this old house

our time lately has been consumed with three things:

1) watching season 1 of 24.
2) finishing the patio.
3) painting the bedroom and bedroom door.

first priority was finishing 24. we probably should have waited to start the season until we had the other important projects done, because once you start, you can't stop. but we didn't, so in between painting, rearranging, pouring cement, and moving rock, we had to find time (24 hours worth!) to finish what we started. the first season was excellent, although i must say that the show has come a long way since season 1. i'm glad we've finished it because now we can go to bed at a decent hour and i won't have nightmares anymore. although much to mike's dismay, jack bauer is usually there to save me in my nightmares....

we started the patio project last summer and quickly burnt ourselves out. our soil here is so rocky that we (and by we, i mean mike) had to pick axe every scoop of dirt we wanted to remove. ugh. it didn't help that we started this project in july, the hottest month of the year, so we got pretty tired of it and never finished last year. the area we poured started looking very much like this overgrown mess of weeds-
but with a little man labor- (thank you dustin and karl!)
tada!
the cement is ready and waiting for a patio set and pots of flowers. now if we can just find a cute/cheap patio set.

and our final project, before and after:
we only painted two walls so that it's not too dark, but i'm really happy with how it turned out. amazing what a little paint and new pillows will do for a room! we were apprehensive to paint the door, but thankfully it looks brand new and cost half as much as buying a new door. before being white, the door was a washed out grainy brown color, straight from the 80s.

so a few projects are now checked off the never-ending list of things we want to do around the house. soon to come, a new and lovely garden planted where roses infested with trees and morning glory once grew, chalk paint in the kitchen, and wallpaper removal/new paint in the laundry room.