
Home Improvement: 1977
Outdoor home improvement can be easy weekend projects or multi-year commitments. One of the things I love the most about our home is the property. Living among the trees is something that B and I grew up with. Neither of us expected a mid-century staple to be our forever home. I didn’t grow up in a raised ranch and neither did my friends, so when we bought our house back in 2015, I was confused as to why there was a concrete sidewalk all the way around our house.


This was back in June 2015 and we thought, we’re young, let’s get this out ourselves. How hard can it be? We headed down to our local Home Depot and rented a mid-sized jackhammer.


Let’s Go!
Well we started chipping away at it and nothing happened. And when I say nothing, I mean literally nothing. The photo of B on the right was after 20 minutes. The photo of me on the left was over an hour in. What was going on? Oh, that’s right, instead of installing decorative cement around the house the original owners installed 6″+ THICK SIDEWALK GRADE CEMENT around the house.

The busted up cement sat there for a while. Like a long while. It was exhausting even to look at. I did decide to pull some up and make our very first fire pit. I hate waste and I like to re-purpose as much as I can (you know, reduce, reuse, recycle).


And this is where my journey begins to spruce up our “outdoor living room”.
[…] Click here for part one […]
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