Progress - and Mistake #1

Progress has been made! The bluestone decks have been extended to make room for the BBQ island and the hot tub. The contractor did a good job and other than the grout color (which should fade over time) you can't really tell where the old deck ends and the new deck starts. I am very glad I didn't do this myself. He was quick - took less than 5 days from start to finish.

The new deck meant adjusting the landscaping a little - resetting some sprinklers (which I did) and also raising the lawn to the deck height as previously the lawn was on a slope. I had the landscapers do this, who are also going to do our ongoing yard maintenence as the previous guys seemed to have lost interest in keeping our plants and trees alive. We also had them do some other tidy up and reseed the lawn where it had died due to some crazy animal attack a few months back. So teh backyard is looking pretty good right now - just in time for summer!

Now, onto mistake #1 - I realized it when I opened up the appliances. I managed to order a fridge that had white trim around the glass in the door. It was impossible to tell the difference between white/stainless steel in the pictures and it was only mentioned in the small print. Seems pretty stupid that they would make a fridge with a full stainless steel exterior except for the door trim. I guess this is the downside of ordering on the web instead of going to a store and looking at something for real. Unfortunately they do not make a stainless framed glass door unit so I figured I was stuck with it, or would have to return it go with a solid stainless door. But then I found Thomas' Liquid Stainless Steel which is apparently the answer to all my problems. We'll see what $20 and a couple hours can do when it turns up later this week.

This is the hot tub area. That has been not so much mistake #2, but certainly a challenge. Given that hot tubs are large, heavy and don't bend, you need to be able to wheel them into place. Now we don't quite have the room due to a low hanging roofline on the corner of our house. Our options were...

1. smaller hot tub
2. go through the neighbors yard and take down some of the fence
3. take down our gate/fence and move some plants
4. crane it in over the house

Decided on option number 3 even though I really wanted to go with the crane as that would be cool (and expensive). Need to do the demolition work before Friday when the tub is delivered. We'll see how that goes....