A little sprucing up

You know how when you have a deadline, you get distracted by all kinds of stuff that's not part of the deadline, yet seems so important? No? You don't know? This doesn't happen to you? Hmmmm

So there's no firm deadline (yet) but I was making great progress on a checklist of items that I can do without supervision (read "without M taking time away from stuff only she can do to help me") but then a couple days ago, I looked out at our sad backyard. Sad because the trees are mostly leafless, the veggie garden is dormant, and the dahlia bed is covered in weeds. Sad because the tufts of green grass (yes, I'm grateful that our grass is green this time of year in California) are already too high and too tough to mow. Sad because there are piles everywhere: piles of dirt; piles of concrete; piles of stucco, piles of stuff to burn (dead branches, leaves, etc); piles of pots for the garden; piles of lumber; piles of siding. Sad piles. 

And then I cast my eyes upon this sad little structure:

Sad, no? When we bought DG, there was a large stack of old wooden garage doors in the back yard. Like about 12 of them. Who knows why, but after discarding many of them, M used her amazing ingenuity, and used a couple to build this temporary shed. So it's not totally weatherproof, and not very pretty, but it helps keep some of the metal lawn furniture, old motorcycles, and other miscellaneous stuff mostly dry.


I was looking out at the yard, and noticed how dumpy it looked and got an idea. What if we painted it and hung a couple old windows on it. It doesn't change the functionality (it's a temporary structure, but I don't see a new, cuter, more functional one being built any time soon--afterall, I want to be living in the HOUSE, not the shed!), but it sure might make it less of an eyesore. It wouldn't change all the other piles of crap stuff in the yard, but my idea was that if the eye had one pretty place to rest, maybe the other stuff would seem, well, less crappy.

See the piles?
















So we spent maybe 2 hours max, and here's what we got:

The spruced-up version. Still a little, well, unpolished, but it is way cuter and makes me smile to see it from the kitchen window.