Home Improvements

This was at 10:06am last Saturday morning... the beginning of yet another home improvment project at the Kenison's home. Are we really leaving for Nauvoo in a week??? What were we thinking... well the dog needs some shade while we are gone... and the awesome latino crew that the neighbor found had great rates... and we just needed to add a little more stress to our lives... our hair is not going gray ( or falling out ) as fast as is should! And 6 1/2 hours later, this is what you get...

a GORGEOUS start to our new screened-in porch! Hooray!!!! We are all sooo excited to finally have a little shade in the back yard.

This spring we have several bids from local contractors to have the stamped concrete poured and a porch put on ... needless to say the $25,000 price tag that everyone was tossing around was NOT made in the shade - wink, wink - with us!!! Are you kidding... it's no wonder the construction business is SLOW. Lower your prices people! At that point, Mark decided that he was going to tackle the project himself ... my first thought was... Are you NUTS??? Were you planning on building this in your free time, lets say from midnight to 4AM??? Then we found this GREAT concrete company to do our patio.. which turned out beautiful. Less then $6000, which was about 40% less than the general contractors bids.. can you say middle man! Then onto what to do about the porch? Hmmm...Then steps in Jose our amazing neighbor - who also happens to be an architect!!! Jose speaks spanish and has a great relationship with many of the subcontractors in the area. He was wanting to put a porch on the back of his house too so off he went to find some crews to do the work. To make a very long story short... after @$900 in materials and $580 in labor... we now have our beautiful porch started. After we return from Nauvoo, we will start on the electrical and finish the screens, door, etc. It seems that the latino crew now has several jobs in the neighborhood! It's a summer thing I guess.