I got a little sidetracked at some point, and forgot to finish the tour of the whole house. One of Trav’s favorite places is the 2 car garage that’s out back. It is detached and opens up onto an alley behind our house. We think it’s great that we have alley access at the back and driveway and street access from the front.

I’m standing at the back door of the house looking at the garage:

Now I’m standing off to the side of the house by our fence:

Walkway to the alley:

I’m standing in the alley looking at our garage. We’ve got a few extra parking spots next to it.

This is what the garage looked like when we first saw the house. Minus all the trash, it was actually the nicest part of the house! It was built in 2004, and it seemed to have escaped the smoking that the house endured.

Trav got straight to work on fixing up the garage as soon as escrow closed. All the garbage was cleared out, and he put in an epoxy floor coating.

Then he added drywall and had the walls and rafters painted. During an open house last month, we saw a house that had the rafters painted like this, and it made the whole garage look so clean and bright. We love the way it turned out in our garage. His next step is to build shelves and get all his garage stuff moved over. It has all been in storage (thanks, Michelle!) since before we got married because the garage at the condo is bite-sized. I love seeing how excited he is to have some creative space and a place for all his tools.

The backyard is a good size, and we are very excited to design a fun outdoor space. Here’s what it looked like when we first saw it. We got that huge dog house for free- score!

Trav killed and removed those crazy weeds, and just today my dear dad came and mowed the patches of grass. Tamed everything a bit. The fence will be removed sometime soon.

There are two fruit trees- lemon and orange. I like them a lot, but I’m not sure how we’ll work them into the plan later on since they’re in an awkward spot. I grew up with lots of fruit trees in our yard, so I’m hoping we can move them to a better location.

Here’s our driveway that comes all the way to the back of the house. I plan on parking there, while Trav will park in the alley so he can be closer to his man cave. =)

Here’s the backdoor. It needed a new door jamb, and the old, old (as in, not the most recently used, but the one before that) water heater closet was a scary little place that I didn’t like looking into.

The new door is a little wider, and the water heater closet is gone. I haven’t chosen the new backdoor yet, so for now there is a basic, no windows door holding the spot.

We haven’t put a ton of thought into the layout for our future backyard, but we do know a few things we want. Phase 3, which I haven’t shown you yet, will occur after the baby comes. It includes a master suite renovation, and French doors will be installed where those windows and air conditioning unit are to the right of the backdoor. Then a porch will be built that goes the entire width of the house, where we’ll have an outdoor dining area and sitting area that’s accessible from the master suite and the kitchen/mudroom.

We walked through a completely renovated bungalow during our house search, and we were inspired by its porch.  Here’s what it looked like (pardon the washed out pic- the shadows were funky and this was the best I could do to lighten the left side):

But, before we work on a super fun porch where we’ll hang out with lots of fun people, we probably need to stay focused on getting a functioning (and clean) bathroom inside the house. And maybe a kitchen. =)