At the quarry

Sometimes, no most of the time my backyard, feels like a quarry rather than relaxing retreat or a garden. The previous owner was a train collector and had a maze of tracks running in the yard. There was a train station and the train track run around a pond. As a solid material they used rock, tons of rocks. Some are nice river rocks but some are just gravel or....train track rocks! Some of the rocks were used instead of mulch. Thankfully all that "landscaping" was done only to the part of the backyard that's close to the house, the rest was left mostly untouched.
This whole time since we've been living here we were pondering what to do with the yard and this weekend it finally hit me: I just want to simplify. So I spent 3 days moving rocks and in the meantime my lovely husband knocked down two waterfalls.
Here is the state of the backyard at the end of last summer. This past weekend was a productive one and I will post pictures of progress as soon as it stops raining.

Some updates around the house take a lot of work and time but sometimes I get lucky and do a quick project that brings out great results. Take this hardware from the credenza. It was dark and dingy and with a little Rub'n Buff and 5 minutes of work it became a jewel of the room.

I can't believe how different the color of the credenza looks in each picture. In reality it's darker but it does change depending on the time of day and light.

Rub'n Buff is officially my favorite new product in home improvement department. I'm wondering what should get the special treatment next.

Dining room updates continued

This sideboard came with the dining room set but the color was even worse than the chairs so I decided to paint it. I wanted to bring in some color into the dining room because it was very neutral and brownish. The fabric on the chairs is grayish-bluish and I wanted to tie it in but not match exactly. The color I chose is Bermuda Blue from BM. It's pretty bright but I love it. Once again I used the Advance BM Paint in semi gloss.

The little applique on the top drawer had to go. It was an easy fix and barely needed any sanding. Tools required...a steak knife and a set of little helping hands.

After light sanding and priming and two coats of Bermuda Blue, here's the finial result.

I did some work on the hardware to make it standout and I'll post more on that soon. I will admit that it took some getting used to having this big pop of color in the dining room but at the end I'm very happy how it turned out.