Deck completion!

Our deck is about 99% complete.  It is just missing a few caps that needed to be ordered.  But for the most part, it is done and we love it.  It is very large and currently houses our old deck furniture AND patio furniture because there is SO much room!  Here is a set of quick progression photos.

We've also built a few walls to create our own yard.  We have a large community-owned space next to us that the kids can run around in, but we wanted to have some flat land in our own yard, so we are working on walls and fences.  You can see the beginning of the wall in this photo (it is huge to cover the large hill that used to be our back yard).

UPDATES and maybe going to build a deck

We are hoping to have a deck built before 4th of July this year!  We've been in our house for over a year and have done a lot of planning but haven't really put any of those plans in motion because I returned to work this year (yikes!).  
But it is now the first day of summer vacation and I am on a mission to do more things to our house!
Here are the colors of the decking we plan to use.

Contemporary Patio by Chesterfield General Contractors Fischer & Frichtel

We built a shed in the small area behind the house next to the morning room (on the kitchen side).

We changed the sink in the kitchen.  I decided that I didn't like the 6-inch depth on the standard sink.  I also didn't like the 50/50 sink because a lot of my pans did not fit in that space.   

So we installed large sink from home depot.

We also added a hidden drawer for sponges at the sink.

We had some problems with our basement door leaking water and after months of back and forth minor fixes, Ryan homes finally replaced the door.

Our laminate in our living/dining room and foyer was not installed correctly or well (????).  At our one-year inspection they agreed to fix it but I think it looks worse.  There are gaps at a lot of seams AND many of the seams are peeling up.  We paid extra money for this floor and flooring people say that it is a good product so it should not be doing this.  We are going to try to get them to replace it with something else but I am sure that will take a while to happen.  
Good thing I am home all summer and available for them to work!  :)

And since I haven't posted since June of 2012, here is what I did to the front of our house for Halloween in 2012.