New decks

Decks finished, railing is next! Here the glass panels are already in place but we were still not allowed outside. Those gaps were still quite big!

Work in progress (see in the upper right corner, the slats are not all in yet.)

Thank you, Leonard, Jason, Luke and Pete for the beautiful, clean, professional work you did on this project! We could not be happier with the result.

Another corner of the upper deck.

The kids' lower deck is larger than the upper deck and makes for a wonderful outdoor play area.

The back of the house, as seen looking up from the bottom of the hill... The lower deck comes out further and has three glass panel inserts. Under the lower deck is a new storage "room" with low ceiling but plenty of room for boxes and paint cans. Entrance door to storage can be seen in lower left corner.

2 years later, replacing the decks!

I don't think anyone is thinking we are rushing through the remodeling of this house. 2 years after we removed the old, unsafe decks from the house, we started the rebuild project.

Foundation for a storage area under the lower deck being poured one morning.

Storage under the lower deck shaping up.

The new storage!!

Here's the frame for the staircase to connect upper and lower decks...

I walked to the backyard to take this pix; the house indeed looks larger, much more complex but what an exciting change!

From the kids bedroom, one can already enjoy a great, new view. Slider doors were still blocked with large plywood sheets at this point.

Working on the railings, and frames for the glass panels.

Our slider doors were still blocked but we could not wait to go outside!

The new stairs connecting the upper and lower decks are beautiful, clean blocks.

Reupholstered dining room chairs

We have reupholstered 4 of our garage sale found dining room chairs! I am super happy with the result.

The fabric we chose is a vinyl actually. It is silver.

A close-up of the light reflecting on the back rest.

All these 6 chairs are from the same garage sale and all 6 of them are made of beautiful teak wood. Two of them were reupholstered years ago; they have regular fabric covers.

When it rains, it pours

Noticing that all these "before" pictures (below) were taken on the very same calendar day, I am asking myself, what were we thinking? The house was taken apart downstairs, upstairs and of course in between (we were re-wiring and getting gas to the new kitchen) at the very same time. One project needed another project done, and that one needed yet another...
Needless to say I am so happy that we are almost finished making a clean home out of this poor old fixer-upper house.
What a project of a house, but what a transformation!

An "after" version of the kitchen image above. Since this photo was taken, we have changed the light fixture! Not sure if I have a photo taken just yet though.

My favorite part of the new kitchen.

After remodel; the railing and stairway.