The Outdoor Series - Doughboy Down

Well even after all that work that we have done to our decked/pool yard {which wasn't even half of what we were going to do}, our Doughboy pool had rusted over the winter and it had to come down.  So in early April of 2010, we started to take it down.  This started a very large project for our backyard, one we had dreamed about, but didn't think we would be able to do for years.  But we did get a good tax return last year, so we were able to swing this really large project.  I will have to break this project up into a couple of different posts, so please bear with me so you can see the final project.  It won't disappoint, so please stop back.

You know things are bad when it starts to rust around the pump area.  The rust was so bad it had already made holes in the outer shell of the pool.  We did think about replacing the pool {heck we even ordered one and then cancelled it}, but we knew we wanted grass to play in, so we took the plunge and took down the pool.  Oh and all that decking!!!  Yikes!!!

Here we are draining the pool out.  Sad looking pool.  Damn we knew we needed a new liner, but this was bad.  The previous owners just didn't seem to take care of anything around this home.  Sad!!!

See all those layers of different colors?  Oh what the sun can do to fade things.  And yes this pool was "clean", it was just that faded and not taken care of at all.

This was all the rust damage on the inside of the outer shell after we took the liner off.

It was sad when I really saw it coming down.  We do miss it sometimes.  But we might put a much smaller one back in a few years.  This way we still have grass to play in.

This was the view from our Master Bedroom.  Yikes!!!

And of course we found more kids toys.  Poor Barbie, she only had a head.

We had to rake out all the garbage we could.  We had a couple of bags worth of toys, beer bottles & soda cans.  We don't even understand how the garbage got under this part of the decking.  There was no way to get to it.  Weird!!!  This was the deeper end of the pool.  The water level in our area is high and we had a hard time getting all the water out of the hole, so that we could fill it back up with dirt.

Very sad view, but it made us realize how large our yard was and how much we were going to gain by doing this really large project.  It was well worth it in the end.  ;)

We hired someone to take down all the decking for us.  We knew it would take us way too long and we would have to get a really large dumpster.  So this contractor took down all the decking {except for right up against the house}, hauled away all the wood and filled the hole several times before there was no more water in that area and leveled the land.  It was worth the money in the end.

Look at how big this yard really is without that huge pool & decking!!!  Nice!!!

The contractor did seed, but we had a really bad raining May in 2010 in NY and we guess it washed away a lot of the seeds.  So this is what we were left with, just patches of grass, but mostly dirt.

You can see the Hosta garden bed along the left fence here.  We received them free from our neighbors across the street.  That is my kind of Green gardening.

This strip right here will be a garden bed one day.  Evergreens and colorful plants.

Well that is it for now.  We are almost ready for the big reveal.  I can't wait to share it all with you lovely readers.

Here are all the other Outdoor Series posts from the start:  post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4, post 5, post 6.

So has anyone thought about taking down their old pool?  Did yours rust like ours?  Did you buy a new one?  How about your decking?  Love it or hate it?  Let's her it ladies!  I want to hear your thoughts.

Thanks for stopping by everyone! Have a great day! I would love to hear your comments, so please leave one if you want. I love sharing and inspiring others, but I also love feed back and sharing of others ideas and thoughts. :)

Jewelry For Your Dressers

After updating my bathroom cabinets with some new jewelry here, I decided I really loved the new knobs and I had tried one out in the bedroom and.....I love it.

Here are the dressers & nightstands before with the old knobs.  They are so small and not very easy to open the drawers with really.  Plus they are more masculine that I would like, but I loved the furniture, so I figured one day I would change them out.  Well almost 4 years later, I'm finally changing out those knobs.

This is my dresser.  See how you really can't see the knobs?  The knobs are brushed nickle.


Let me zoom in on one for you, so you can see how small they are.

The Hubbies dresser.  {sorry some pictures are not clear. i took them and didn't look first before I moved on put the new knobs on}

Nightstand.

Now this is what the nightstands & dressers look like.

Ohhhhhhh so pretty now.

