House to Home I - Big Yard

We've always enjoyed and have been pretty good at turning someone else's house into something we call home.  It's always a challenge and this one is no exception.

It all started with a few unexpected outside improvements, but we're trying to chip away at them and put that behind us!

Like this retaining wall - built to keep those amazing palm trees and our pool from sliding down the hill.  You can see there was a huge drop off that the previous owner had attempted to shore up with a menagerie of DIY projects.

Before.

This wall was definitely our first priority and, although we are fairly good at DIY, this one was definitely not that kind of project.  Sometimes you need a professional.

After.

Now it's perfectly level and these incredible palm trees and the new sod are thriving.  From this angle it's difficult to see that 4 foot drop off!

Before.

See? It took a 4 ft wall to level that hill!  Seven guys worked two 12-hr days to complete it.

We moved more than a few piles of topsoil from here up to the wall before we sodded it.

We had some good helpers!

After.
Now all our grass has come back and the wall looks like it was always there.

Before.

Our house was built in 1993 and this fence appeared to be original to the house.  We figured it was only painted to somehow make it look less likely to fall down.

So rather than waiting for the fall, we took it down.

We had some really good help on this project.  Ross loves doing projects like this.  Okay, maybe he doesn't love them, but seriously, we couldn't have done all this (fence or dirt or sod) without his help!

Pop and Norma Grace taking a little break.

After.
It's really a work of art - that curved gate and all.

The shrubbery, which is already long gone in this photo, was also original to the house.  Overgrown with thick trunks and sparse leaves, we decided it had to go.

Here is just a small sample of them.

It was another challenge in itself to figure out how to drain all the water away.  The entire yard has some serious drainage issues.

Like this, for example.  One of a few French drains we now have throughout the yard.

Back to the front landscaping . . .

After.

After a LOT of leveling and reshaping and new trees and shrubs, it looks beautiful.  I put the stone path in myself and I will never do that again :)

There was once a huge oleander bush here.  It actually spread as far as that dirt spot and was nearly as high as the roof.  The fence on this side wasn't much better and it wasn't painted either.

After.  

Much, much better.  Jim worked tirelessly on that stone wall there.  It's perfectly level!  Notice the nice new cedar fence Jim and Ross built.

I'm not a big fan of red front doors although our Jefferson house also had one.  I never figured out a better color for it so I guess it's still red.  I tried several colors on this door and even painted all the hardware, but Jim finally came up with the perfect color.

After. 

This is 114 Oak Isle painted in Benjamin Moore 10 Downing Street.  Glossy black.  Classic and perfect for this Georgian house.  I removed all that paint I previously applied to the brass hardware and I'm so glad I did.

This sidewalk was broken and sticking up for all to trip over.  The center of this section had sunk several inches.  Everyone who looked at it figured during construction 23 years ago, debris was buried here and it rotted over time.  According to our new neighbors, it had been like this for years, but Big Ed (previous owner) never got around to fixing it.

After.
So we fixed it.  A brand new sidewalk, perfectly flat.

I didn't really like these brick columns, but also wasn't anxious to tear them down.  Redoing the patio is way down on our list of projects, BUT . . . rules of our neighborhood say that fences facing the street must have a brick column at the corners.

So I went in search of this particular brick and turns out, it isn't available any more!  We figured there would be just enough of these brick to make the new column for the fence.  By the way, we chipped off every bit of that mortar ourselves.

More good help!

A new patio is on the list . . . somewhere.

After.

Voila!  Re-purposed bricks into a brand new fence column - mortar is still wet here.  And there's the stack of leftovers.  That was close!  This project also required a professional.  Brick columns are hard!

Before.

Where the sidewalk ends.

As part of the new sidewalk project, we also got a new mailbox.  The masons took the old one down, cleaned the bricks and reused them.  Yes, they did the cleaning this time!  I asked them to make our new mailbox look just like the one across the street - wider and with a rounded top.  The concrete guy even laid a bigger foundation to accommodate the new size and shape.

After.  

I left the house and the masons for a few hours while they were working on it and came back to this.  It looks exactly like the old one, right?  I was upset at first.  Notice the "extra" concrete pad.  Anyway, I decided to just let it go.  It was done and that was that.  What we have there is a failure to communicate!

Before.

This little spot had great potential and I really enjoyed working on it.

After.
Much better. 

Jim had the idea for the little stone path and I transplanted moss from a shady part of the yard and filled in between all the stones.  Makes it feel like my little garden in Belgium.  The moss is struggling here in sunny Texas, but it's hanging in there!

Before.

This area of the back forty holds a lot of water so we decided cypress trees were the answer.

