What's the haps @ 2 Inyo?

Howdy All,

I hope everybody had a good Thanksgiving. I know I did! I golfed, ate like a pig and got a sick deal on a ski package!

But on to more important things... our air dates for Curb Appeal. The show will air at the following times:

• December 15, 2004 10:00 PM ET/PT
• December 16, 2004 2:00 AM ET/PT
• December 16, 2004 7:00 PM ET/PT
• December 19, 2004 8:30 PM ET/PT
• December 20, 2004 12:30 AM ET/PT

Please tune in and let us know what you think.

We completed the final shoot for Curb Appeal today. The day started bright and early at 7:30am when the 6 person production crew started setting up the shoot.

The day started off cold and gray, but the sun broke through the clouds about 8:30, which warmed everything up and led to a beautiful day.

Yvonne (our designer) showed up around 9 and Rick rolled up at a prompt 10:30. He thought the shoot was cancelled because of the bad weather the day before. He wasted little time in setting the mood for the rest of the day.

We had a long but enjoyable day. Rick was a blast to work with, and our producer Kylee (sp?) was really flexible with the script so we were able to have a lot of fun on camera.

In the shot below, Yvonne and Rick display amazing on-camera chemistry :)

Sharon is smiling because we are down to the last two shots.

The calm after the storm... this is what 5 wardrobe changes in 6 hours looks like.

We are episode 1310. We should be on the last week of November or first week in December.

For my dear mother-in-law. This one is for you Rickie.

Sharon and I had a very busy and eventful weekend. In no particular order:

The painters finished
Kent and Maga got married
The sod went down
The irrigation went in
The plants went in
The door was stained, varnished and hung
The fence was painted
The flower boxes were installed
The entranceway was finished
and tons of stuff I am forgetting about...

In lieu of words, here are some pics... you know what they say :)

A view of the house, almost complete

Another view

The lawn that I wanted, containing grass and not a micro-mulch wasteland that Californians seem to bw predisposed to

The flowers for the boxes waiting to go in

Our final shoot with Rick Spence and co is on Tuesday 10/19.

It feels nice to be in the home stretch with the process. A big thanks to Kevin and Valerie for driving all over hell's half acre to find 6 rolls of sod for us and for Kevin, Valerie, Chad, and Heidi for helping out with the finishing touches yesterday!

Well I am exhausted. My back is aching in a way that you wouldn’t believe. I spent the afternoon (in the rain) cleaning up all the trash that the contractors left on the side of our house. I expected some scraps but did not expect to be cleaning up jack-in-the-box leftovers, pb&j remnants and tons of soda cans. Dear heavens I have learned so much through this experience, some good, some bad, but all valuable information that I will keep with me as we move forward with other house projects in the future. For now, I am anxious to wrap up curb appeal and rest for a while. So once we saw the amount of trash the contractors were throwing in our backyard, I ordered a dumpster. Walking past the huge pile yesterday, we happened to notice that the lovely contractor that we had (and so wanted to fire) managed to not only throw all the scraps in the back but also a ton of lumber that he never even touched. So, rummaging through the pile last night with my mom and a trip to home depot this morning, we were $90 richer. Well I should say $90 less over budget. This afternoon I found about $100 of more lumber I will be returning. Even though it was raining and I was freezing out there, I couldn’t seem to pull myself away from the pile. It was like winning the lottery everytime I saw another brand new piece of lumber. What is wrong with that contractor anyway? Why would you ever through away brand new stuff that can be returned? Arg, just another thing on the long laundry list of why I will be conducting interviews and hiring my own contractor on the next project.

We reached a couple of major milestones today. First, the primer is on the house and second, the fence is up!

We had two ancient hydrangea bushes in front of our house. They had to come out for Curb Appeal.

I spent an hour and a half last Saturday trying to dig the first one out. The roots were so deep and woody that it took an hour and I was exhausted after removing the first one. I saved the second for this Saturday.

I bought a new spade at home depot for the occasion and began to dig. It became apparent within the first 5 minutes that the second hydrangea wasn't coming out any easier than the first.

There was a road crew paving the street perpendicular to our and one of the guys noticed my hacking away at the bush. He asked if I wanted some help. I said sure, expecting him to grab a shovel. He returned with a backhoe. The hydrangea was out in less than 2 minutes.

That is the proper way to remove a hydrangea!

Our first "real" work for Curb Appeal began on September 17th with the demolition phase of the project.

Our designer Yvonne wanted our old rusty iron fence and the unkempt hedge gone. Easier said than done!

Here is a picture of the house before we started.

My good friend Eric Wright brought down his trusty saws-all, and together we made short work for the fence.

The fence took about an hour to cut down, and having 2 saws definitely helped. The hedge, on the other hand, had to be pulled up by brute force and took about 2 hours. When we were finished, we had no fence, no hedge and a nice big pile of dirt in the curb-side lawn.