Gardener Ken

 Ken does such a beautiful job of caring for our landscaping.  We are loving our new terraced front yard.  

I especially love these beautiful flowers on the east side of our house.

Home Repairs

 Our house is getting old and was in need of some repairs.  One evening we went to Lowe's and chose a new faucet for our bathroom and three new light fixtures for our living room and entry.  A couple of days later, Ken tried to install the new faucet.  He got it almost done, but had some trouble, so we had to call a plumber.

A few days later, he installed the three lights.  He did a great job and we loved them.  So he went back to Lowe's and bought five more of the same model, completely cleaning out their stock.  He came home and installed them.  He replaced all of the upstairs lights and one downstairs.  When they get more in stock, he will get a couple more to finish the downstairs.

We feel like we always do when we do home improvements:  Why didn't we do this sooner?

We Want Grass

 For years, the neighbor children have gathered and played in our yard.  We enjoy hearing their cheerful voices and having them in our yard.  On Sunday, before sacrament meeting, Ken talked to one of the moms and told her that the hill in our front yard is too steep and he is getting old enough that it is dangerous to mow the grass, so we are getting bids to have it xeriscaped.  Her two daughters that play here frequently overheard the conversation.  Though they said nothing at the time, they must have talked to the other children and they decided to do something about it. We have choir rehearsal for twenty minutes after church.  During that short time they hurried home and put together a peaceful protest, complete with song, dance and even a smoke machine.  When we got home, they rang the doorbell.  When we got there, they turned on the smoke machine and the oldest started playing the guitar and they sang, to the tune of Silent Night, "We want grass, we want grass . . .  "They had made up words and choreographed the whole song.  It was so cute.  

They gave us this note, promising they will mow it.

We were so touched.  Oh they are cute!  But I think we will go forward with our plans.  Though they will be disappointed, we have noticed a change recently.  For years, they have played vigorous games of some sort of made-up tag.  I'm not sure I understand all the rules.  It's quite complicated.  But recently we have noticed that they gather to chat more.  They are growing up.  They just sit in the chairs we have out front and talk.  So maybe they won't even miss the grass that much?  We hate to disappoint them but needs must.

Broken Shower

 I was showering early Sunday morning.  I tried to switch the water from the shower head to the handheld nozzle and it just sheered off leaving water pouring down the shower wall, but not out of either nozzle.  I quickly turned it off.

We had to wait a few days for a plumber to come.  He was able to fix it quite easily.  It is so nice to have my shower back!

Our House Gets a Facelift

 We noticed that the stucco on our house was disingrating in places near the bottom of the house.  Even some of the grout in the brick was turning to sand.  We got a referral from a friend for someone he trusted and Kevin Hansen from White Glove Construction came and gave us a bid to fix the stucco and grout, put in cement borders and repaint the doors and stucco.  When it got warm enough about a month ago, they started the project.  We had been unhappy with our last color scheme, but had lived with it for about twenty years. We had a trusted friend (Marsha Burdick) who is very good with colors come over and help us choose colors from paint chips we had (before she left on their mission to Africa!)  We are very happy with the results.

First, they scraped and redid the damaged stucco.

Then they did the cement.  We had this little corner in the front for a small flowerbed.  But the wet dirt was causing damage, so they suggested we cement it in.

They put cement borders around the whole house to prevent damage in the future.

Then they painted the doors a dark brown.  You can see that before we had a light kind of pinkish brown.  Marsha suggested that we needed to get rid of that color as it was not matching the roof tile.  We like it SO much better now.  We couldn't figure out what we didn't like, we just knew it wasn't matching. We were so grateful for Marsha's help.

We love our new front door.

Then they taped and sealed everything and painted the stucco.

For one day, we were sealed inside our house.  We couldn't get out any doors as they were all sealed over with plastic and tape.

We were excited to go out when they let us out and see how it looked.

We are so pleased with how it turned out.

We were so happy with the company we hired.  It was expensive, but they did such a good job.  They were careful, respectful and meticulous in their work.  They came when they said they would.  I liked how they talked to each other, too.  I would overhear them.  There was no foul language and they treated each other with respect.  If you live in this area and need repairs done at your home, we recommend White Glove Construction.

Not Again!

 Yep!  Again.  Our sprinkler system is old.  Ken found the leak really early this time, before it got really bad.  But it had to be repaired.  So a couple of hundred dollars later, we are back in business.

And the water was only off for a little over an hour this time!