Beacon Hill Bungalow

cards

2011-12-16T18:34:00.000-08:00

We've received 3 Christmas/holiday cards to-date from friends and family. Guess what: they are all had a picture of a kid named Henry.

Traveling

2011-12-04T20:29:00.000-08:00

We've been on vacation. Just back from Vietnam.

Apples

2011-10-30T21:21:00.000-07:00

I picked my bumper crop of backyard apples last weekend. There were about 5 pounds and they were nearly perfect, nary a worm. I've been eating them all week and they have a delicious crunch and tart flavor. Can't wait for more next year!

Happy Halloween

2011-10-30T21:15:00.000-07:00

We missed the costume parties this year but we didn't miss out on the pumpkin carving.

Our neighbors, Chelsy and Cyndi stopped by on Saturday night to share in carving up these jack-o-lanterns.

Open/Closed

2011-10-30T21:11:00.000-07:00

Well, it was a big weekend for our friends Michelle and Ryan...they moved into their new house. With that event, we moved out all of the odds and ends that we'd been storing for them for the last few months. We've got the real estate in our garage and NW corner of our basement back...and that means a project!

Lowes sent us a coupon this week--just what we'd been waiting for to buy a garage door opener. It was the perfect excuse for Justin to spend 10 hours in the garage alone. I helped with one step requiring two people but for the most part, this was a Justin project. His reward for his effort is the treat of parking in there.

Too bad snapshots can't capture movement...the door was headed up for my first trial run of the new gadget.

Justin spend a few hours tidying up the garage so it would fit a car...he's got some new organization for ladders and sawhorses as well as his drill press.

Drainage

2011-09-26T20:39:00.000-07:00

There was a whole lot of hole digging going on this mid-September. Remember last year when we had some torrential rain and our basement sprung a leak? Well, we hope we have solved this problem by re-routing the downspout. Justin did most of the trenching but I covered about 5 feet while he rested up.

Just getting started, only 40 more feet to go!

The good news is that it's been raining quite a bit in the last 48 hours and our basement is dry as a bone. It's still to early to declare victory but this is definitely a good start.

Can-stravaganza

2011-09-11T14:12:00.000-07:00

Well, it's that time again! Time to fill the larder and get ready for a long winter of soups and stews and the occasional pizza with homemade sauce.

My friend Jen and I invested in 75 pounds of tomatoes and put up 34 quarts for our respective pantries. And Jen couldn't get enough and canned another 9 quarts of dill pickles in the same afternoon. And then I couldn't get enough and picked a peck of wild blackberries--the kind that grow in ever neglected patch of land in the Northwest--and turned them into jam for my Sunday morning amusement.

Super-canners extraordinaire: Laura & Jen.

Another angle to get an idea of the magnitude.

I had to break out the bacon for my first BLT of the season. That tomato beauty is home-grown--weighing in around 2 pounds.

Five pints of blackberry jam. It's extra delicious because it is seedless.

So far this year, I've done peach, plum and blackberry jam, sliced peaches, dill and sweet pickles, sweet relish, dilly beans and tomatoes. I've nearly exhausted my supply of jars...although I think I have enough to make a batch of jelly from the grapes growing all over the foreclosed home next door. And, if I come upon a abundance of something, I might just have to locate some more jars.

Sneak peek

2011-08-29T21:35:00.000-07:00

Justin has been hard at work sanding and cutting and nailing. So far, he's prepped 3 of 4 of the windows and he's nearly done with the 4th. It'll be my turn next to caulk the seams and touch up the paint.

A twilight shot: preppin' windows.

Stairs: The big reveal

2011-08-29T21:28:00.000-07:00

And, the stairs are painted...

While this was not the most satisfying job we've ever hired out, due to a little sloppiness by the painters, we're pleased with the results. The painters had to come back a half dozen times to clean up and touch up and in the end, they still missed a few places. We think we can fix them though and it will be a lot less tedious than if we'd done the whole project ourselves.

Peaches

2011-08-29T20:24:00.000-07:00

I serendipitously came across a box of peaches on a return trip for work last Friday. Peaches weren't in the plans for canning this summer, especially the when the plan included leaving town for the weekend. But since it was the season and a box of juicy, ripe peaches can't call my name and not get my attention, I packed up 25 lbs of stone fruit and took them to the cabin with me for a canning extravaganza. It was a little more difficult working in a foreign kitchen without all of my gadgets or sharp knives but I managed. Justin helped by eating seven peaches in 2 days, a feat I didn't think he was up to. In the end there were 5 pints of spiced peach preserves and 8.5 quarts of sectioned peaches in light syrup....and an electric stove that about to cash in on its pension and retire.

Plums

2011-08-15T21:32:00.000-07:00

Isn't it wonderful to have abundant fruit trees everywhere you turn in this city? It's even better when there's a free-for-all pair of plum trees less than a mile away. On Sunday, Justin and I went to pillage the plum trees in preparation for the inaugural annual canning rituals. Someone had beat us to the low-hanging fruit so Justin, brave as he is, pulled himself up a small cliff holding onto ivy vines to get to the higher branches. Then he tossed each plum individually down to me to bag up. Truly a team effort!

Honey-ginger plum jam.

Today, I boiled and peeled and mashed and stirred those plums into a jammy slurry and canned my first* bounty of the season. Seven half-pints ain't too shabby.

*Technically the refrigerator pickle and dilly beans were the first but I forwent the water bath canning and opted for a simpler approach.

A Class Reunion

2011-07-31T16:24:00.000-07:00

The class of '98 met up again for another summer picnic. This time the babies weren't quite so docile...2 of 3 are walking and the youngest pipsqueak is just about ready to launch. That's tough on a group of parents in a house with flights of stairs and not a single cabinet latch. Now that the kiddos are a little older, bedtimes are more important so the whole crowd was gone by 8 o'clock.

L-R: Andy, Megan, Justin, Henry, Scott, Tory, Colin, Elizabeth, Jay, Esme. Foreground: Pongo's rear.

Flowers: A Montage

2011-07-31T16:04:00.000-07:00

Just a few shots from my garden on the last day of July.

Echinacea and Russian Sage

Bluebeard and Monarda

My favorite vignette: Penstemon, Daphne and Dusty Miller

Paintin' and Preppin'

2011-07-31T15:54:00.000-07:00

Most of this month we've been lolly-gagging around, taking in the summery weather (Yes! I'm the only one in Seattle who thinks we were dealt a decent summer) and taking a break from the DIY projects. But, we've managed to cram in a few projects, specifically the prepping of the stairs for their big makeover (coming soon) and this weekend, a start on replacing the trim around the windows on the south side of the house.

Justin spent a few hours on Saturday digging out all of the wood from the garage that we've been storing since about this time two summers ago. On Sunday morning, I primed all of the pieces and by Sunday afternoon, Justin was into the blue paint, laying down the first finish coat.

Meticulously applying a coat to the trim boards.

Mini Vacay, Eh?

2011-07-04T21:30:00.000-07:00

Check out my other blog for an update.

Summer Scrapin'

2011-06-28T20:41:00.000-07:00

Stairs. This is one of our last interior projects; one that I have been really successful in procrastinating. (there are a few more that I'm earning gold stars in the procrastination category too but those are for another blog post) Sometime last summer, I thought, why don't I hire someone to deal with the stairs and painting them? But then we looked at them a little closer and figured we needed to do some work like attach some trim, fill in some holes and gaps before we could have someone paint things. We didn't (don't) want to get carried away and pay someone to caulk. The only reason I'm entertaining the idea of hiring a painter at all is that this is really detailed work and I don't think I have the patience nor tenacity to do this project.

So, that brings us to today-well--really this past weekend. Justin got super into the idea of scraping off old paint from the stringers on Saturday morning. I could have helped but I didn't. On Sunday, he picked up where he left off and then sanded down the stringers and risers to prep for paint. I did my part by contacting a painter for an estimate. We still have a few more things to sand down and are waiting for a new tool that Justin procured from the internet to help him get into the corners. Once the wood is prepped, we have to add some new trim to some areas and caulk and fill all of the holes (my job).

Here are the stairs with the stringers scraped of paint:

Justin sands the risers:

Oh, and another project that we did about a month ago that I never reported on: tool organization in the garage. In the spirit of reorganization and making more room for an automobile to fit in this garage, we abandoned the can-o-tools for this homemade hanging rack.

Gardening News

2011-06-13T20:40:00.000-07:00

Justin and I have been busy in the garden, taking advantage of our warm summery weekends and not-so-warm, dreary weekdays. We've nearly planted all of our crops and have been harvesting assorted greens (chard, spinach & lettuce) and radishes for about a month now. This is the first year I've successfully planted multiple rotations of radishes. We're on our third rotation and I'm out of seeds so I guess that's all until fall.

Peas, tomatoes and peppers (and some sad looking garlic that wintered over). We each ate a single pea pod this evening--they are just coming in. These babies aren't very tall but they have quite a batch of incoming pods.

My grove of greens: spinach and lettuce. Behind are the sprouts of pickling cukes and squash. In between is the third crop of radishes, just peaking through.

