July

My freelance work and house guests took up most of June and July leaving me no time to blog. I want to share with you the projects we did managed to get done with the help of Justin's dad. 

I wanted a real raised vegetable bed this year, an upgrade from last year's hole in the ground. We built two rectangle frames out of 2x6 redwood planks. After planting the first bed, we decided to turn the second frame into a sandbox for Desmond and his little buddy Cian who was staying with us.

From earlier this year. 

After installing the sod, I realized the old PG&E  incinerator has got to go. I wanted to keep it as a part of the history of our house but it was barely standing. The incinerator was probably placed in that location for easy access from the old staircase in the back of the house. 

Dismantling the incinerator was a lot easier than expected. It was being held together by two pieces of metal ties. Once those were cut, it just came down. Bye bye.

Prepping the area for the raised bed. Toys belong to Desmond's little buddy.

We put up the plastic fence to keep little hands and cats out of the fresh dirt. I think we only succeed in keeping out the cats.

The weather has been gorgeous in Oakland and we have been spending a lot of time out in our new back yard. We even had our first 4th of July BBQ on our new lawn.

A small get together on the 4th July. My parents, aunt and uncle. 

Karilyn, cian's mom, made this lovely, patriotic fruit salad. 

The little tikes playing in the new sandbox.

It was really nice to have Justin's dad and stepmom here for 2 weeks. Not only did little D get to spent some quality time with the grandparents, Justin's dad helped us finished the gates and built a work bench in the garage.

Since the front is pretty wide and we wanted to save money by getting the 8ft long planks, there was very little over hang on the ends of the posts. 

I am so happy with how it turned out. The four 2x8 redwood planks cost around $150 plus extra for screws. So we didn't really save that much by doing it ourselves.

Side gate is finally done.

We got this play structure for free from a friend of a friend. 

Justin's dad also cleaned up all the dead weeds in the side yard. He got it done in a couple of hour, it would've taken me all day.

This photo was taken from last year, our yard has definitely come a long way...

Hung some peg boards to the wall for all the tools so we can finally find everything we need when we need them.

This area used to be a major disaster zone. Things were scattered around took up a lot of valuable floor space. A new work bench made with 2x4s added much needed storage and work space.  Made room for  new hooks on the wall to hang all my gardening tools too.