CoSar Casa

Okay, so I kind of started in the middle with the whole, "we're tearing down the pergolas" thing because I was all exhausted and proud at the time. But I never got to the "Why we're doing this" thing. So let's back up. My in-laws have been living in the same enormous 6 bedroom house since they purchased it in 1979. It was great when they were raising three kids and had various other relatives living with them throughout the years, but as they grew older, it became increasingly apparent that it was just too much house for them. However, my father-in-law was firmly planted and rather stubborn, so we helped them when we could but for the most part, let them be. When he died three years ago, it became increasingly apparent that things had to change. If it was too much house for two people, it was waaaaaay too much house for an elderly woman who had, in keeping with her generation, left most of the home maintenance to her husband. We spent many weekends...

Watch this space - it's going to be unrecognizable pretty soon. I don't mean the blog itself, I mean the backyard. We are having all of the concrete torn up and the yard regraded. Most of the concrete is in terrible shape, and we don't love the strange sidewalks to nowhere but more importantly, the yard slopes TOWARD the house, which is less than ideal, especially when you're about to pour a new foundation. Demo on the concrete starts this week, and Jules is out of town, so that meant that we had to remove everything in the backyard that we wanted to keep before she left. So that's how we spent the weekend. Just so you appreciate the magnitude of that, here is the backyard from the listing when we bought the house: The brown shed on the far left and the blue shed in the side yard were essentially just termite colonies and had to be torn down before we moved in. But I fell in love with the two big pergolas next to the house.  Another shot of the pergolas. ...