Here's the health-food section: chard, kale, beets and parsnips. Only the parsnips have a ways to go. Everything else is ready to go. Believe it or not, we've probably had a half-dozen salads with the chard already. The beans in the background are just getting their second leaves.

Here's a sweet little pocket of the garden: poppy and lupine

Lots of stuff is in bloom and we're starting to get little vignettes of plants and flowers coming in. It's fun to watch and rearrange certain items in my head (and some day in the yard as well).

First Harvest

2011-05-10T19:52:00.000-07:00

We have some crisp and spicy red radishes, fresh from the garden!

A finished project!

2011-05-10T19:49:00.000-07:00

Finally a weekend with two healthy DIYers and 10 hours of dry daylight! Justin and I got our jig on carving up umpteen 2x3s with a fanciful curve and mounting them on the top of the trellis. I sawed, Justin sanded and then we finished the project off with a little edge-easing with the router. All in a day's work.

Around this time last year, we had barely more than a pile of rubble and a big vision for the backyard. But this year, the yard is filling in with fresh flowers and new greenery including some promising looking salad greens in the raised bed. Our apple trees have blossomed and our maples are just leafing out. I can't wait to fill in the bare spots with some new shrubs and perennials.

Spring has sprung!

2011-04-24T21:16:00.000-07:00

We've been waiting for the first weekend of the year where the sun shines and air is crisp and almost warm. And it came this weekend. Both cats were out and about, eating blades of grass and romping through the neighborhood. We spent Saturday exhausting ourselves moving boxes and furniture for friends Ryan and Michelle. They're spending the summer in an apartment while they search for a new house. And today, even with a few sore muscles from yesterday, we made some progress on the arbor and some other outdoor projects. I'm pretty proud of our accomplishments.

We hung a bunch of lattice on the trellis, filling it in. We under-ordered on a few dimensions of wood so we couldn't get much further than this today.

After a trip to the home improvement store, we came home with some hooks for improving our storage arrangement for our garden tools. I installed the hooks and hung all of the tools while Justin worked on the arbor/trellis.

When we bought our house, it had bars on the basement windows. But, last year before we had the windows replaced, Justin and I removed all of the bars, opting for an unobstructed view. Thinking ahead to a day like today, I saved the decorative ironwork with the future hope of making a trellis or garden art. With our sugar snap peas planted and sprouted, these re-purposed window grates should provide a nice support for our incoming crop.

A perfect width!

Another weekend

2011-04-17T20:55:00.000-07:00

This weekend has been jam-packed! On Friday night, Justin and I went to the opening night of Paul Simon's tour for his new album. I'm a huge Paul Simon fan so this was a special night. Justin was really amused to be sitting amongst a sing-along-er in every direction. He had no idea that there were so many people cut from the same cloth as me! This may be the last time ol' Rhymin' Simon tours; he's going to be 70 this year. I'm super happy that I got the chance to see him one more time.

On Saturday, we had a birthday party for Justin which entailed spending the day sprucing up the house and cooking up a birthday feast. We made banh mi sandwiches for the party and they were a big hit. These are Vietnamese-style sandwiches: marinated meat on a crusty french roll with pickled veggies, jalapeno, cilantro and spicy mayo. If you haven't had one, your most exciting discovery will be the price: usually < $3 for an 8" sandwich that is truly delish. We made ours using a great recipe from last year's Bon Appetit magazine.

And on Sunday, we were planning a day of rest but I had ants in my pants and couldn't help digging into a timely project. I've been planning to re-purpose the security grates that we pulled off the windows when we moved into the house as a trellis. I've planted sugar snap peas along the garage and now that they are poking out of the ground, I need a trellis for them to climb up and flourish. I spent the afternoon scraping rusted metal off the old grates, washing off the dirt and spray painting. We ran out of spray paint so I'll need to pick up tomorrow where I left off but I'm hoping to have a homemade pea trellis on the side of our garage before my little pea vines grow another inch.

Scraping off the rust:

Trellis

2011-04-02T16:51:00.000-07:00

Justin dug in with enthusiasm to this trellis project. The wood has been sitting in our garage for over a week and I know he has been getting anxious to saw it all up and build something. Justin loves getting the drills out.

Here's an action shot:

The skeleton of the trellis, all up:

Farmer Laura

2011-03-20T16:24:00.000-07:00

Did the groundhog see his shadow this year? I think so and now six weeks later, Seattle is enjoying temperatures that are pretty ideal for kicking off the planting season. I should mention that I kicked off the planting season over a month ago indoors with grow light and heating pad and today, the seedlings are all of an inch tall and really spindly. Something is not right with my indoor garden. Let's hope the seeds I planted yesterday fair a little better. If so, I'll have baby lettuce, spinach, radishes, beets, kale, chard, peas and parsnips poking out in another week or so.

On to the fun part

2011-02-13T19:00:00.000-08:00

Our heavily unused second bedroom on the second floor has undergone a bit of a makeover over the last few weeks. It started out as a playroom for the cats, complete with a shredded cat tree. Then, when Justin and I put the king-sized bed in our bedroom, we relocated our queen bed into this room and got rid of the mishmash of cat and craft and couch. But the room lacked trim and the closet was missing doors and an organization scheme. Now it has trim, new paint and a snazzy closet. We put the finishing touches on the paint this weekend and moved all of the furnishings back into the room today, freeing the hallway from the jumble.

Here is the closet, complete with our bargain bi-folds and a homemade closet system.

We have a table for sewing and crafts on the left side of the closet that I'm hoping to put to use soon for curtain and pillow making.

Here's a rare shot of me working. Seriously, I do stuff but I'm also the historian so I'm usually the one behind the camera capturing the moment.

I didn't get any action shots of us painting the walls but the room is small enough that the paint went on pretty quickly and we were done in a day. We've switched to Rodda paint from Valspar, mostly because I had a 2-for-1 coupon at Rodda. But after using it in the master bedroom, I was pleased enough with the coverage to go back. It's a little spendy (~$45/gal) without the coupon but very affordable at 1/2 price.

Here's the room all painted out and put back together:

From a different angle:

So, now we are onto the fun part of picking out some curtains and a duvet and some colorful accents. I think I am going to go with a dark blue and purple. The walls are a light gray that leans to the blue side of the spectrum. I had thought the walls would dry a little lighter but you get what you get. I like it though. I think it will make the room look brighter which is important since that window faces north. We're unlikely to have the blinds open much since the view is the house next door with its peeling paint and other maintenance issues.

Just for fun...

2011-02-06T21:19:00.001-08:00

We've been working on finished the trim in the guest bedroom upstairs. We are rounding 3rd on that project. I don't have any photos for you of the trim, but I have been hard a work figuring out what the third bedroom should look like when we're finished with it. I've been playing around with Olioboard and here's what I've come up with (and don't worry, I don't love that curtain pattern...it's just all I could find in the approximately correct color) :

I'm really only set on the shag purple rug since I already own it. The bed, which I didn't feature in the montage is black and a bit contemporary. Everything else would be need to be acquired. I'm kind of excited about the plum-turquoise-lime green combination but I have some other ideas up my sleeve: red-pink-plum, orange-lime green-plum, and plum-navy. I'm thinking all of these would have a backdrop of white walls...and I'm leaning toward a white that has a drop of gray in it.

Anyway, let me know if you think this is too much or if you have any other great ideas for incorporating a purple shag rug into my decor.

Mr. P

2011-01-16T20:20:00.000-08:00

It's been about 6 weeks now since P-Kitty moved in and he's starting to make himself at home. And Tink is starting to tolerate him. We've even seen them chase each other around a few time for play. Pongo doesn't like to be picked up or petted much but he's frequently up for chasing round and rolly objects from one end of the house to the other.

Here are our two cutie-pies almost snuggled up together. This is actually a huge improvement from the first three weeks of cohabitation.

In the Nook

2011-01-16T19:22:00.001-08:00

Every time we get ready to wrap up a project, Justin and I love to indulge each other with our mental "to-do" list to try and come to an agreement on the next project. For the past 5 or 6 months, I've been saying my preferred next project is the shelving in the office. And, for the past 5 or 6 months, we've worked on something else. But this month, my project prevailed. I think 2011 is going to be a good year.

There were a few hitches to this seemingly simple project. First off, we had some dimensioning issues but those were luckily solved with 5'x5' pieces of plywood. Second off, our oven broke in the middle of this project. You don't need to use your oven for any part of this project, other than for fixing dinner. But, that is exactly what we were doing the evening that I applied the first coat of stain to the shelves. We didn't realize this at the time, but the petroleum fumes from the oil-based stain dispersed throughout the house and our gas range started combusting them. It didn't cause a fire or anything other than a noxious smell, but we did have to finish cooking our dinner in the microwave and we spent the next day puzzling over what went wrong with our oven. It wasn't until two days later when we called the appliance repairman that we got our first clue about the paint fumes. So, bottom line, don't use oil-based paints inside unless you can open all of the windows and ventilate the space well.

Okay, onto the shelves.

Here's an action shot of Justin installing the cleats.

