A Fence

When we were house hunting we always said our first house project would be to install a fence for our dog Madison. Here we are, 1 1/2 years after buying the house, and we are finally putting in that fence! The fence delay has really been for many reasons. One, our yard is huge, so fencing it in is very costly. A solution to that would be to not fence in the whole yard, but we both felt like that would be stupid. We want to enjoy our whole yard, not only a small part of it. We've decided to fence in the whole backyard plus half of the woods behind our house. Another reason is that I really really don't like fences! Especially privacy fences. Especially when they go on for long stretches. And our fence will be all of those things. But we need the fence to keep Madison in, so she can run around, which is one of her favorite things to do. We also need the privacy in our backyard. Our house is pushed off to the corner of our property, so we have a huge side yard, which gives absolutely no privacy at all in our backyard. My solution is this fence:

Picture from www.allabovefence.com

It's 6' tall, but the top 18" or so is open, with a colonial picket. I feel like this will help break up the huge big white wall going all along our property. I'm planning on doing a lot of landscaping in front (and behind) the fence, so it will essentially be blocked by bushes, trees, and flowers most of the time.

To cut back on costs, we're planning on installing the white fence on only two sides of our property.. along the front and one side. The back and other side are woods, so you won't even see the fence, and we already have complete privacy, so we're just going to install black chain link fencing.

We had someone come last week and measure the yard, so hopefully Madison will be enjoying her new fenced in yard soon.

Under-cabinet Lighting

We had an electrician come in before we renovated the kitchen, to update some of the wiring and add some additional outlets. We also had him wire for future under-cabinet lighting. For the past year and a half we have had wires hanging down underneath our cabinets because I was having a hard time finding slimline hardwired under-cabinet lighting. Last night I finally found some.

After all of my searches online and in stores, I finally decided on the UtiliTech Pro LED Direct-wire Under-cabinet Lighting, which I found at Lowe's. We bought a light for each cabinet... two 30", two 12", and a 24". When we got home, we realized that we had used common sense, and assumed that a 30" (or 12" or 24") under-cabinet light would be for a 30" cabinet. But the 30" was the actual dimension of the light, so it was about 2" too wide for the cabinet. We ended up having to use the 24" on the 30", 18" on the 24", etc. The only problem was that they didn't sell a size smaller than 12", but we'll need a 9" one for the cabinets on either side of the stove. We'll deal with that later I guess.

We had a wicked busy day today, but R installed the light above the dishwasher. It looks awesome. We have been turning it on every time we walk in the kitchen! It's so nice to have the extra light on the countertop!

We're planning on buying a dimmer switch for the under-cabinet lights. I'm not sure why I didn't have the electrician install one right from the start. I can't wait until our next party.. it'll be so nice to have some nice mood lighting in the kitchen :)