Final home renovations (for now)

Last week I unpacked the final box from our move (11 months later)!  For the past year we've been storing boxes of books and miscellaneous stuff just on the floor of our office as it was waiting to be re-done.  At long last that project was moved to the top of the list and Pete worked his magic to create a new space for us!

The room used to have a fireplace... lots of pink and gray and white....

... but we decided 2 fireplaces were enough in this Southern home and we'd rather have the wall space back for storage and other things.

So, Pete ripped out the mantel and hearth, and did all the various layers necessary to board up that side of the fireplace (it's double-sided), and drywall the new area.

Then we designed a little table/desk and some shelves and now it looks like this:

It's not exactly neat and tidy, but it's definitely functional for what we need.  I'm looking forward to starting out our new school year in this space!  Well, I'm not looking forward to it quite yet... but will when late August rolls around.

Elsewhere around the house, we've painted both of the boys' bedrooms, but everything is still in progress there (read: total mess because we're in the midst of packing for a big trip, and plus, the boys are never neat anyway), so I have no good pictures of that yet.

The breakfast area of our kitchen got a makeover a few months ago when some friends sold us their old dining room set.  I repainted it and it works well in that space:

And I think that's all we'll get done inside the house for a little while!

Meanwhile, the outside has been undergoing slow transformations as we plant and wait for things to grow (and see what will die).... All kinds of experimenting going on here!

So far, the front of the house is pretty much a big mess of confusion.  I've planted all kinds of things to see what will work and what won't...  I'd like to think I'll be more organized next year, but chances are I'll forget where all the perennials are over the winter and we'll end up with more hodge-podge next spring.  At least gardening is fun!

Our Vegetable Garden experiment decided to rename itself the Marigold Garden.  We've harvested a few vegetables, but mostly the marigolds decided to dominate the whole area.  Who knew there was a  variety of Giant Marigolds?  Not me, because I don't read package labels.

And that's what's been going on on the homefront!  (and back)

Now we can just sit back and watch Entropy slowly undo it all...