I've been checking out office organizing systems here and there for the past few months, anticipating we'd be doing the project. It's really fun to get a bunch of boxes and move all of your disorganized stuff into its new home. The last time I got an organizational bee in my bonnet, it was 15 months ago so I haven't had this kind of fun for a while.

Here's the view of the new shelves holding up our important (and not so important) stuff.

We were able to get the printer off the counter and the bulletin board hung and all of the cords tacked up neatly under the counter. I'm going to keep my eye out for a nice large colorful print to frame and hang on the wall adjacent to these shelves...there's a nice big open wall to fill.

And a belated happy New Year!

2011-01-09T20:08:00.000-08:00

We rang in 2011 with barely a jingle, sorry to say. I was laid up on the couch with a truly unpleasant cold. But, our 2011 has been pretty productive nonetheless. We have been working on a bunch of odds and ends. Starting off the new year, we got back into our painting clothes and finished installing and painting all of the trim in our master bedroom. Now our closet is really complete, with a door and molding and everything. This weekend I worked on a chore that I have been postponing for more than a year: touching up the wall paint. When we installed the new baseboards and door frames, we ended up with caulk and white paint on the walls. I pulled out 3 different colors of paint today and touched it all up. Sad to say, but I think the upstairs hallway is going to need a total repaint since the touch-ups seem to dry just a smidgen off the color on the walls. We'll probably save that project for another year.

The other super exciting thing that we worked on was building shelves for the office nook. We had some really unfortunate dimensions to work with: 49" x 13.5". Every commercially available shelf was 48" so just a bit short of the full span and when you look at making shelves out of sheet goods, you get really annoyed because everything is just a little too small to get an optimal cut from a 4'x8' piece of plywood. Lucky for us, our trusty lumberyard, Compton's, happened to sell 5'x5' pieces of 1/2" plywood. Eureka! We needed 4 pieces of 49"x12.75" plywood cuts and this did the trick with hardly any waste which made it a cheaper project in the end. Justin fabricated the shelves on Saturday afternoon and I stained them up. I'll get some polyurethane on them over the next week and then hopefully we'll get them hung before next weekend. The true fun starts when I can start filling them up with all of the office supplies and storage.

Last post of the year

2010-12-31T16:09:00.000-08:00

Well, it's the last day of 2010 and I am laid up with a cold. It's a heck of a way to ring in the new year! We wanted to cram in a few more odd projects before the clock strikes 12. In my condition, I'm supervising. Justin is the sole laborer today. The project du jour is new lighting for the garage.

Here are our new T8 fixtures with electronic ballasts. We had an old 8 foot T12 fixture. Since the lamps were fading, we decided it would be a fantastic time to install more efficient lighting. And, another bonus: no more 8' lamps with which to deal.

The outside of the garage gets some new security lighting.And, we have some handcrafted house numbers up in the back to help with back yard deliveries. Thanks Mom!

Happy New Year Bungalow readers!

Greetings!

2010-12-19T13:54:00.000-08:00

Well, a few weeks ago I imagined the front door would be in by Thanksgiving. That didn't happen, but we did get the new back door installed before the turkey was roasted. Today, after 5 coats of urethane, we took on the front door. I don't have any before photos because Justin dove right into this project and had the old door off its hinges before I could grab the camera. The only thing remarkable about the old front door was the porthole that the former owner installed as a peephole. But, alas, that is done and we are getting rid of the 6 panel contractor-grade steel door and installing a lovely Craftsman-style fir door with 3 window panels for viewing who is knocking on the door.

Justin, pulling off the interior trim, cracking lots of plaster along the way:

Out with old and in with the new:

3/4 of the way there. We still need to install some hardware so we can latch and lock the door and have some insulating and trim work to do (another day):

Lookin' good, Beacon Hill Bungalow!

Winterizing

2010-12-19T13:34:00.000-08:00

A welcome surprise came on Friday, clearly the work of Mother Nature's elves (does she have such things?). Apparently, trees are falling like pick-up sticks around here because a friendly tree service was finally calling with a load of chips. It smelled like Christmas trees around here all afternoon.

Here's the pile before--probably about 10 yards of mulch:

Our newly bedazzled yard, tucked in for the winter officially now (hope it's not too late, the cold snap came early this year!):

We have about a yard of mulch remaining and hopefully a neighbor will want to use it in their yard. It's free and it's a miracle worker on weeds.

Sketch-Up

2010-12-13T21:34:00.000-08:00

My new favorite tool from Google: Google SketchUp! Aside from the water issues mentioned in the previous post, I have a vision for what our basement could become. I think I might get a side gig as an architect.

Thoughts? Comments? Feedback? I've got lots of time before we're ready to build this.

***And just for the record, the TV was Justin's idea.

Uh oh...

2010-12-13T18:06:00.000-08:00

What do you get when you cross a porous foundation with 3" of steady rain in 24 hours? Why, a wet basement of course! We spent the better part of the summer installing drainage in the backyard but it wasn't enough to prevent the scene we awoke to Sunday morning.
So, now the question is, what do we do now? Luckily, our basement is unfinished and we probably only took on about 1 gallon of rain water. No harm done yet. But we have big plans for this space and 1 gallon of water puts a serious crimp in those plans.

Whirlwind of a weekend

2010-11-21T16:06:00.000-08:00

For the last few weekends we've been projecting but we haven't really finished much to showcase. But, alas, all of that tedious painting a sanding finally came to fruition. This weekend, we took on the back door and other assorted projects. Of course, we picked the coldest weekend of the year to tackle the project where the house has to be open but aside from some frosted fingers, we pulled it off.

Our new rear view: check out our renovated backyard!

It's weird getting used to all of that light in the back corner of the kitchen; I keep thinking we left the door open.

Out the front of the house, the view is decidedly uneven. This poor maple can't decide what color to be: orange or green. This is the most bizarre fall coloring I've seen:

Once the door was in place, we took on a bunch of other miscellany: refinishing the butcher block, touching up paint here and there, prepping the new front door for another coat of finish, and cleaning out the basement.

The butcher block has been holding up pretty well with the finish we applied but last month when I left a wet cast iron skillet on the wood, I was left with a stubborn rust spot. That, along with a few other imperfections were sanded out on Saturday and we have a new coat of oil penetrating the wood this evening.

Here's Justin sanding out the rough spots.

We carried the new front door into the basement because the urethane wasn't drying very fast in the cold garage. The basement is pretty chilly too but probably warm enough. I'll be add a couple of coats of finish to the door and before long, we'll be turning off the heat in the house again to install the front door. Brrrrr....

Here's Justin sanding out the rough patches where the finish didn't set up nicely due to the cold temperatures.

Our next project

2010-11-14T14:37:00.000-08:00

So, now that we have the interior doors painted and hung and privacy is no longer premium in this household, we have a few new projects in the queue. First up, exterior doors. Our lovely 6-panel steel doors are not long for this world...we've got a new front door and back door in the paint barn this week and if everything goes to plan, we might have a new front door before Thanksgiving. Wouldn't that be welcoming?

Justin in the paint barn working on the back door. It is mostly glass and we're hoping it opens up the back corner of the kitchen a bit.

Second in the queue are some drapes for the windows in the front of the house. At first I thought I'd make them and then I was feeling lazy so I started looking around to buy drapes and then I got cheap (and I didn't really find a pattern I liked either) so I'm back to the idea of making them. I'm zeroing in a fabric and would welcome any reader's opinions.

Here are the top contenders: (l-r) Red squares, gray/black whirly gigs, and gray links. If I go with either of the gray fabrics, I'm considering bordering the drape with red fabric to bring some red into the room.

Busy Boy

2010-10-24T17:23:00.001-07:00

Justin was a busy boy today. He hung the rest of the doors and outfitted many of them with doorknobs and latches and the like. The only think holding him up was me...I was a little behind on my prepping the doorknobs and latches and the like.

Our linen closet, all buttoned up.

So, while I was finishing up the prepping of hardware, J moved onto relocating the light switch so that it wouldn't be behind the door in the bedroom.

The pocket door for the master closet with adjacent new light switch.Check out the period hardware on the spare bedroom door! Salvaged from our own home.

Trying to use up the expiring Chinook Book coupons for 2010, we stopped by Second Use, a used building supply store, and found two matching bifold doors for the second bedroom's closet in the right size and style all for about $75 which was a screaming deal for solid oak doors in a craftsman style. Yippee!! So, we'll have more door stories coming soon.

Voila

2010-10-23T20:51:00.001-07:00

Justin and I have been hard at work, starting projects left and right. But all of this work has left precious little time for blogging so it's time to play catch up.

First, check out a finished project:

We made the bed...no really, we made the frame and headboard. I just couldn't bear the price of an upholstered bed from the store when the materials to DIY the bed were less than $200. So the bedroom is looking a little on the gray side but at some point I'm going to find some red and orange accents to liven the room up a bit.

