Trading Spaces

I wish that show was still on air because 1) I loved it so much, 2) we need some help around our place and 3) I'm not sure that I want to do the work myself. Last weekend I had a chance to hang out in the backyard again with my sweet little daughters and I immediately started daydreaming about a pool yard makeover.  This is what we're dealing with right now:

I took this photo from atop the slide to give it that nice aerial feel

Here's my very rough, very unprofessional mark-up of the space:

I have high hopes for that Almond Tree!

Little by little that nasty old hot tub is leaving the yard...panel by panel. This Fall it will be gone!  A pergola would be nice so with some pretty passion flower vines growing all up around it. We could move the grill from under the Magnolia to under the pergola. But a cabana opens up so many more possibilities!

We often dream of relocating our Master bedroom and bath to an upstairs floor but that would be a LOT of money adding on another story. We have more realistic discussions about remodeling the two rooms in the basement for the kiddos' future use. With either of those options we'd have a guest room once again (the sun room futon doesn't really count but is available currently). But I digress...

If we decided to extend our current pool house (here's a photo from last year's leak-chasing effort) we could actually do BOTH! Cabana to the East of the pool and Pergola to the North of the pool all the way to the pond.

The leak was nowhere near where we were cutting...(or digging as I suggested later that weekend) BUT we are intimately familiar with our pool plumbing now and are planning to patch up more concrete as we go along.

Cute picture of my girls!

View to show my vantage point in capturing those previous shots... and my cute girlies!

It would be so nice to have a place for friends and family to stay when visiting, a little space of their own. Plus it would be nice for gatherings if we had a space outside of our house specifically for pool parties or tailgating before games. I'd like to move my guargantuan fridge from my small kitchen into the cabana and have another area in which to prepare and eat food. We don't even have a budget for this right now, but I can still dream about it.

Maybe when the Little Ones are in elementary school we can start with the updates? Or maybe I should start buying lottery tickets again...