One House Project Down

Just had to take a minute to brag on my husband & be thankful for his hard work! When we bought this house, we knew that we had to do some exterior improvements...or else face foundation problems down the road!

We had a structural engineer come to our new house during our "option" period, and he strongly recommended that we have the french drain line removed & replaced with a better yard drainage system. The bids came in at about $2700-$3000 for materials & labor. WHOA!

So, thanks to Greg's willingness to do some manual labor & no fear of hard work, Greg decided to tackle this project himself!

Materials ran us a little more than $500, so Greg's work saved us anywhere from $2,200 to $2,500! WOO HOO!!!

Greg had some help too from my stepdad, Mark, and he had to work around the weather & Greg's work schedule. So, Greg finished up by covering up the last of the new drain pipes about a week ago, and we can cross off one house project off our list!!!

Goals during Lent

As part of my Lenten Fast, I wanted to commit to spending at least 30 minutes to an hour each day to work on my house (a small amount of my daily time that I'm usually on Facebook)! Since we moved in August, I still have several areas in my house that need to be "settled" & organized. So here are some before pics of what I'm working on...the moment of truth & time to be honest (maybe this will help keep me accountable):

Our Dining Room...a semi-before pic since I've been working on it since Lent started. Believe me, it was much worse!

Since our Home Team will be coming over in a little over a week, I really need to make our dining room house priority #1 since we'll need to use this room!
Poor Sheridan's room! She's been waiting patiently for me to "decorate" & organize her room! Thankfully, one of my sisters is coming over to help with this MAJOR project!

This is another semi-before pic! This floor space was completely covered with Barbies & old clothes about an hour ago! Sheridan has declared that she's done with her Barbies (sniff, sniff), so I packed them up today & put them in the attic (in case she changes her mind)!
This is an area in my garage that needs to be cleaned out! It's currently housing vacuum bags of the kids' old clothes. I need to purge some & pack away other's that I'm not ready to get rid of!While painting is not on my Lenten project list, it would be nice if I hung up some of Colin's wall decor! It would help "tone down" his walls until we have time to paint them!

Actually, this is an area that has been cleaned & organized multiple times! I guess I need to figure out a better system for the boy!

OK...there you have it! I just remembered another area of my house that I need to work on...but let's face it, I only have 40 days for Lent! I wanted to set "realistic" goals & not set myself up to fail! Also, hopefully, the discipline I'm learning from not being on FB will carry over even after Lent!