So, how did we do it? The headboard is a separate piece and is actually mounted on the wall with french cleats. It was pretty easy...we cut a 3/8" piece of plywood and used a frame of 2x2s to shore up the plywood and give it some structure. Then we glued a piece of 2" foam to the front of the plywood and covered the foam and plywood with batting. We fastened the batting to the frame with staples, making sure that the batting was smooth. Finally, we covered the batting with the upholstery fabric, pulling the sides taut and stapling the selvage to the backside. For the bed frame, we cut 3/4" plywood 7.5" wide and to the lengths of the boxspring. We mounted 2x4s to two of the plywood strips to form and "L", giving a shelf for one side of the boxspring to rest on. Then we screwed the plywood strips together to form a box. Next, we added one 2x4 piece in the center of the box to hold up the boxspring (we have a king bed so there are actually 2 twin-size boxsprings). Finally, we attached furniture feet to the box to give it a little height off the ground and a finished look. There are 7 feet on this bed, one on each corner and three attached to the 2x4 in the center. I ordered the furniture feet online. And lastly, we upholstered the frame just like the headboard, except skipping the foam layer.

So, what else have we been up to? Check out those nightstands in the photo. That was another lengthy project. We sanded off the finish from two nightstands that I picked up from craigslist and painted and stained the bare wood to make them look like new. The feet are painted black and the rest of the box is stained a medium-dark finish. This was a lot of work. The sanding was tedious (and because we couldn't easily get all of the nooks and crannies, I decided to paint part of it). The painting took 2 coats + a coat of primer and the staining was a bit of a disaster. Let me warn everyone that you never want to buy the staining product that has stain and polyurethane all in one. It is a sloppy mess. The sheen was inconsistent and the color was streaky. I ended up settling with the streaky finish and going over the whole kit'n'caboodle with clear polyurethane for 3 coats. Luckily, polyurethane goes on and finishes like a dream.

So, there's my $300 of used and homemade bedroom furniture. I hadn't exactly planned to do this so much on the cheap but sometimes it just works out like that.

In other news, we finally have a bathroom door (upstairs). In fact, we have doors for all of the bedrooms and a few closets too now. Justin and I painted 7 doors over the last few weeks and have 3 of 7 hanging in their final home. We still need to attach the doorknobs and other hardware as well as figure out the strategy for hanging the other 4 doors (these require us to mortise out the frames for the hinges.)

At long last....Privacy!

Exhaustion

2010-09-19T19:46:00.000-07:00

I'm too exhausted to even take photos. This was an action-packed weekend, even though it wasn't supposed to be. We didn't have any particular project plans so when the weekend hit, we just dug into the to-do list. Here's a recap:

Got 3 coats of paint on the nightstands
Prepared and canned a bunch of pear butter using my neighbor's Asian pears
Build a bed frame for our king bed (still need to upholster)
Thinned out the closet and got a box for Goodwill going; organized the storage in the basement to put up all of my canned tomatoes, pickles and jams.
Ran a bunch of chores around Seattle, mostly trying to cash in on Chinook Book coupons
Purchased and planted about 50% of the plants for the planting strip out front
Installed soffit vents in the garage
Repaired and rerouted the downspout on the back of the house
Prepped the interior doors for painting

Anyway, it was a lot and I'm exhausted now.

Up on the Rootop

2010-09-12T16:57:00.000-07:00

A lot has happened since last weekend. Frankly a lot has happened since Saturday morning. We started off the weekend right on Friday night by heading to Georgetown for a few post work libations. On Saturday morning I was up and out the door to pick up our monthly meat delivery here on the hill. My dad was here promptly at 8:30 and up on the rooftop of the garage we went. 40 minutes later (he timed it) the old three tab roof was gone and in the back of the truck. Many hours later and a trip to town for more nails we had completely re-roofed the garage. It was great starting and finishing a project in one day! Now the garage looks just like the house. Same paint color, same trim, same roof. Just not the gutters. Yet.

Not to let the moss grow under our feet we started out today with a little cleanup in the garage and some sanding on Laura's nightstand project (I'll let her fill in the details on this little operation later). We were then off to the dump to unload the old shingles and then to the orange box to return some of the nails from yesterday and pick up some wire to finally hook up the garage electrical. For some reason when the previous owners of the house had the garage re-built (the original burned down) they had it wired with outlets and light fixtures but never had it hooked up to a power source. This has been a really long overdue task for me that I have been working on since the spring. After a few hours and one more trip to the blue box and the garage is officially wired. No more dragging extension cords around or using flashlights. It is done.

Laura was not sitting on the sidelines by any means this weekend. She planted a ton of new stuff including our new herb garden out front, diagnosed the problems with our washing machine and ordered the parts as well as continued the canning extravaganza. She is currently processing cucumbers for dill pickles. All in all another productive weekend.

Roof Removal Underway

Roof Complete with Vents!

Trees!

2010-09-05T19:31:00.001-07:00

We planted 5 new trees this weekend and found a screaming deal on them to boot. We picked up two apple trees, 2 paperbark maples and one Japanese maple all from West Seattle Nursery. WSN was having the sale of the year...the prices were 50-70% less than Swanson's on trees. I'd been anticipating that Swanson's, with it's larger space, would have a better selection and comparable prices. NOT SO!

Pictured here (looking east): 2 espaliered apples and 2 paperbark maples amongst a bramble of raspberry vines that are just now starting to produce. The raspberries are moving as soon as the fruit ripens.

And our lovely-shaped, multi-trunk Japanese maple...planted between the house and garage.

We picked up a few other items as well like a red rhody to block the alley between our garage and the neighbor's and a bunch of herbs for our soon-to-be herb garden in the parking strip. I love the fall because you can plant without consequences and all of the nurseries are having end-of-season sales so the plants are cheap!

A high school reunion

2010-09-04T09:14:00.000-07:00

Well, if there wasn't something in the water in 2010, I'd be surprised. We had a gaggle of 2010 babes over last night, all born within 5 months of one another and all born to Justin's best high school buds. Check this out:

L-R: Megan with Henry, Jay (Elizabeth's husband) with Esme, and Scott (Tory's husband) with little Colin.

Ahem...

2010-09-04T09:03:00.000-07:00

What was that all about? Well, we've been busy redesigning the bedroom.

Check out our new paint color: Pussy Willow, by Rodda.

Justin rolled the field and I did all of the cutting in "by hand"...a true team effort. But wait, there's more: we built our own headboard too! I'll get a photo up in a few days once we have the darn thing mounted. Our new king-sized bed is coming on Tuesday.

Overheard...

2010-09-02T11:40:00.000-07:00

Overhead in the bedroom last night:

Justin: Laura, you do a good hand job.

Me: Thanks Justin.

In a Jam, not a pickle

2010-08-22T16:46:00.000-07:00

With the bounty of free fruit ripening up, I declared that this would be a canning weekend. I've been keeping my eyes open for a screaming deal on roma tomatoes but alas, no deals are to be had...yet. But the deal on blackberries and plums was too good to resist. Justin and I picked about 4 quarts of berries on Thursday and I went back out for another 2 quarts on Saturday and turned the whole lot into several half pints of jam.

Canned and ready to be eaten or given away as gifts! Half of the lot is plain blackberry and the other half is blackberry-cinnamon-cardamom jam.

On Sunday, we headed out for a little walk to my favorite plum tree that doesn't appear to be owned by anyone. The plums are small, about the size of large cherries but they have good flavor and they are plentiful. As, I write this, I'm simmering them down with some ginger root to make a tasty preserve. The canning will have to wait until the work week because the plum stew must cool so I can separate out the pits.

Mmmm....stewed plums.

We scoped out the cucumbers at our local fruit stand and they looked pretty picked over. My own cucumber vines in the garden have a lot of little gherkins but only one vegetable worthy of pickling. So, I'll be waiting until my cukes come in or I find a better selection elsewhere. In the meantime, I'll be searching for some *free* dill weed. There's an abundance of fennel around my neighborhood but I haven't stumbled on dill yet...and you call yourself a weed!

One other fruit I'm hoping to find a free source for is figs. We have a fig tree and it has yielded two ripe figs so far but it only has 5 figs on it total--it's pretty young. I'd like to make a fig jam since it makes a lovely hors d'oeuvre with goat cheese and bread. Let me know if you live on the hill and have more figs that you can handle.

And during all of this picking and simmering and processing, my lovely partner painted and painted and painted some more. He likes to zone out to his tunes with a paint brush in hand. Good thing because I've lost steam on the painting.

One more coat and some touch up and our garage is ready for her debut!

Trimmed out

2010-08-15T17:05:00.000-07:00

We added the final coat of the yellow this morning before it got too smokin' hot out. Just as the mercury was rising to unbearable levels, we got a coat or two on the windows and garage door. We'll have this project wrapped up by the week's end, I predict.

That old garage, she's lookin' pretty slick now...all matched up to the house.

Just a few more hits of white and blue and a little window box and she'll be looking good.

Color coordinated

2010-08-14T13:51:00.001-07:00

We're pretty proud of ourselves...check this out:

The swamp man returneth and cleaned our garage.

All cleaned up and ready for her makeover:

Foundation coat, aka primer:

Top coat to match the house:

Now we're off to the store to see if we can find some inexpensive windows to replace the clunkers we have while the paint dries. More tomorrow...