After.  

Our little cypress grove.  We planted about 20 - some of the smaller ones are hard to see.  One of these days it will look amazing I'm sure!

You can also see our nice new fence on the left and our neighbor's crappy fence on the right.  We've struggled with what to do about it because it's an obvious eyesore.  Rules of the neighborhood allow (supposedly) for a 6 foot fence ONLY so . . .  our options are to (1) break the rules of the neighborhood (like our neighbors obviously did) by covering theirs with our own 8 foot fence (2) make a stink with the neighbors and the neighborhood rule makers or (3) . . . leave it like it is.  Since we are the definition of rule followers and non stink-makers, for now, we are going with door #3 . . .   Grrrrr.

Perhaps the best part of all is this amazing pool which we have thoroughly enjoyed and our main reason for choosing this big yard house!  I think it's beautiful and I love to sit and have coffee by it and crank up the fire pit and have marshmallows by it and watch the kids have fun in it and . . . all that and more.

I think that patio project is moving up on my wish list :)

an american in america

Finally we are back in the U S of A

But first, I must do a little reminiscing about our journey from there to here because it was very emotional and very exciting and very exhausting.

I miss a lot of things about Hasselt and I really miss my little garden of cobblestones, ivy and moss and flowers that bloomed with only rain water.

This is Winslow's last of many visits he took to a cafe'.
The world traveler, he was.

Celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary just a few days before departing. 

I wasn't sure it could happen, but somehow all this managed to turn into . . .

THIS!

On one of our last days in Hasselt, we had dinner with our good friends and neighbors.  From left, that's Anse, Pieter, Esther, Bert, Jim, me, Ross and Annemie.  A difficult and bittersweet farewell as we don't know if or when we may see all of them again.

On one our last nights in Hasselt, we were treated to a farewell dinner with some of Jim's colleagues at The Century.  It was another bittersweet evening as we were excited for our new adventure and reluctant to leave our old life behind. Although I didn't get to know each one of Jim's co-workers personally, I was lucky enough to get to know quite a few.  These are some really great men and women who became friends and whom Jim has a world of respect for.

Moving day in Hasselt.  Loading a trailer this size on a city street is a complicated matter.  A lot of planning and scheduling and permission from the city must be done to allow these trucks to block the sidewalk, the parking spaces and the bike lane.  Everything must be done pronto.

Everything from upstairs must come through a window down to the street.

The international moving company was very efficient.

We wouldn't see our things again for more than 60 days so there was also a lot of planning when it came to packing for the flight - as noted in photos above!

This is Hasselt.  A great city to call home. I do miss it.  A lot.

When we left Belgium, we had dinner and spent the evening with Ross.  We said our good-byes because we also wouldn't see him for a couple of months as he finished his job contract in Brussels.

The flight across the pond is really long.  If you've never done it, it's difficult to imagine sitting in one place for 10 plus hours.  Not long into our journey, I took this photo.  It's the display that constantly reminds you how far it is!

Just when you think you've been in that seat as long as you possibly can . . . you realize it's only been 4 and a half hours and you aren't even halfway!  I actually didn't get out of my seat the entire trip.

Mostly because I didn't want to upset Winslow - who also didn't move for that entire trip.  He sat right there where my feet should have been.  My ankles might have been swollen!  Good news was that he traveled in the cabin with us rather than in the cargo like his trip over.  Good thing that worked out because I wasn't sure how I was going to smuggle him on board, but he was definitely not flying cargo this time.

Fast forward.  We landed safely in Atlanta.  Spent a few hours getting the rental car.  Drove a couple of hours and spent the night in Birmingham to get a head start on the drive south.  Went to Wal Mart at 3:00 a.m.  Still living on Belgium time where it was 10:00 a.m.  We were up and ready to go!  We drove to Ruston and had a nice welcome home visit with Jim's parents whom we hadn't seen in a very long time.  Then finally to Longview . . .

and our very own house!

The first of our moving trucks - delivering all the stuff that had been in storage in Texas all the time we were in Belgium.

Some of this stuff had been packed since Ruston (2010) because we'd moved Ross out of the Ruston house AFTER we had already moved to Belgium.  A few things we forgot we even had. 

Then, right on schedule, 2 months later, that very same shipping container from our front door in Hasselt made its way to our new door via the port of Antwerp, the Atlantic Ocean, the port of Houston and I-20!

Finally, all our worldly possessions in one place.

The fun part - unpacking and organizing and 

A LOT of discarding.  We kept the little girl :)

All settled, so of course, the next logical step is home improvement - our dream for the last seven years and our bane for the last seven plus months!  

It's all coming together.  I think.