Making Progress

Well we made some good progress over the last week on two fronts - the master bedroom and the small area of artificial grass in the backyard. Neither of which are quite done but we have what's important...new pictures! 

As I said last week, I was close to being done with our master bedroom. All that was left was painting the dark blue in the middle, doing a little touch up and pulling off the tape. I couldn't do any work on Tuesday because we had free tickets to the Phoenix Coyotes hockey game against the Vancouver Canucks from AMEX. Turns out they were pretty good tickets (right at mid-court?) on row L. The problem was, we were surrounded by Canadians. Not that we are Coyote fans, but there were just so many Canuck fans around us; pour Coyotes didn't have a chance in being louder fans. We only stayed through two periods because we didn't dress appropriately. We went to the game straight from work and Mark didn't bring a jacket and it was actually quite chilly in jobing.com arena. It's actually in a pretty cool location and I want to go back during football season. It's right next to University of Phoenix Stadium home of the Arizona Cardinals and there is this strip of restaurants right there (it's called Westgate City Center apparently). You can park in your space and walk to the restaurants, eat, hangout, shop, drink, then go right into the arena. And guess what else. That's where the Margaritaville is! We didn't go because that's not what we were in the mood for but I'll have to check it out some other time.

So Wednesday night I added the dark blue paint and touched up a few spots on the light blue. I impatiently let that dry so Thursday night I could removed the tape. I did have to touch up a few spots in the white stripes but it was pretty minimal. I think the investment in the higher quality painter tape was definitely worth it. Plus, we did Angie's trick of painting over the tape with white so if anything did bleed under the tape, it would bleed the color that I wanted it to be and it would seal the edges. We got all the painting supplies out of the bedroom and moved the furniture back into place. We even hung pictures. It's like a real bedroom. And I love it! I do still have a small amount of painting to do in there. Apparently, the shutters were hung after the room was painted green so inside the shutters it is still green. I'm going to just paint it white in there but I'll get to it at some point.

Before removing tape

Finished bedroom

We got free tickets to the Home and Garden show on Saturday so we headed over there in the afternoon. It was a total bust! I was hoping for nurseries and ideas and it was just full of booths of water heaters, doors, windows, pool people, etc (although there were some landscapers and nurseries). Oh well, at least I got free tickets and saved my $10. So from there we headed to Lowe's to start out backyard transformation. After looking at pavers, I decided I wanted the poured concrete look. Of course I wanted to make it more difficult for us :) So we talked through the plan with a Lowe's employee that just happened to own a concrete company for 15 years and got the materials to get started. Back home, we started measuring out our circle of grass and staking the ground for our mold. And our ground is hard! It's one thing to dig a hole but to try to drive a wooden stake into it. Geez. We were about to give up but we finally got them all it. The trick - spray the ground with water. If you still have trouble, start digging until you find the enormous rocks in your way. We had to call it quits after one side was up because it got too dark to keep going.

Inner circle of mold

Here you can see our new wall in the back - we still need to paint it

Sunday morning we got up and started working again. First up, add the backside of the mold. It went a lot smoother on Sunday. I don't know if we just had gotten the hang of it or what but it was definitely nice. Before lunch we were heading back to Lowe's to get the concrete. After a quick lunch, we were trying our hand and pouring concrete. Mark was the mixer/pourer, I was the finisher/edger. I think I definitely had the harder job too but Mark might say differently. First we had trouble figuring out the best consistency of water to concrete. If it was too wet, you couldn't round the edges for a while. If it was too dry, you couldn't finish it up before the little amount of water dried up. Either way, it's now poured and some sections definitely look better than others but it's done now. 

Inner side of the mold and outer stakes.

Bentley watching our progress on the pool deck

Finished mold

Finished mold - again

First pouring of concrete - too wet to work with

Mark mixing concrete

Finished border drying

Now we just have to let it sit for 3 or more days before we can remove the mold and see how it looks on the sides. This weekend were planning on working inside the semi-circle with the artificial grass so hopefully we'll soon have some green in the yard!!! I can't wait!