An unexpected weekend

2010-08-08T19:53:00.001-07:00

This weekend, we found ourselves unexpectedly at home and with very little for plans. We had planned to head out to the peninsula this weekend to Justin's family cabin but when everyone looked at the weather report, the rainy forecast scared us away. Much better to sit at home on a rainy day than out in the middle of nowhere. Which, is just about what we did. Justin napped and read his book for the majority of Saturday. Meanwhile, I schemed up some ideas around canning and craft projects and sold our old sofa on craigslist--the first step in our bedroom makeover in the works. On Sunday, the skies dried up a bit and we found ourselves scrounging around, trying to find on odd project or two to keep our D-I-Y urges satisfied.

Justin couldn't resist tearing into our garage to replace some rotten fascia. Believe it or not, we are probably only a week away from taking on this garage as the next big project. We'll be painting soon enough.

Milestones & Neighbors

2010-08-04T20:58:00.000-07:00

My 100th post...it's pretty clear I've had something to say! It's a fun reminder that this blog has become a regular endeavor...a frequent stopping place.

Well, enough with the analy, let's get on to the fun: we had our first block party!
As part of Seattle's "Night Out", we hosted a party for the 14 houses on our block sharing our alley. We had great turnout and met a few new neighbors and I think a fun time was had by all.

Here's an early-on shot of everyone taste-testing all of the delicious dishes that the neighborhood whipped up.

Feelin' Hot Hot Hot

2010-07-25T20:32:00.000-07:00

It was a really hot weekend for outside projects, although I think the folks on the east coast would welcome our 80 degree weather. I got a sunburn on Saturday and spent Sunday trying to even out the tan lines with no success. The other thing we did on Saturday was assemble the majority of the handrail for the deck. On Sunday morning, all that remained were one side of the stairs and several small pieces of blocking that needed to be cut and nailed into the foot rail. We still need to fill a lot of holes in the wood where the screws went in, caulk all of the joints, repaint the whole shebang and find and paint some post caps but as is, it looks pretty finished.

Alfresco dining? Yes please!

While I was stocking us up on groceries for the week, Justin swept out the whole garage and feeling a little short on projects, swept up the alleyway too. That Justin, he always loves a clean floor.

And in other news, Justin smoked his first salmon! Boy was it tasty. I'm accepting tried and true recipes incorporating smoked salmon--we have a lot of leftovers!

Safety...Second

2010-07-19T21:03:00.001-07:00

I think the saying is actually safety first but we've been without a railing on this deck for a good two months (and have averted all accidents!!). But we aren't going to leave it to chance any more, especially after discovering how delightful a brown derby or two can taste on a hot summer afternoon. We got the easiest parts in place this weekend before the big event of the summer: friends Heidi & Aaron tied the knot.

Next weekend, we'll tackle the remaining railing pieces, except for the one where Justin accidentally cut the bottom railing an inch too short :( For that one, we need to start from scratch and cut and paint and new piece.

Queuin' up

2010-07-15T19:25:00.000-07:00

Mostly we've been painting railing parts for the past two weeks. Photos aren't too exciting. See:

We are queuing up for the weekend when we're going to try to assemble this bad boy of a railing.

In other less photogenic news...Justin wrapped up the plumbing on the north side of the walkway so now we have a spigot and hose on the garage. His plumbing skills have really improved since his first plumbing project when he took a whole day hooking up the ice maker in the new fridge at the last house.

2010-07-05T21:12:00.000-07:00

Happy Holidays blog readers. We had a busy and productive weekend around the house. Mostly we got busy in the painting barn (aka the garage) but we had a few other items we were able to check off the list.

Justin and I put the fascia and trim around the deck this weekend which was a chore! Believe it or not, the deck isn't square and plumb :( Moreover, everywhere we wanted to install a fastener for the trim, Justin seemed to hit a fastener that was installed in the framing. So, it took twice as long as can be imagined. We are going to need some tips on how to make nail holes inconspicuous in the Trex material because we have quite a few.

Decked out!
Meanwhile, while Justin fiddled with installing the trim, I painted our future railing. We don't have enough staging space so I'll be painting the railing in batches. This will be a slow project since it needs 3 coats.

Everything's drying out.

Justin moved all of the scrap lumber that we've had piled up next to the garage and we graded and moved some of our new soil into the bed between the garage and the house. It's now a ~12x12 blank slate in partial shade. We made a stop at the nursery to take advantage of some coupons and pick up a few plants to fill in around the edges. I see a paperbark maple tree in our future, just not today. Mostly we still have a blank slate left.

We picked up a hose reel to take care of a little organization problem in the front of the house. Unfortunately, the connection leaked in the new reel so it's going back to the store.

Before: messy eyesore!

During: Reeling 'er in.

After: stay tuned. The saga continues...

Mending Fences

2010-06-27T19:12:00.000-07:00

We've been capitalizing on the long summer evenings this past week and wrapped up the raised bed project last Wednesday. I decided to make one the crazy vine bed (zucs, cukes and beans) and the other the root bed (beets and radishes) for this season. I picked up another tomato and pepper plant to put in the sunny bed alongside the garage--you can never have too many veggies! (although, it is very likely that I will have too many zucchinis--that's 3 plants you see, all for the price of one.)

Our soon-to-be productive beds. We installed hardware (aka PVC pipe) that will allow us to make these into hoop houses in the winter and spring.

Additionally, I got some of the flowers and shrubs that I picked up over the past few weeks into the ground along the edges. I'm hesitant to get too carried away because I need to buy a few trees and get those placed in the right spots before I fill in with smaller landscaping AND I don't want to spend a fortune watering these little babes all summer to get them established. But, the fun of plant shopping continues to call to me so I'll probably succumb somewhat.

We had an action packed weekend and writing this I am pretty proud of us for getting it all in. On Saturday, we trucked it out to the lumber yard to pick up all of the trim for our new deck railing. Justin and I chopped it all up to size and sanded and primed the pieces to ready them for installation. We are going to get them all painted up with their final coat before we install them and then just touch them up once they're installed.

The painting barn in full production mode:

On Sunday morning (well, really it was about noon by the time we got underway) we bicycled over to Alki Beach for lunch. Returning, we dug right in with our paint brushes, applying another coat and running ourselves out of paint. With plenty of energy remaining (joking), Justin decided to take on mending the fence. We have to replace one of the posts since it rotted and fell over and then mount the end of the fence onto a new post.

Here's Justin in demo mode; his favorite job.

Visualize...

2010-06-21T21:03:00.000-07:00

You can really visualize our yard now. We finished up one raised bed and got the pieces cut for the second so it should be a quick and easy assembly. But maneuvering one bed into place has really given us a picture of what the rest of the yard will look like. All of a sudden we have margins along the edges for flower beds and I'm starting to imagine where a few trees will go for privacy and shade.

I think I'll plant a summer crop of zucchini and cucumbers in these beds since there's no point letting them lie fallow all summer.

Summer Solstice

2010-06-20T15:26:00.000-07:00

It's June 20 and the summer solstice is tomorrow but apparently Mother Nature didn't get the memo. For starters, it's been unseasonably cold (like high 50s) and then there is all the rain. Don't get me wrong, I love the rain -- especially for all the new plants I've got in the ground, but it sure puts a damper on outdoor activities.

This weekend, we had two major outdoor activities planned: a scavenger hunt and a garden project. The scavenger hunt was a blast although our out-of-shape bodies are feeling the next-day burn now. The garden project was a bit of a bust. So much for building raised beds in the backyard...we got drenched prepping the area for our project and bailed out before getting to the real meat & potatoes.

This is us on our scavenger hunt (the answer to the clue in the background on that blue awning) expressing our attitudes for the weather. Seriously, we were having fun!

This is as far as we got. Boo hoo -- no raised beds this weekend.

But, we did remove all of the concrete forms and transfer some of our garden soil into place so that's about all I have to show. Oh, that and a final conclusion to our dilemma with the stair(s) to the garage.

We added another step!

Concrete!

2010-06-18T11:42:00.000-07:00

A beautiful day to pour concrete! Should have a nice new slab by the time I get home from work. (I feel like I should have cropped the garage monstrosity out of this photo--if only)

She-Ra: Princess of POWER

2010-06-13T20:27:00.000-07:00

Yes, that's right folks, I can move mighty boulders with my bare hands (and a little help from my old friend Archimedes). Since my partner in crime was laid up sick on the couch with a nasty cold that yours truly passed along, I had no one to help me so I had to do it myself.

Last Monday, Justin and I maneuvered all of the stones for the walkway into place but did not set them in sand. I was sick on the couch that day but got up to lend my She-Ra muscles to the task. Justin had arranged for the concrete worker to come on Tuesday and start forming and installing the rebar grid and we needed to figure out precisely where the walkway would end to meet up with the concrete.

All formed up and ready for the concrete. Our concrete finisher will be back on Wednesday to finish the job!

On Saturday, I piddled around with some low-impact chores because I still wasn't feeling top notch while Justin volunteered as the safety man and gopher for an on-the-water scavenger hunt. I wouldn't say I was 100% well on Sunday either but way better off than Justin and well enough to build a walkway. I decided that a little sweat might be just what I needed to kick this cold.

