Ah, the Joys of owning a home..

Did you get the sarcasm there?  Actually, this is more about the joys of owning a large dog who doesn't know how big she is.  For years the pets have abused our back patio door--Alice climbs the screen, Indy has been known to push the door off track in her rush to get outside...but the final straw last summer was when Liberty decided to go through the screen.  Now, if she had just gone through the screen, ripping it off the door, but leaving the door frame intact, we would have been fine. However, Liberty believes in doing things right...she not only ripped the screen out of the frame, but also, at the same time, bent the door frame so badly it couldn't be fixed (d'oh.). Well, fixed correctly that is...I can do (temporary) wonders with duct tape.  We finished last season and started this spring with the messed up door...but after Alice escaped through the broken door (and then couldn't figure out how to get back in), we broke down and bought a new door.  This time we went for the heavy duty frame--guaranteed against all kinds of disasters (well, maybe not against dogs, but still...).  We proudly brought our new door home and began to install it...only to find it was too wide for the space.  Blink....blink.. No, we didn't buy the wrong size door...there wasn't enough space between the door frame and the patio wall for the new, heavy duty door....AGGGGHHHH!!!  This was, of course, late on Sunday afternoon, so we put the door (and the receipt) in the garage to return later.  While the door sat in the garage, we had a moment of inspiration...Why not just make the opening wider by chipping off part of the wall?

So a couple weekends later, this is how Mr. Ranch spent his Father's Day afternoon...chipping away at the patio wall. After a couple more minor issues with the door, it is installed and we now can have a nice cross breeze through the house again.  Now, what project should we tackle next? 

Clean (ish) house

In preparation for the house appraiser's visit, we had a frantic house cleaning....here are some pictures, to prove it was (sort of) clean...

 The dining room, which the appraiser insisted on calling two rooms--apparently the tiny corner with the piano and the lamp is our "living room" and the rest of the room is the "dining room". This summer it is all a "storage room" for all my stuff from school.

 The family room...complete with dogs, replacing their hair that had been recently removed from every surface.  This room, combined with the kitchen, is where we seem to spend the majority of our time.

 The kitchen...yes, that is an empty fish tank.  And the bottles by the sink are root beer bottles from the festival, I need to find somewhere to store them so we can get half price refills at the next festival...

 More dogs, furring up the place

 Now, it looks like a mess, but this is one of my favorite "rooms" of the house...I have dreams of making the shelves floor to ceiling, built in, with doors at the top or bottom for the debris...this is where we could have (should have) added another bathroom, so it isn't a bad sized "corner".

 Bonus/Music room...ok, it is still a cluttered mess..we tried. Lately, The Girl has spent time in this room, not only playing her drum set (not pictured, but to the left) but also watching tv "alone".

 The Boy's room...view one (notice that his sister staged his desk to look like a "scientist's desk" so the appraiser would think he was a smart guy)

 Boy's room, view 2.  Those are stickers over his bed and legos under it...ah, to be 9.

 Master Suite, with quilt created by Susan Guzman--Here is a link to it pictured on her design page with all the proper credits.

 Master bath...needs some love, but at least the dirty clothes are cleaned up, right?

 Another favorite corner that needs some work, but I love--some of my favorite books live on the shelf behind the chair there...I dream of sitting there and reading...but more often, Indy is the one in the chair.

 Another view of the master bedroom

 This is The Girl's room...complete with sleeping girl...

 View from the master bath window--there really are mountains, my camera just wasn't totally up to the task

 And the view from the master bedroom--aka "one of the reasons we bought this lot/house". Oh, and it shows the trail that brought The Boy and I home after our adventure a few days ago!

The reward for a clean (ish) house?  I got to have coffee with (in?) this cute kitty and read for five minutes :)