So for $14.99 per package at Target, we needed 8 packages total, this little mini makeover cost us just under $120.  We love our mini makeover.

Here is the link to the knobs at Target.  They are made of acrylic.  They also come in other colors {link to all acrylic knobs at Target} and they even have pulls to go with some of these knobs.

Here are some other pictures of our bedroom.  You can also see some older pictures here.

So has anyone done any mini makeovers in their home?  Bedroom?  Livingroom?  Kitchen?  Bathroom?  Let's share the details!!!

Thanks for stopping by everyone! Have a great day! I would love to hear your comments, so please leave one if you want. I love sharing and inspiring others, but I also love feed back and sharing of others ideas and thoughts. :)

Hello Gorgeous

Come in and see my gorgeous Hydrangea's.  We have three bushes right now on our property.  I think I might want one more for the backyard so I can enjoy it more.  Two are in the front yard and one is in the backyard right now.

This is the "Endless Summer Hydrangea", which is located in our backyard.  Check out the corner it is in, in this post.  Check out how small the bush is in the other post.  It's huge now.  Can't wait to show you the updated pictures.  Right now it has bluish, purplish & pinkish blooms.  They are gorgeous right now.  I love this "just starting to bloom stage" where you have fulling opened buds and then just starting to open ones on the same head.  I think I might blow this picture up and frame it.

This is the same bush, but a lighter purple.  Love the soft colors of this one.

I really love this picture too.  Maybe I can print up a few of them and stage them all over the house.  I think I need to go to Ikea now and buy some white matted frames.

This is our newest Hydrangea.  It's called Strawberry's & Creme Lacecap Hydrangea.  It's she gorgeous!!!!  This one is located in our front yard.  I can't wait to see this one fully bloomed.  I love the deep raspberry kind of color it is.  I know they are calling it Strawberry's & Creme, but the color is more raspberry.  Just sayin'.  Right now this is just a little bush.  We have only had her for a year.

Last but not least our third Hydrangea bush that is located in our front yard.  This bush was already on the property when we bought our home, so I'm not sure what type of Hydrangea exactly it is.  But check out the colors on this one.  Lovin' it!!!

I'm in love with this little bloom.  Look how delicate it looks.

You can check out where this Hydrangea used to live when we bought the house.  See how dark purple it was then against the house.  I don't think it was getting enough sun and now that is why it has changed colors over the last few years.  Plus it was in about a 6-8 inch wide dirt bed.  I don't think it was getting much of anything.  Who knows why the previous owners placed this poor guy there.  Can you see the purple against the house amongst all the weeds of course?

Well I hope you loved looking at my pictures of my Hydrangea's as much as I loved taking them with my Macro lense.  I love macro lenses.

I will take updated pictures once all of these bushes are fully in bloom.

Tell me about your Hydrangea's.  What color are they?  How many do you have?  Which type do you love best?

Thanks for stopping by everyone! Have a great day! I would love to hear your comments, so please leave one if you want. I love sharing and inspiring others, but I also love feed back and sharing of others ideas and thoughts. :)

The Outdoor Series - Splish Splash

Welcome to our pool!!!  Come on in.

This is what the pool looked like the day we first toured our home {previous owners stuff}.  You can see how many different levels of decking there are in the next few pictures.  This is the view from our Master Bedroom.

The diamond in the rough shed to the right.  Check out what we did to the shed to update it here.

View from the back door.  Not so pretty to look at when you first walk outside.

Here is the backside of the decking around the pool.  Our backyard borders on a wetlands preserve area.  So there are some trees, lots of weeds and a small stream that doesn't always have water in it.  So it's not the best looking area all the time, but we might put up a solid white PVC fence once we save the money up.  We have a neighbor right over on the other side of the stream and they don't have a fence either.  There is plenty of brush in the summer time, but we can still see into each others yards.  We like that it is open, but we don't always like that they can see right into our yard.  We will see what we decide over time.  We are so on the fence about it.  Sorry I couldn't help that silly pun. ;)

So from that lower level on the back side, you go up two steps onto this walkway and then up another 2 steps to the upper deck of the pool.  Or you can go upstairs to the enclosed deck or sunroom like we like to call it.  So many options and way too much wood decking.

