4-7-2016---time to take pictures of the house!

After weeks of work sprucing up the house, carting out excess stuff, cleaning, tons of yard work, ... , it was finally time for Angie to take pictures of her house and send them to her realtor.  Her realtor usually hires a photographer to take the pictures, but she's good friends with him and convinced him to let her take the pictures.  I was along to loan her my heavy duty tripod, dslr, super wide angle non-distortion lens, flash, and support.  I knew when she was ready, she would take amazing photos and she did!  Here's the ones she edited and sent to the realtor.

love these driveways

sure going to miss this pool and deck!

and our bar b qs

great place to sit and watch the Florida downpours.

or lounge and soak in the sun.

not a huge yard, but large enough.

so nice seeing grass where the dogs use to run.

I sat in that chair and watched more then one sunset.

I love the jungle like area to the side of the back yard.

You don't realize how large these houses are until you see the sides of them.

the other side.

the beautiful front yard again.

entrance showing off the fountain her inlaws cleaned so thoroughly.

to the left of the front door (looking in)

to the right of the front door.

dining room from kitchen entry.

eat in kitchen

new countertops and appliances, the back splash we helped her install.  The new handles she and just installed

the butcher block top to the desk that she installed and the corbels under the cabinet.  Garage door I painted.

love the open concept.

love the ambient light!  The realtor suggested taking the ceiling fan down or putting up one with a light, but having used it for 3 years, we knew it was necessary and didn't need more light.  May not be fancy, but certainly practical. 

I also like the way it has dual ACs and the areas are separated by a pocket door.

The guest bathroom that she redid a couple years ago.  Love the board and batten.

The bedroom with french doors that they used as an office----I love the Tommy Bahama desk!  Neat seeing my Dad's old console record player/radio in there, too.

She even used very South Florida/Caribbean paint colors in 3 of the bedrooms.  This one is more coral then pink like it looks here.  The old night stands are from the old bedroom sets my sister and I had as kids.

The yellow room.

Loved that it had a walk in closet.  The bedrooms certainly are roomy.  I always remember going to Coral Gables with her to get that bed from an estate sale whenever I see it.

the HUGE master bedroom. 

the master bath that I "helped" her with over the past month or so.  I would love to have it!

Even like the huge step down shower.

I told Angie she needs to go into business staging and photographing houses!  I think it looks like a house out of a decorator magazine!

 Goes on the market Friday morning as soon as Robert gets it online---although he's bringing a client by before then. 

4-5-16 --- Coral Springs Camera Club meeting:

We got a break from home improvements today.  Angie was working on the disclosure letter and doing random things around the house like touching up paint and putting down mulch.  We could have done the mulch, but didn't really know where she wanted it.  So we went to a movie and to an early dinner instead!  Then she joined us for a trip to TJMax for some more stuff to stage the house with for pictures and showing.  Then we helped her move a bunch of boxes from the foyer out to the garage.   Even took  my camera over so she could start taking photos of the house.   I think tomorrow will be the day we rent a RugDr. and hit the carpets.  She had more running to do and I had a camera club meeting to go to, so we parted ways about 7.

Only have 2 more camera club meetings left before we leave---one with judging of photos and one with a talk about street candids.  I don't know what I expected from a camera club, but I've learned quite a bit about what judges look for.  A lot of their points are valid, a lot are personal taste.  There are a lot of really good photographers and a lot of strict judges.  In the past meetings I learned to edit out power lines and stray hairs, remove highlights, be careful who prints your photos because everyone has poor color correction except for that judge, and add a vignette to almost every picture.  Today the guy was big on eliminating backgrounds by using gausin blur or cloning, make water soft by using a tripod and slow exposure, and things going from left to right even if you have to invert the picture. 
Anyway---I didn't fare too well today.  Actually, not too many people did.  I only remember there being one 10 and a hand full of 9s.  So I guess I fared ok.  He even scored a lot of 6s.   I don't remember anyone else scoring that low.  I ended up with 2 - 8's and my printed one was a 7.
The theme this month was railroads and pavement and what goes on them.  For my assigned photo, I entered:
He liked the perspective and colors, but didn't like the 2nd guy in the picture.  I actually left him in for the juxtaposition of the serious photographer with the tripod and the casual photographer with a point and shoot or cell phone camera.  He didn't mention the digital matte that I put on it.

