Flooring, Gardening, Painting & A New Door

We've had a serious case of spring fever here! It's a good thing because we needed to get a little sprucing up done for the boys big 5th birthday party coming up.

It was barely March when the boys decided they wanted to buy vegetable seeds with their weekly earnings. They were eager to get them planted & watch them grow. With that came my desire to build a raised planter bed for said vegetables. As I was in the garage scoping out the supplies we had & making a list of supplies we would need, it dawned on me that we still had two twin beds that I never sold. Those twin beds would make perfect planter beds for our vegetables! I ran my idea past Donna who thought I was nuts but went for anyways!

We striped away all the bedding hardware so that we just had two wooden rectangles & then dug some holes to partially bury the legs & to set them level. Once they were in place I layered some cardboard boxes we had inside. Purpose 1, kill the grass underneath. Purpose 2, keep the weeds out. Purpose 3, keep the dirt inside until we get another board to secure the bottom portion. Then we added lots & lots of soil.

This is when I remembered there was a sprinkler head underneath that now had to be dug up & extended so off to Home Depot I went for some pipe & a fitting...
Once the sprinkler was modified we proceeded with transplanting the veggies the boys had already planted in pots & planting new seeds & flowers

We've only completed one of the 'beds' so far. We will continue with the other one probably after the birthday party now.

While working outside, we decided to modify our front flower bed a little. We had never liked the way they edged it out. It was kind of squiggly & not really pleasing to the eye. So Donna carved out a new border & we removed a little (maybe a lot of) sod. I love the new shape! We filled it in with flowers & are looking forward to seeing what it looks like when everything grows up & fills in. We still need mulch but are mulling over getting stone instead...

We were all set to finish laying the new laminate flooring in the hallway last Sunday when we inadvertently discovered water under the floor by the front door. UGH!!!
We discovered it was something we had done to cause the water but of course don't want to have to deal with that again so we pulled up half the floor in the living room, dried up the water & reinstalled cutting back & leaving an area to tile right inside the front door. The hall did not get done & now we've re-thought our intentions of carrying the flooring into the bedrooms. I think we will re-carpet when the time comes and stick with tile in the kitchen, entry & all other wet areas.

Lastly, We finally got around to painting the hallways. It was one area I was dreading & put off as long as possible because there are 9... NINE! doors in our hallway!!! It couldn't be avoided anymore though, between the dirty handprints, crayon marks & dingy dog scrubbings, it HAD to be painted! It came out beautiful & very clean. In the end it was worth all the prep work & meticulous painting.

Finally the leaky back door that disruoted our floor installation to begin with was replaced by the builder. They attempted to repair the door several times before throwing the towel in & just getting a new door all together & a new installer. It turned out that the original door was just installed poorly & it wasn't sealed well or at all so every time it rained the water just came in around the bottom. We had the house pressure washed the day after the new door went & and luckily there were no leaks! Hooray!!!