Guest Bathroom

This is the guest bathroom:

We haven’t figured out what to do with it yet.

The Home Office

This is the middle bedroom; I intend to turn it into a home office:

We’ve replaced the windows (just like the guest bedroom), but that’s all we’ve done so far.

Master Bathroom

This is the master bathroom.

Maureen broke the shower, but that’s all we’ve done so far.

Master Bedroom

This is the master bedroom:

We’ve replaced the windows (just like the guest bedroom), but that’s all we’ve done so far.

We intend to remove that cedar closet, and double the size of the master bathroom.

The Den: the story so far

This is what the den looked like when we got the house:

MORE TO COME

Jungle Oasis

This is what the swimming pool & Florida room looked like when we got the house:

This is what it looks like ten months later:

Every week the plants start growing back. They spontaneously generate from the soil itself, and reach a foot in height overnight. I think we’ve got them on the run now, but I’ve been proven wrong before.

The Kitchen: the story so far

Behold: a kitchen so ugly that I don’t have the heart to remodel it.

Pictures cannot do this kitchen justice. It must be seen to be believed.

The Dining Room: the story so far

This was the dining room:

MORE TO COME

The Living Room: the story so far

This is what the living room looked like when we bought the house:

MORE TO COME…

The Backyard: the story so far

My battle against the backyard has been epic. In the past eight months, I have removed 4 dumpsters worth of vegetation, leaving a barren wasteland of sorrow and broken dreams.

While digging out the jungle, I broke several key pieces of the underground sprinkler system. As a result, the lawn has been dying a slow death as I continue to remove everything green. We have been able to salvage a few trees, but everything else had to go. There was no way to prune this stuff back- it had become totally overgrown, and it had to go.

To hide my shame from the neighbors, I would like to circle the entire yard with a privacy fence, like this:

That hedge is my next target. My neighbors are as disgusted as I am, and have agreed that starting fresh is the only way to go. Hiding within that hedge is a chain link fence, forming a tangled knot of hellish overgrowth. In the next week I hope to remove that hideous hedge, and continue the fence.

Once this fence is in place, we’re 2/3rds done. We have another chain link fence on the remaining side, but a (relatively) well-maintained bush lives there, and I think I can work around it.

Once the fence is done, we’ll need to replace the irrigation system. This will require us to plot out the rest of our backyard planting, and that’s a daunting task in and of itself.

Believe it or not, we love plants, and want to fill our yard with a bunch of exotic and cool stuff. However, before we can get to the fun stuff, we have to finish cleaning the slate.

I expect to be finished sometime in the next 50 years.