Here's the (almost) finished project. We still need one more stone at the end which we don't yet own and we can't place until the concrete is set and the form is removed.

A flat yard and other news

2010-06-06T17:09:00.001-07:00

It took one dump truck and one excavator and one Saturday morning and we finally have a flat yard with no extra dirt. We figure that we got rid of about 30 yards of dirt from this tiny Seattle lot which is amazing. The yard was pretty flat to begin with but it was about a foot higher in most spots than it is now. We'll be bringing in some quality soil to use for a top layer so that our garden can thrive but it will be a lot less than 30 yards.

Here's Dan loading the truck up one shovel at a time. Thanks Dan!

After the dirt was long gone, Justin got to work on framing up our walkway to the alley and tamping the gravel into place. Meanwhile, I busied myself digging up weeds in the yard. I'm a bit concerned of what lies beneath this lovely bare soil. Just two months ago, this was a thriving weed patch and I'm not so naive to believe that scraping off the top layer will do away with the former crop. I'm especially wary of the morning glory that has been poking out of nearly every corner of the yard despite my futile attempts at eradication.

Here's the tamped down base for the future path to the alley. Where the gravel stops, we'll be installing concrete the total width of the lot to provide a small parking spot, driveway into the garage and pad for the garbage cans.On Sunday I wanted to get some plants in the ground. I've been busy picking up plants here and there over the past few weeks and I was anxious to arrange them and plant them. After raining all night, the soil was heavy and muddy so I quickly made a mess of everything traipsing through the dirt. But, I got the east side of the patio completely planted, save for one hebe that I still need to find and buy. I can't wait until these plants grow up a bit and fill in.

Here's the spot on the north side of the stairs to the deck. The featured plant is a variegated red twig dogwood which should get as tall as the deck.

Looking south, I've got a ninebark plant, privet, yarrow, several barberry plants and a few daylilies. I'll be looking for an exciting clematis in a hot color to train up the trellis.

Weeds-be-gone

2010-06-01T20:28:00.000-07:00

After a bunch of desperate calls to tree services, we finally got a load of wood chips for mulch. Heaven sent! Apparently tree mulch is in high demand or tree services are in low demand because we've been asking for months for a load. Today, some random caller offered me a load and I didn't even recognize the company name as one that I had called, but I've been spreading my name and address and phone number around like I'm looking for trouble. Who wants to bet that we end up with more mulch than we could ever dream of using? It's bound to happen.

A view of the front yard:

Justin and I spent about an hour spreading the whole pile around the yard, hoping that the weedlings will choke on the mulch and die under it's woody goodness. I've been keeping them at bay with regular tending but they keep popping up, especially after all the glorious rain we've had.

Looking south...

This weekend

2010-05-24T20:20:00.000-07:00

Swinging single again this weekend due to back-to-back regattas, I picked up where I left off last weekend. I weeded the garden beds, picked up some new plants and got down and dirty in the garden. Unlike the other parts of the yard, I don't have a planting layout for the backyard. I figured I'd try playing it a little fast and loose...picking out whatever looked good at the nursery. I did get a little lost in the daylily section but for the most part, I think I did okay with my selections. I don't have enough plants to fill in the bare beds yet so photos of my landscape design are not yet available. But, I will say that I'm going with a "hot" color scheme. That means I'm ditching the pink and pastels and will be planting reds, yellows, oranges, lime greens and looking for interesting contrasts and textures.

Here I'm putting my best foot forward...ha ha...isn't this a FUN! planter?

Justin and I laid the rest of the walkway to the north side of our yard after work last week. All that remains with the stone work now is the walkway out to the alley.

Here, I've plugged the stones in place with a spot of moss. Someday, it'll take over and I'll just have a moss walkway.

Just for fun: Tink gets comfortable...because really, is there anything more to being a cat?

Last weekend

2010-05-24T19:46:00.001-07:00

I've been busy. So busy. Blogging's taken a back seat over laboring so we'll be catching up with a review of past weekends. Two weekends ago, I was a paintin' and sewing fool. I primed and painted some handrail posts.

No handrails yet... or balusters but we're ready for them now.

I dusted off the sewing machine to make these blue cushions for the benches. They needed custom cushions...no one was selling bench pads with the right dimensions. The pillows were picked up at Target for $13 each....couldn't make them that cheaply.

Meanwhile, during all this painting and sewing, Justin was off winning the National Offshore One-Design (NOOD) regatta as crew on J/24 Hot Pursuit.

An update on the stairs

2010-05-20T20:57:00.000-07:00

Well, the jury is in and we're getting another stair. We think it will be both safer and more attractive; a winning combo. Justin has a grand plan. Stay tuned!

An important question

2010-05-12T20:30:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure that this is creating the aesthetic that we were going for, but we now have an intermediate step between the patio and garage. Serves the purpose just fine but does it look right? There's something about our threshold jutting out from the foundation that just isn't sitting quite right with me. So, how do we fix this? Do we just paint the foundation the same color as the siding (eventually the siding will be yellow like the house) and hope that it blends in? Do we find some bluestone tiles that we can affix to the foundation to create the illusion of another step riser? Or do we back out our step and the last foot or so of patio (easier now than later) and create a second step to give our garage door a landing at the level of the threshold? Blog readers, what do you think?

2010-05-09T19:54:00.000-07:00

We have had an interesting run with the latest project: stairs. I think you need to have a little more practice than we do to have the kind of success with stair building that Bob Vila has. In a 9 minutes video on TOH, Bob can build three stairs. It took us 16 hours to build six stairs so you can see how experience can pay off--that and good video editing.

It started on Thursday when Justin framed and poured a little concrete pad for the stairs framing to rest. We had all of the right tools to finish the concrete with nice edges and even etched our initials into the slab--even our cat Tink got into the action and walked across the fresh (wet) concrete. On Saturday, we went to the lumberyard to pick up 2x12s from which to cut our stair stringers. It was supposed to be an easy arithmetic problem: height of the staircase divided by number of stairs equals height of the stair risers. But somehow, we had the height of the staircase wrong. Justin had cut three of the five stringers before we figured this out. Bummer. That was a $60 mistake and enough frustration for the day. We closed up early and met some friends for a sunny afternoon party.

Sunday morning, Justin was up early to get the coals ready in the smoker for a beef brisket. Ready to try again with fresh lumber, he cut up the remaining stringers and started hanging them on the joists.

Did I mention that this weekend offered the sunniest of sunny days? Here's a shot of Justin lining things up before he realized that they didn't line up.

Things were cooking along splendidly until all five stringers were installed and something was off. For starters, the whole patio and new concrete pad were not square to the house so the stairs landed a little cockeyed (hopefully this will hardly be noticeable after we get everything trimmed out). Second, the five stringers somehow were not the same despite using one as a template for the other four. So, after several attempts to tighten up screw joints, we opted to try a little kludge that won't be noticeable after everything is finished. Whew! Around 2 PM, I took a walk to the store and when I returned, Justin had cut all of the decking and was halfway into installing it. Around 4 PM, we were cleaning up all of the tools and sawdust and smiling because it seemed like we had built a set of stairs that looked just like we had imagined. So, it only took the whole weekend but we are finally able to descend from our new deck to our new patio without a 4 foot leap!

The finished product! So pleased with the color match we accomplished between deck & patio.

The other half...

2010-05-02T19:20:00.000-07:00

Hip Hip Hooray! Well, we're just about where we wanted to be at the end of this weekend. The stones that can be laid are laid. We still have the pathway to the alley to do but that requires some additional excavation before we can get going there. And, we have a little meandering pathway to the side yard to do but we'll need some more gravel to accomplish that. We hauled in about 5 wheelbarrow-loads of compost from our pile in the front yard to fill in between the new patio and the house...something more nutritious for the future plantings than the rocky, clay bedrock-like stuff we have left over from excavating.

Voila! One stone patio made to order.

Now we need to use the upcoming weekdays to recover our worn-out bodies. Too bad it is the start of bike-to-work week and I've signed up to pedal to Bellevue daily. No rest for the weary!

Halfway

2010-05-01T18:40:00.000-07:00

It's harder than it looks, laying a stone patio. The base layer is easy....just shovel the gravel where you need it to go and then drive a compactor around it until it looks solid. The hardest part about the base is lifting the compactor out of your truck when you get back from the rental yard. The sand layer is pretty easy too. Just put the sand where you want it and drag a 2x4 over it until it looks smooth. Yep, the hard part is lifting 2'x3' stones into place and then making them level with all the other giant stones you've laid. This is
the part where you wish you had bigger muscles (or any muscles for that matter). And if lifting 80-100 lbs of stone isn't difficult enough, try re-lifting it from a flat position to shove some extra sand under it when it doesn't match up in thickness to its neighbor.

Screedin' my life away...

So, we're about halfway on this project now. I had high hopes of laying all of the stone today but since the stone thickness varies from 1.5"-2", we've had the tedious job of leveling each piece.

