My New Summer Office

My daughter using power tools

You might remember my cautionary tale about giving me a box of pictures. Well, this edition is called "If you buy Danica new patio furniture...

Hubby's friend is downsizing his home. Friend asked hubby if he wanted to buy the patio furniture. Hubby had me look at it, and given that it's a thousand times nicer than what we had, I said yes.

The only problem is, our patio is too small for the set. The solution: Build me a bigger patio, of course! And, while we were at the friend's house, I noticed that his covered porch was open to the rafters, something I've been wanting a long time because the squirrels have been building nests between the ceiling and the rafters. I'd been trying to get hubby to make that change for me, but until I pointed out at the friend's house that I wanted my patio roof like his, he didn't get it. Once he understood, he agreed to tear down the ceiling.

In the back is the ceiling still needing to come down

Except... several owners before us decided to "improve" the roof, but rather than tear down and re-build, they built over. So, when hubby tore down the ceiling, we found two OTHER roofs and the remnants of a second-floor balcony. For whatever reason, we can never take on the easy projects.

The deck (so far) and some of my new furniture

So here we are... I have 1/4 the deck, just big enough for a table and a couple of chairs. Hubby and the cowgirl spent Sunday working on it. I spent Sunday evening sitting on my partial deck, listening to birds and thinking that I could get used to this place. Kiddo and I had breakfast out here this morning, and after having a very pleasant lunch on my 1/4 deck, I decided that I'm going to be spending a lot of time out here. My new chairs are soo comfy, and when I pretend that my back yard is not full of the junk that will be on my deck, I think this just might be my own personal heaven on earth.

Welcome to my summer office (in progress!).

If you pretend all the patio junk isn't on the lawn, it's very pretty!