When Life Gives You Three Dog Runs. . .

Make a Picnic Pad!

When we bought this house we inherited a large 12 ft x 12 ft piece of cement in the back yard, it had separators in it to make 3 long cement-y areas. (Above is the best picture I could find of them as they are so ugly I always tried to avoid them in the background.) Good for nothing but a puddle collector that the girls have enjoyed splashing in. (Apparently few owners ago a K-9 police officer lived here and he put his dog kennels on them.)

For quite a few years we have said that we were going to put a shed on the spot and it seemed the perfect thing to do. We had a contractor come over this summer and talk about it with us. We got bids and planned to do it. But then we had second thoughts. We didn't have enough stuff to fill that big of a shed. We knew the rest of it would become a black hole for junk. Neither of us wanted that, so we opted to put the money into better shelving in our garage.

But something good came of that. . .the contractor said that for him to put a shed on the cement, he would have to fill the areas with cement to make them all level. (I thought perhaps they would shave some of it off to put a shed on it.) One day while out painting I saw how shady that area was and knew it would be a perfect place for a picnic table if we added more cement. So that's what we did. . . .

Now we're just awaiting the arrival of our hand-me-down picnic table. (that needs a good scrape job and some paint. . . .that will definitely not happen until NEXT summer!) Still not done with the fence. . . I wanted to have it done before school started, but we didn't quite make it. Squeezing it in now will be even more difficult, so it will probably be a couple more weeks. . .