Saturday's progress:

A Deck in a Weekend

2010-04-25T20:01:00.000-07:00

Take two days of dry weather (and add in a little sun) and you can have a 6x12 foot deck. At least we could! Justin poured the footings last Thursday so we could get a jump on the hammerin' and nailin' for the weekend. On Saturday, we got the full substructure in place. On Sunday, Justin spent the morning meticulously cutting the holes for the handrail posts in the decking while I planted a vegetable garden in the front yard (yeah!!). After lunch, we got on with the fun and fast part of installing deck boards. And by 5PM, we were sitting on our deck enjoying a beer.

Here I am pounding in a Simpson hanger.

And the finished product. (Yeah, yeah, we know we're missing a few things like railings and stairs)

Justin took his new smoker (a 30th birthday gift from yours truly) for a trial run and made dinner while we assembled the deck: smoked pork butt.

Oh, my aching body...

2010-04-11T18:16:00.001-07:00

Well, our backyard now looks like an archeological dig site, although the only discoveries were giant blocks of concrete and a pile of broken bricks.

Two out of three of us were up by 8am ready to carve up the backyard with heavy machinery. I was in bed, trying to sleep in a few more minutes and wishing I'd had one fewer glasses of wine on Saturday night. Dan, our equipment operator and friend of Justin's mother, graciously volunteered to run the equipment. And Justin, eager to get some full body exercise stood in as the dirt schlepper, ferrying a 1/2 yard of dirt at a time to a dirt broker a few miles south. Ultimately, I pulled weeds and separated out rocks that we can use for our drainage project.

Here you see the patio space and pathway to the garage excavated along with a drainage trench along the house.

Here's our giant pile of dirt...only 2-3 yards found a new home so far. We're going to use the other 12 yards for a bmx jump :)

Dan's going to try to come back to finish up...we had so much extra dirt that maneuverability was too limited to dig out the pathway to the alley.

Staked out

2010-04-06T20:13:00.000-07:00

Today, we got home from work and staked out our backyard. We're really visualizing a patio and path back here! Sometime before Sunday, we'll be raking the gravel off to the side to repurpose in a drainage trench. Then, this upcoming weekend, we are going to break out the heavy machinery and move some dirt to get the foundation for our new hardscape started. Stay tuned!

Here today, gone tomorrow

2010-04-04T14:13:00.000-07:00

Well, our giant pile of rubble is packed up and ready to be hauled away. We got super, super lucky and found some folks via craigslist to come take the large pieces of concrete. It was a win win because now we don't have to pay for disposal/recycling and they get some free material to build their retaining walls. Justin ordered up a dumpster for the smaller scraps and we filled it up in quick time and still had a mini pile remaining. The pile wasn't large enough to warrant using a dumpster so we decided to take a trip to the dump with it. We also filled up our yard waste bin with so many weeds that we can barely move it. We are hoping that it is not too heavy to collect.

We have a lot of small pebbles and gravel that was under the slab of concrete and we are hoping that when we install our drainage trench and french drain, we will be able to reuse this material for that. If you look closely in the picture above you can see the contour of the filled-in trench where Justin installed water and electricity to the garage last weekend. I want to have an easy option for irrigating my vegetable beds when we put this yard back together and thought that a spigot off the garage was a better option than drawing water from the spigot on the house. And, despite being wired up inside of the garage, the previous owner never actually pulled power from the panel to power the garage. So, Justin's got the conduit in place to allow for us to actually wire the garage to a real power source, not just thin air.

A pile of rubble

2010-03-21T20:03:00.000-07:00

We wasted no time busting up the concrete in the back yard. See, we need a place to put the dumpster for the concrete and we didn't want to put it on the grass because we are going to need to level it using heavy machinery which we also hope to use to bust up and load the rest of the concrete. Can you believe it took Justin and I less than 2 hours to build this pile? Big changes are coming to this backyard soon!

Demolition Again!

2010-03-19T17:33:00.000-07:00

And we're back...After 2 weeks of frolicking in Europe, we decided to dive right into hard labor on our first day back.

Here's our back porch, deconstructed.

And here's a view of the siding removed, and being reinstalled. Check out the cool shadow!

Back in the game

2010-02-21T20:56:00.000-08:00

It's been a dull few weeks for this household seeing as we both caught a cold and mine was bad enough that I can't breathe well all of the time. So, we've been piddling around with little chores here and there but mostly laying on the couch convalescing. This weekend brought 60+ degree weather and we figured that we might feel a little better after an afternoon in the sun. I had just the project for a warm February day! A new pathway.

We have around 800 bricks from the chimney that our circle of friends helped us deconstruct last January. Justin and I built a walk between the curb and the sidewalk in the front today using about 1/4 of the brick pile. This is the first of the hardscape projects that I have planned for the first half of 2010. We'll be tackling the backyard next and installing a patio, several walkways around the patio, and a new back stoop/deck. However, for this sunny February Sunday, we just have a new walkway.

Here's Justin tamping down the gravel for a solid base:

And the finished product:

And here's Justin in true filth. He not only covered with brick dust but also car grease from "fixing" the muffler on the old pickup. By "fix", I mean remove.

2010 Flower & Garden Show

2010-02-07T20:57:00.000-08:00

I thought I would share some shots of the garden show. There were a few things there that caught my eye.

I wonder what the real Dr. Chomsky would think of this? I thought it was funny.
Here's a lovely panorama of one of the gardens. My preliminary garden sketches for the backyard are leading me toward something like this...a big patio with 3'-5' beds along the perimeter.

This was one of the coolest new ideas I saw this year. It's a vertical strawberry bed. It's something I think I might be able to make work in my space.

And this was my all-time favorite new plant (at least new to me): 'Midwinter Fire' Bloodtwig Dogwood. The photo doesn't do the color justice. And doesn't it look fabulous with the black mondo grass?

All in all, the show this year was a little bit less amazing then in previous years. The first year I attended, maybe 2003, there were tons of freebies and awesome coupons from the nurseries around the area. This year, there wasn't much of that. I think I came home with three packets of seeds and a single coupon to a nursery in Lynnwood. The show organizers seem to have let in a lot more shed-builders and window replacement vendors. There are still some awesome booths, Ravenna Gardens had one for sure and some of the more far-flung nurseries were peddling some interesting plants. Prices seemed a little steeper than my last memory and it didn't look like the vendors were selling as much given the huge masses of people at the show. This was the year for the longest ticket line for sure.

But as usual, the show didn't fail to inspire and with a backyard that is a blank slate (well, more like a blank concrete), I needed a few grand ideas to get me thinking.

Garbage, Yardwaste & Recycling

2010-01-25T12:41:00.000-08:00

Maybe it was my inner guilt about filling 7 dumpsters full of construction debris from this renovation or maybe it was just a quest for more civic involvement but I've found my way onto a City of Seattle citizen advisory board on Garbage, Yardwaste & Recycling. This board looks at a bunch of stuff concerning solid waste including rates, frequency of pickup, legislation at the federal/state/local level, conservation, and other policy-related topics. I've been to my first meeting of this group, called the Solid Waste Advisor Committee or SWAC and I'm eager to weigh in from a citizen of Seattle perspective. So, if you're a resident of Seattle and have thoughts about our solid waste service, leave me a comment. Part of my role is to reach out to folks in my community, specifically those folks in SE Seattle.

Seattle, We have a 2nd Bathroom!

2010-01-05T20:07:00.001-08:00

We have a second bathroom complete! Lest you think we've been doing nothing on the home improvement front, I have a photo of a completed second bathroom (dare I say Master Bathroom). We've been using this second bathroom almost since we moved in but the details weren't complete. They are now! Here's the rundown: We sanded down all of the ugly trim, filled the holes and re-sanded; painted the trim white to match the rest of the house; caulked between the windows and trim; repainted the red-orange walls to get a clean edge with the ceiling and address a few of the areas without paint where we thought we might put tile but opted not to.
Except for the missing door (doors on bathrooms are so overrated!), we have another room to check off our list. That leaves one room and one hallway to finish up before we officially have this house put back together and have time for other things like the hobbies we both abandoned when we took on this monster project!

The $100 hole

2009-12-16T21:12:00.000-08:00

Who knew that a simple do-it-yourself electrical project could cost more than $100? That's the price for wanting lamps in the middle of the living room without visible cords. A special brass outlet box, some Romex and two hole-saws later, we've got an electrical receptacle in the middle of our living room, to be cleverly hidden beneath our sofa.

A Yummy Sandwich

2009-12-14T19:05:00.000-08:00

I don't have a picture to share because I ate the evidence. But I would like to share a recipe for the most delicious of sandwiches. I'll call it the "party leftovers sandwich". See, we had a party this weekend a put out a spread of hors d'oeuvres including and antipasto plate with peppers and marinated roasted vegetables and salami. But not all was consumed so we were left with a few spears of zucchini, slices of eggplant, strips of roasted red peppers, pickled cherry peppers and some slow roasted tomatoes. We had some leftover salami and sharp cheese as well as a couple of hoagie rolls from a different sandwich creation earlier in the week. Now, some of this stuff came out of jars from the store but not all. I slow roasted the tomatoes to the tune of Orangette's Pomodori al Forno. And I roasted the eggplant and zucchini, coated in oil and salt & pepper & oregano at 425 degrees for about 20 minutes and then cooled it all down in the fridge for a few hours. And that, my goodness, is the basics for a great sandwich: A chewy hoagie, slathered with a grainy mustard (Justin uses mayo) and piled high with roasted & pickled veggies and topped with a thin slice of salami and a sprinkling of grated cheese (we used Parmesan). Yum!

