The grass is always greener…

…at the sod farm.

Yes, we sodded (is that a word?) most of our front yard during the last two days, and I’ll put down some patches in the back yard tonight.

Here’s the before:

We sodded (there it is again–I’m just going with it) because last year’s hot summer had really taken a toll on our yard, especially in the front. We’d normally just re-seed, but with the housing market the way it is, Andrew thought it would be best not to have to wait eights weeks to see growth while we’re trying to sell the house.

There was also a pretty decent size patch on the side yard, too. We rented a tiller and went crazy all over the front yard. The hard part is raking and dumping the clumps of grass that come up.

Andrew worked so hard, and we had some other helpers, too. A couple neighbor kids and our friend, Jen.

Hi Jen! You’re a lifesaver and I don’t know what we’d do without you.

Here’s the after:

Isn’t it beautiful?

Andrew and some of the neighbors completed all the sodding of the front yard last night. You can see we have a bit left, which I’ll put down in the back yard tonight.

The side yard. You can definitely tell a difference (we didn’t know which grass we had–fescu or bluegrass, so we went with fescu), but in time that should be less noticeable.

This weekend is our final push to get the house COMPLETELY, 100% ready to put on the market! Pray for us…

What a workday!

I posted a couple of days ago about how cluttered and messy our house has been lately. Well, today we decided to do something about it.

Andrew finished up the last bits of our bathroom tiling project.

I cleaned up the guest bathroom and put it back the way it’s supposed to be.

I got up on the ladder to dust the shelves in our entryway. Andrew had to do the higher one–I was terrified!

Check out that bedhead and little sprout ponytail!

We cleaned out the garage last night, which included a “mopping.” It needed it, I promise. I had to give it another rinse this morning because the soapy/scummy water dried like broom strokes.

You can see the mulch we had delivered a couple days ago. My friend, Emily, helped me do the front beds. The weather’s been pretty yucky, so we’re on hold until we can get to the back yard.

One of the things I wanted to do today was clean the grime off the yellowed window frames next to our front door. Hi Hadrian!

After I finished cleaning the windows, Andrew decided we should just spray paint the window frames so they weren’t yellow anymore. I’m glad we did–they look great!

My friend, Jen, came over unexpectedly and helped me touch-up some spots around the house. Thanks Jen!

Andrew put up some drywall in our basement–it’s been bare since we moved in!

We’ve really cleaned up the basement (with a lot of Jen’s help)!

Up next: Andrew’s tool area…pray for us!

Help! I need my life back…

I’ll just go ahead and say it: I’m a neat freak/control freak/clutter-phobe. If you’ve known me for any length of time, you know this is true.

We’re in the process of tiling our master bathroom floor (something we should have done when we moved in THREE YEARS ago), as well as trying to get our house ready to list with a realtor. Translation: I’ve started boxing random things up, neglected cleaning ANYTHING (because I’ll just have to clean it all over again when we take the listing photos) and the tiling project has somehow spilled into all the other rooms in the house.

So, for those of you who swear my house is ALWAYS clean, here you go:

Kitchen–I can’t live like this much longer…

Don’t miss the TWO vacuums in the photo… Not that I’ve been using them or anything.

Guest bath–we’ve moved in during the tiling project, but not very neatly

Notice the master toilet in the lower left of the photo–makes using the bathroom and getting in and out of the shower interesting…

Office–who am I kidding? It’s never been clean…

For once, I would just like an organized office! I would swear up and down that it’s all Andrew’s fault, but I’m as much to blame as he is. We never “use” the office, so we just throw things in there and when we can’t see the floor anymore, we eventually clean it up. This is AFTER I did that and didn’t know what to do with the rest of this stuff… Moving on…

Master Bedroom–it’s seen the brunt of the damage from the project

I’m embarrassed to admit it’s been like this for more than a week. The piles just keep getting bigger…

My half of the bedroom–it’s just as messy!

And finally, the actual bathroom…

Unfortunately, you can barely see the tile for the mess. But, it was the right color (beige) and the right price (58 cents/sq. ft.)! Thankfully, Andrew is a fantastic tiler. He’s already said he’s buying his own tile saw for the next project…here’s to praying there won’t BE a next project. At least not any time soon.

Pray for me… I think my deadline to get ALL of this cleaned up is Saturday!