This is looking back to where the last picture was taken, I'm on the upper decking taking the picture.

This pool is 32L x 16w, just to give you some perspective of the yard.  Our yard is 75' wide by 100' deep.  So add all of that decking, plus the pool and you don't have much of a yard do ya?  Nope!!!

This was the view on our day of closing.  I guess the building inspector made them cover up the pool properly before the closing.  They had to get certain CO's before we closed.  So at least we had a cover that fit the pool now.

BUT....when we took the cover off, this is what was found underneath.  Gross!!!  Looked like a swamp & smelled like one too.

Close up of the deeper end.

Within 4 days we had the pool completely clean and clear.  Pump running a lot, shocking the heck out of it and of course vacuuming it out.  Now that is much better to look at from our bedroom window.  Yes the liner needed to still be cleaned better, but it was old and a lot of it was faded and just baked on.  But it did clean up better.

Here is a pretty good view of most of the yard.  Well what you can see of it with all the decking.  lol.

Here is the sunroom that is off our Dining Room.  We still have a lot of work to do on that Sunroom, both inside and out.  We want to paint the wood to either go with the siding {light gray} or white to just brighten things up.  Plus we have plans to make the ugly black poles much nicer.  You can see we added some chairs and plants to the upper pool deck to make it look nicer.  We also added two outdoor rugs.  The decking up there is really bad.

And the duckies even thought our pool was nice and clean.  They went from out neighbors pool to ours, did a few laps and then went to the next neighbors pool and then flew away.  It was so cute to watch.  Typically these duckies are in the stream behind the fence and not in our pool.  They never came back again.

Ready for some ugliness?  Well if you haven't already guessed by other post of mine, the previous owners were slobs and didn't care.  They had 4 kids that didn't care either.  We found toys {and still do} all around the yard.  This was just grossed.  We really couldn't help the water build up because the water table level in our area is high, but all the garage was just gross.  So we had to take the lattice off and rake out all the garage we could.  Oh the things we found under there.  This is all under the upper deck of the pool.  We guess at one time the lattice wasn't there and they just through stuff there.

Yup that is a headless and clothsless Barbie.  Poor dollie.  That little girl just wasn't nice to you.  Other things we found were lots of beer bottles, soda cans, a tackle box and lots of toy pieces.

Here is some of what we found just around the pool area.  Not even under the decking.  This was just in the dirt/weed/leaf area.

This was old stuff from a fish tank.  The gravel was even dump there.  Plus other things in between.

Then we figured out that our Sunroom was sagging in the center.  A lot of the windows were sagging and leaving gaps.  So we hired a contractor to make sure the job was done properly.  They put three new poles in and put another header up, so now there are three headers up there supporting all the weight upstairs.  Headers are those large pieces of wood you see above the poles.  Our contractor told us that if we had a party and too many people were up there, the Sunroom might have fallen into the pool basically.  Oh My God!!!  We were very happy to spend the money for this project.  Now we are completely safe.

The poles were rusted that were in the dirt.  They didn't even seem to be in that much of cement below the deck.  What the heck is wrong with these previous owners?  They didn't do anything by code.  Our contractor also told us that these poles were indoor poles for basements, not poles that can be in the ground outside.  So now we are all safe.  New poles are rated for outdoors and are in cement footers.  Plus the windows are not sagging anymore.  We still need to replace them, but they aren't sagging.

New poles with new wood deck right around it.  They needed to replace them because they used like 4 inch nails and it was not easy to come up in one piece.

So has anyone else done some pool or decking projects lately?  Do share with us.  We all love to see others peoples projects.

Thanks for stopping by everyone! Have a great day! I would love to hear your comments, so please leave one if you want. I love sharing and inspiring others, but I also love feed back and sharing of others ideas and thoughts. :)