For the open digital category, I entered this Oregon waterfall.  He thought the colors were good, but thought I should have had a tripod and used a slower shutter to totally blus out the falls.

 I also entered an 8x10 print that I had just gotten from Shutterfly.  He really didn't like the coloring on it.  He mentioned the range of gray the mountain should be and that the sky color was off.  It got a 7.

Oh well, it's entertaining and I have met a few good people there.  One lady even announced she is selling her 650 Rebel with 18-135 lens for $200 and a 16-300 lens for another $200.  I couldn't resist!  I haven't decided yet whether to give it to Angie and take back the 20D I gave her before so I have a decent back up camera, or keep this one for my back up.  I figure I'll give her one of the super zoom lenses, too, just need to decide which one.

I hope to find a camera club near Buford. 

4-4-16 --- yard work!!!!

Yesterday Ken and I went over to the Hicks' house while Angie was at church and mowed, raked, and blew leaves around.  When Angie got home, she went on to packing more stuff, so we went on home and I hit the pool.  The pool was very much therapeutic yesterday!!!

With the temperatures down to about 80 today, we decided it would be a good day to get the resodding and other yard work done---or at least started!  So we heading out with Angie at about 11:30 to run to Home Depot for dirt, mulch, lava rock, and a couple other things she needed.  Unfortunately they didn't have the rock she wanted, so we then took off to Lowes.  Fortunately, they did.  Some $50 later, we left with 9 bags of rock, 6 bags of mulch, and 4 bags of dirt.  That didn't go too far!  So back to Lowes for pretty close to that much more.  Then Angie and Ken headed off to the nursery to get a palette of sod.  That took 3 trips with the back of their SUV full each time!  While they ran for that, I cleaned the inside of the fountain again, trimmed more palm branches by the front walkway, swept dirt off the driveway, and started taking wheel barrels full of sod to the back yard.  Sure looked like a lot of sod!  Sure was a lot of work!!  Sure looks a lot better!!!
First time I've seen an Ibis in their yard!  Angie said there were 3 of them out there while she and Ken where laying some rock and dirt around. 

 About 6 we took a break for pizza, then got back out to try and finish up before the sun set. 

 Hard to believe that was all dirt!  Looks so nice now.  Hard to believe a palette of sod didn't go as far as I  thought it would.

At least sunset isn't until about 7:40 now.

It was all dirt to the other side of the little palm.

The dogs did a job on the lawn which is why she took them to Georgia before we tackled this project.  It's almost back to the way it was when they bought the place.

This area was a mud pit!  Angie built it up with the lava rock and dirt, then laid sod on it.  The neighbor's yard had sloped into theirs, so when his sprinkler went off, the area flooded.  Then the dogs ran it into mud and tracked it into the patio area.  Amazing how good it all looks now!  But now we won't be able to enjoy it! 

Still some more rocks to go here and there and a bunch of mulch, but the wheel barrels full of sod are done---Yes!!! 

4-1-16 --- Sunset in Coral Springs, Fl:

More working on the Hicks' house.  It's almost there!  Today the power wash people came and washed the tile roof, pool deck, driveway, and some of the walls.  Angie even replaced 3 of the screens on the pool enclosure.  She got quite good at it when Murphy and Micky kept going through the screens.  A few months ago she had pet screen put on the lower areas and it really worked!---Micky no longer went through any of the screens.  But one of the upper screens, the upper screen of one of the screen doors, and the little lower area they left unscreened as a doggie door needed to be screened.  I even tried rolling the spline into part of it and it's not easy!!!  After a few knuckles across the screen, I decided to leave it to the experienced one!  Just a bit left to do on the outside.  By a bit, I mean mowing, resodding a bunch of dirt thanks to having 2 dogs running all over it for 3 1/2 years, mulching some areas in the back, adding lava rock by the downspouts,... but the finishing touches are beginning!  Maybe by next Friday it'll be on the market! 

Managed to be done doing whatever we could for the day and headed out for a sunset.  We had passed an industrial area not far from our place that actually had a nicely landscaped area around a pond.  So we went there tonight.  Not the most spectacular of sunsets, but any sunset is a good one!

looking to the East

A policeman even drove by and stopped.  He asked if everything was ok, I said yes that I was just taking sunset pictures.  To which he replied so did he.