July 17-18 and 24-25, 2010

Vacation time! We were spending time with Mike's family in Connecticut and were forced to take a break from moving/fixing things/normal life. It was much needed!

July 9-11, 2010

This was the second weekend in our new house, and we made great use of our time. We spent a lot of time in the backyard pulling up lots of weird (a McDonalds Happy Meal barbie toy) junk and lots of metal scraps from the ground. Michael did an amazing job disassembling the fire pit (i.e. lots of huge rocks and broken pieces of a concrete barrier in a hole in our yard.) We also tore ALL the ivy off the house, and ripped all of the runners out of our yard. A neighbor told us that she hasn't seen anyone battle our ivy in over 20 years, and was cheering us on from her side of the fence. After the ivy was gone, it looked like a completely different house!

We soon found out that there's only so much yard work that you can do with bare hands and zero tools, so we took a trip to Lowe's and bought a bunch of tools to help us with our other backyard projects. Hands down, our favorite purchase of the weekend was our super wagon. It's the perfect size for our property.

The last big backyard project of the weekend was trimming the tree. It's our neighbor's tree, but almost half of the canopy hangs over our yard and we were told to do as we pleased with it. This poor tree hadn't been loved in quite some time, so Mike and I did our best to give it some shape. Unfortunately, we don't have a ladder yet, so I jumped up to grab branches and held them down until Mike clipped them. We probably looked pretty ridiculous, but it got the job done! This was also the first time we were able to mow the yard. Slick and Ted no longer looked like dogs lost in the jungle!

Before and after:

Our front yard is tiny, but it is full of HUGE problems. The front flowerbeds are infested with GIANT MONSTER WEEDS! When I cut through the weeds, they were about 1 1/2 inches in diameter and hollow on the inside. It looked like I was chopping through giant pieces of bamboo. I was only able to cut the bulk of the weeds down this weekend. We will have to dig them up completely another time.

We also had a nasty thorn bush at the front right corner of our house. Seriously, who plants a thorn bush?! This thing was all sorts of nasty. Thankfully Mike and I were too delusional from the heat and workload to feel most of the scratches from cutting it down. Very happy to see that gone too!

We had to tackle a lot on the inside of the house this weekend, but the majority of the work was done in the basement. The basement looks as if it was a place for boy scout troops to practice hammering nails and tying knots with 10,000 little bits of string. There was junk EVERYWHERE! I probably pulled 250-300 nails out of the walls, ceiling, and support columns. We also need to take a moment of silence for the 50,00 spiders we sucked up with our vacuum. The scarier part is that we only vacuumed only a quarter of the basement - and the rest of it is just as bad. Bleck. We'll have to finish that another weekend.

To end on a nicer note, we could hear the waves from Nantasket beach from our backyard early Sunday morning, so we took the dogs with us to go check out the beach. They were the biggest waves we've seen so far at the beach, and surfers were taking advantage of this special treat. I would love to run out on that beach with my surfboard someday.

July 3-5, 2010

We were very happy to close on our house June 30th, and used our three day weekend wisely. Mike and I unpacked boxes upon boxes of our things and tried to organize it in some shape or form. Fortunately/Unfortunately we have moved together quite a few times, so we have it down to a science.

Our big excitement of the weekend was the delivery of our fridge! We had been fridgeless since the 30th and were living on pizza and sandwiches from our local grocery store. I have to give total props to Mike for finding this fridge for..... $600 at.....................Salvation Army! I once thought you could only buy mismatched forks and paisley suits with shoulder pads, but NO! There are some absolute deals and we are happy to have a fridge that can house all of yummy stuff.

Our first walkthrough

Here's the videos I took when we saw the house for the first time with our realtor. Who doesn't love ivy infestations, yellow kitchens/bathrooms (let's not even mention that stellar wallpaper,) and backyards that resemble the Amazon?

Nothing a little elbow grease and a bulldozer can't fix... right?

Nails and Whales? What's that?

Nails and Whales is a place to document renovations to our first home in Hull, MA. Not only is it our (Michael and I)'s first home; it is also the first time I've lived by the ocean. There's a lot of things going on around me that are new and interesting and I am excited to document and share with you!