My New Porch

If within two hours of waking up on a weekend I'm saying, "I'm bored...hmm...", then I'm more than likely going to find something productive to do with my time. If Josh is home, then I pass the kids off to him and try to find something to do around the house. The theory is that one day (in the not so near future) we hope to move from this house. Since moving in, I've done quite a bit to spruce up the joint. One of the things on my never ending to-do list is to make it so my kids can go out in the backyard and play without me worrying about them running into the street. The only two working exits make it so that they must walk through a gate into the yard. My goal is to have a door that leads into the locked backyard. I just so happen to have one of these doors in my house. Up until now, it's been permanently locked due to its crappy nature. Bad door, bad screen door, bad steps. No aspect of this door screams 'safe for kids!' The pathetic excuse for steps from this door are roughly sculpted from leftover concrete with jagged edges and the first step is a one foot drop. Yeah. Scary. The first step in my project was to make a safe step that wouldn't potentially land them in the emergency room. Today was the day for that. Thanks to my awesome friends Mandy and Sean, I got free wood to build my 'step'. They disassembled their in-ground pool and the deck that went around it leaving them with massive amounts of nice wood. They were wonderful enough to give me 18 2x6's and it was ample amount to make my new 'step'. It's really a mini-porch. My awesome parents loaned their power tools (One day I hope to have my own saw and drill.) and their manual labor to help get it thrown together. It turned out great and the kids love it. Alex and Abby even helped me with the hammering. Alex actually got quite good at it. He must get his accuracy from me. :-) I used nails instead of screws and boy howdy! My arms are hurtin' tonight! My mom also got some free planters from her job and now I have some nifty plants to spruce up my new porch. I was excited to get this done and the best part was that it didn't cost me a penny. What a blessing! Next step...new doors.