dog park" that keeps them out of the pool, and removing all bushes and shrubs and laying new sod for the dog park area.  The reason why this project is #1 on the list is so that the dogs will be able to go in and out of the house while we are at work and not have to stay in their kennel all day.

 

Since I had already agreed to paint the whole house, this project was added onto Lance's Honey-Do List (oh boy!).  He started by removing all of the ugly shrubs that are ALL OVER the back yard. 

 

Here are some of the before pictures of the Dog Park area of the backyard:

 

 

Lance started by removing all of the shrubs and ivy that were underneath the bay windows and installing the beams that would support the fence.  It took a couple of days to remove everything and dig the holes, especially with all of the pool and sprinkler pipes that ran underneath the ground in this area!  Thankfully, he was diligent and did not bust a single pipe!

 

We then turned our attention to the back door. We used to have an all window back door which wouldn't work for our dog door to be installed into.  So we made a trip to Lowe's and purchased your average, boring, white back door.  I cannot wait to get some paint up on it - but that will have to wait for now.

 

 

While Lance is fully capable of learning and completing the task of putting in a door, we were under a bit of a time crunch and didn't need a hole in our house for an extended period of time.  So we decided to enlist the help of an extremely handy friend,

Maricio.  He and his guys spent about 2.5 hours at our house on a Friday evening and "TaDa!" our new door was in!

 

 

 

With the new door in, we could get started installing the doggy door! 

 

Now I have to stop and take a minute to describe this doggy door.  Most people think of a simple square cut-out with a flap - right?  Well, not in the Buckley house.  Due to the large size of our pups, we needed a doggy door large enough that a human could easily crawl through it.  Seeing as how Lance is all about safety and home defense, it came as no surprise to me when he excitedly told me about a bullet proof, electronic doggy door he found online.  High Tech Pet offers multiple different doggy door options for those customers who have home defense and safety in mind.  At first I was skeptical about how it would work and if it was really needed.  Now that it is installed I couldn't be happier!  I sleep easier at night knowing that only the dogs (who have sensors installed on their collars now) can get in and out through the door while all raccoons, squirrels, humans, etc. are stuck on the outside.

 

 

 

Kimber took to the door a bit faster than Delta, but now they both know what to do and they love it! I tried to get a picture of Kimber using it, but it is a little blurry because she is a hard one to get to hold still.

 

The next step was to remove all of the front shrubery and begin putting in the top and bottom horizontal planks and then the vertical pickets.  With the help of a good friend, Travis, Lance was able to knock out all of that in just one afternoon.

 

Doesn't it look great??  The last piece of this project was to have the sod laid down and that was completed today!  So now we have a fully functioning dog park!!

 

 

 

The last two gates are going on it tonight and the dogs will get their first day out of the kennel tomorrow while we are at work!

 

This project took us a total of 2 weeks to complete, but let's be honest, who wouldn't want to give these cuties are wonderful dog park of their own??

 

 

Until next time, any guesses at what we will be turning this $20 oak door into that we found on Craigslist???