My house during the recent blizzard that hit the East Coast of the US.

I also created a panoramic view of my street, taken from my front porch, during the blizzard.

This summer we finally purchased a new Barbecue grill for the backyard. Its a Weber and we were able to use it a few times before the weather got a bit too cool and cold. Looking forward to using in more actively next summer!

I can’t believe its taken me this long to post these photos. Early in the summer, we had a patio installed in the back yard. Its a wonderful addition to the house!

Some updated photos of my basement, with my mini “shrine” to the Red Sox.

We painted the kitchen this week. Doing so was prompted when we purchased our new kitchen table. Here are some photos of how the kitchen looks now.

This is our new kitchen table. I’m particularly proud of this acquisition to the house because we purchased the table for…wait for it…$100. You can’t get a cheezy kitchen and table set from Wal-Mart for that price. The table was damaged. Can you see the damage? Neither can I from this view. In reality, the round edge of the table is a bit loose from the main area of the table top. When we purchased the table, it had the “shabby chic” look. So a paint job, and a couple of angle irons, and we have a brand new kitchen table.

The old one is below. We really liked the old vintage table below, but unfortunately too much pressure on one of its “wings” caused it to break. Its a 65 year old table, yet 3 years in the Clark house and we manage to bring it too its knees. Makes me proud! :)

I spent today attempting and failing mightily to install crown moulding in my house. Basically, it kicked my ass. There is no other way to describe it. I definitely need to get a professional in here. To think that I could install it in my dining room, living room is nothing short of hilarious. Oh well, at least I can say I tried.

So the painters finished up painting the house. And here is the big “reveal”. Its a nice grey with black shutters and a deep red door. Combine this with the grass that is growing and the house is now almost presentable :) To see a before photo, scroll down to the previous post.

Here is the first view of our house getting painted. This is just the primer coat, but none the less, it loos pretty good. They worked filling in and cleaning up the trim today, and will probably paint the trim tomorrow, with the main coats going on later in the weekend. This is going to transform how the house looks!!! Just for kicks, above is a before picture of the house.

This is grass. This is grass on my property. I never thought I would see the day.

During the week of July 4th, 2008, we finally bit the bullet and had our “grass” resodded. I put the word grass in quotes because to say that the stuff we had on our plot of land was grass is a big, big stretch. It was more like some form of green moss growth…it was terrible and made our property look like the Pigpen of the neighborhood.

So during the July 4th week, I stayed home and we had some landscapers come to our house, rip up the top layer of dirt across the whole property. They then dropped down a new layer of topsoil, they put down 45 lbs of grass seed, and then dropped hay all over the place.

We are now seeing real, actual grass growing on our property. Photos to be shared shortly.

The transformation of our TV room is almost complete. Today we had some new couches from Crate & Barrel delivered to replace the old ones that we had taken away yesterday.

The next thing we need is a new coffee table to replace Lisa’s Conran’s table that has been with us since New York City and may never leave the house.

If you live in New Jersey, I have a sofabed couch and loveseat set posted on craigslist that I need to get rid of. All details are on the craigslist posting. Respond to the email on the craigslist posting if you are interested. Need to get rid of them by next weekend (May 3, 2008)

This week, we had a new front walkway put in. The old one was rapidly deteriorating and falling apart. In addition, it was just ugly with these old looking maroon “decorative” rocks that ended up all over the place. Having the new walkway sets the stage for us to update and fill in the garden in front of the house and the two little gardens to each side of the front door. More photos are here.

As mentioned below, we renovated the basement recently. And here is the end result of the work. While we sadly had to do away with the 1970’s fake wood paneling and disco era wallpaper, I think the end result is a far nicer space. More photos here.