A Job Well Done Almost Done

When my husband and I began the project of fixing up our house to list for sale, I never imagined that it would consume me to the degree it did! I was overwhelmingly busy almost all of the time. Thankfully, however, the projects are very close to being finished and I just had to share some of our hard work with all of you!

These are pictures of my flower gardens (and yes, I realize that my shadow is right in the middle of the first one, but in order to get this posted when I want to, I just had to take that picture then!). Seeing these look so good is a big deal complete miracle! This is the first time that they had been weeded at all this summer - add the mulch on top of it and they look great! I couldn't have done it, though, without help from my mother-in-law, Marion, and my good friend, Kristin. Thanks so much ladies - I appreciate you both so much!

Right next to the flower gardens is our huge driveway. What good is a driveway if it is old and cracked and needs to be replaced doesn't have a fresh seal coat on it? So that's just what our good friend, Chris, spent the better part of three days doing for us - seal coating our massive driveway! Thanks so much Chris - you're an amazing friend!

I know that this looks like another picture of the flower gardens, but if you can, look beyond that and see the beauty that is emanating from our front porch. See, before, this porch had a nice shade of gray. Now it is shining with it's beautiful new color after my husband spent a LONG afternoon staining the deck. Isn't it gorgeous?!

Do you need a closer look? Alright, here it is, you don't have to beg!! ;)

Previously, when you would look down the hill toward our dock, you would see a lot of brush and the traces of a path that used to be there. Unfortunately, that path had all but been destroyed, and the brush had grown so high that you could no longer see the lake. Well - NOT ANYMORE! Thanks to my phenomenal father-in-law, Woody, you can now see (thanks to the removal of many weeds!) and walk up and down that fully functional path to our dock! Also, thanks to my completely amazing husband and his machete, the underbrush that had taken away our view of the lake has been cut down and this is what remains:

Want to know what happened to all the dirt that was encompassing the back side of our house? Well, thanks to Monte's cousin Blaine and his use of the power washer, our house is shining with beauty!

All of those changes have been really great - but I must admit that the most amazing of them all happened inside of our home - a project that is at least five years in the making: WE CLEANED CLAIRE'S BEDROOM! If you had ever been in there before, you would know that there literally was maybe a walking area of three square feet. She had piles of STUFF everywhere, her shelves were covered in STUFF, the floor was covered in STUFF ... it was an overwhelming amount of STUFF! Now, I will let the pictures speak for themselves (I really wish I had a "before" picture for this so you can see just how drastic the change, but alas, I cannot find one):

All that hard work has left me with just one thing to say: I'm exhausted! I'm so thankful for everybody who has helped make this a success - now it's just time for someone to come and buy the house! :)