Anniversaries

2009-12-02T09:18:00.001-08:00

Well, our first anniversary of home ownership came and went yesterday without so much as a nod from us. We forgot. Good think a home can't divorce its owners...

We've come a long way from last December 1.

A Dull Boy...

2009-11-29T18:42:00.000-08:00

Well it was all work and no play this 4-day weekend despite our best intentions at play. We did take a break from the work on Thursday to celebrate the holiday with some good friends but we were up and eager, just like the black Friday shoppers, to install countless feet of trim around the main floor of our house. This trim project took the better parts of Friday, Saturday and Sunday and there is still work to be done. But, I'd say it is about 80% done and I think a few weekday evenings should have us putting a nail in this project (pun intended).

Here's Justin setting the nails on the crown molding above our cabinets.

And a snapshot of a corner that we trimmed out this weekend.

I can hardly contain myself

2009-11-24T18:29:00.000-08:00

Umm, there is almost nothing that gives me that same feeling as seeing all of my "stuff" tucked away neatly in a well thought-out organization scheme. So, it was a good Monday night this week when I got to whip out the label maker and dump all of my baking goods and assorted grains and non-perishables into plastic bins. No more plastic sacks of bulk flour (and for this bread-baking household, that's a big deal.)

2009-11-22T14:25:00.000-08:00

Well, Justin just finished up his 14th straight day of work, thanks to a construction project that requires closing city streets. So, rather than slave away on the house on the weekends, he's been slaving away in the evenings. And you can only get so much done between 5 and 9 pm. Yesterday though, while I was out grocery shopping, he tackled the closet. Now, I had installed the shelf and rod a while back but our stereo components have been sitting on the floor since we moved in and we wanted a little more organization. So Justin built a little cubby for the stereo, ipod and whatever else we decide to store in the closet. It really cleans up the space. For my part, I decided to unpack the 5 boxes of CDs and see about organizing them in a way that doesn't take up as much space. Justin's been working on copying his music to his ipod but I'm not ready to give away all of my shiny Paul Simon discs quite yet. I am however totally ready to get rid of the jewel cases. I've condensed my entire collection down into those two cases in the bottom right of the photo.

Last weekend, we really made a push to get the doors hung and the hardware on the doors. Justin painted the doors and the trim and I caulked and touched up the tan paint once the trim was completed. Finally, we have some privacy for our bathroom! We only have one more door to hang, the coat closet door which needs a modest repair first.

In other news, I ordered a rug for the dining room after much deliberation. I visited a half dozen stores and surfed to the ends of the internet to find a rug that met my decor requirements as well as budget. I ended up purchasing this one off of Overstock.com. It's got a real arts and crafts vibe to it and the color ties well to the living room sofa. And despite its heft, they shipped it to me for $1. Sweet!

Another internet find that I unpacked this week was this interesting pillow I found on etsy.com. I'm trying to create an eclectic feel for my living space and I think this pillow is a little quirky.

And finally, we got the trim around the fireplace installed. On one hand it covers up all of the cracked and damaged tile in the surround. On the other hand, it is a behemoth of black metal. I'm getting used to it though and the whole family (cats especially) is enjoying the warmth.

So there you have it. Our projects are a little smaller and take a little longer but at the end of the week, there is something to show for it.

Doors

2009-11-02T21:08:00.000-08:00

Well, the first batch of doors came out of the oven, oops, I mean garage/paint barn and are almost ready to hang. I'm a little slow with the cleaned up door hardware though so we have no clean hinges on which to hang the doors. I've actually cleaned up most of the hardware but I've been trying to alter the brassiness of the metal to make it look aged. My tricks aren't working. I've probably invested an hour of researching the internet for techniques and another couple of hours trying out the techniques. I'm told that heating the hinges and then applying peanut oil and then heating them again will darken brass but that doesn't work. It just makes the hinges oily and a little tacky. Neither does ammonia fuming. I built an elaborate shelving system to hold my hinges and my dish of ammonia in an old kitty litter bucket and left it out to do it's magic for 24 hours and besides a little blue spotting (probably where the hinges weren't completely dry), the ammonia did nothing. We bought some chemical darkening solution from a hobby shop and while it worked okay, it seemed to take a lot of the chemical to do a very little surface area. Sooo, all this added up to spray paint. We want a black finish and lucky for us, Rustoleum makes one.

In lieu of hanging wooden doors, Justin hung the glass shower door in the bathroom on the main floor. This is his third shower door so he's becoming a pro. Now we can show off the tile that we painstakingly hung, piece by piece.

The new shower door! This photo is really yellow because I took the photo on the wrong camera setting.

I wasn't just painting hardware, I cleaned up a whole load of it too tonight. PS. Our internet research for this task did work: boil the hardware in water + 1T baking soda and scrub paint off with scouring pad.

Some inspiration for the bedroom

2009-10-31T09:18:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting to change up our bedroom decor a bit and I've been surfing the web for some inspiration. I'm starting with a few constraints that seem to be more constraining than initially thought. First, I would prefer to change up the room without repainting it another color and without buying new furniture, namely a new headboard. As you may remember, our current bedroom scheme is gold, brown with a touch of purple.

Here's the current design:

I do know that I'd like to replace our bedside tables. They just aren't doing anything for me anymore and I'd like to bring some color into the room via the nighstands. So, I'm scouting Craigslist for some tables that I can jazz up with paint.

Justin and I disagree on color options for the bedding which is where 85% of the change to the room is likely to occur. He'd prefer the light/medium blue accent against the brown. It's a classic combination and it would look good but since there is so much blue on the main floor of our house, I was hoping to get a different palette.

Clean and simple with a lovely gold or tan accent.

I am leaning in several directions. I really like a pink/rose/red/purple combination.

I couldn't find any photos of my exact vision but these are sort of the idea.

I like the idea of lavendar for the bedspread with white accents like this photo. This would save me from buying new rugs. Right now I have a purple shag rug in the bedroom that would go well with this scheme and the black cat for the foot of the bed.

And I'm loving the idea of orange for the bedroom. These rooms are gorgeous and would work fine with my existing black furniture and brown walls.

Love the green and teal accents. I could do that!

What we've been up to.

2009-10-27T18:54:00.000-07:00

Well, it hasn't been blogging, that's for sure. But the bungalow is coming along nicely. We finished up the fireplace prep and got the gutters installed and enough exterior paint on the house to get us through the winter. Justin found a tool chest at his grandmother's house that he's claimed for his own and started organizing the mounds of hardware and tools we have littering the basement. We've got two interior doors patched and nearly painted and ready to hang...just one more coat of paint likely. Justin's mastering the art of spray painting.

When I moved out to Washington from Indiana, I brought 2/3 of my childhood bedroom set but I left the large decorative metal & glass cabinet behind because it just wasn't practical for my college accommodations. Ten years later, I figured it would be a nice addition to my decor and so when I heard that my freshly retired parents were taking a road trip out west, I asked them to bring it along. They trucked it over 3000 miles and we took it another 7 miles down the road to the powdercoater to have it refinished. And now it is reunited with it's furniture mates. I must find something interesting to display in this cabinet. Any thoughts? There are 2 glass shelves that install in the cabinet yet.

Fire in the Hearth

2009-10-27T18:46:00.000-07:00

Just in time for the cold months, we've got our cozy heat insert installed. Everyone's a big fan, especially the cats who sprawl out in front of the fireplace and toast their bellies. The trim pieces are being built custom and we should get those installed at the end of the week. I'm a little nervous about the gas bill...Justin's taken quite a liking to the fire.

Hunkering Down

2009-10-04T19:48:00.000-07:00

The last of the outdoor projects should be wrapped up this week as we prepare to hunker down for the winter. Not that this means no further progress on the house, just back to inside tasks. The gutter man has been pushing us off for the last week but claims that he will be on site tomorrow. We'll see. We continued to prepare for his arrival by doing some more minor painting on the porch.

Laura has been working away at re-grouting the tile surrounding the fireplace in the living room and completed the grout on the walls yesterday. I wired up the circuit for the upcoming fireplace installation last week, and theoretically by the end of the month we will have a nice cozy hearth to enjoy.

When we bought the house and had the inspection it appeared that the light bulbs in the garage were burned out as they did not come on when we went in there. Only after we bought the place and started the renovation did we discover that yes, the garage was wired but was not actually hooked to a source of power. At the time it was a pain but this summer we lived with it. As the days have gotten shorter I decided to remedy this with a kludge using parts found in the basement. Needless to say the fluorescent tubes in the garage do indeed work, and appear to have never been used.

We have started making our list of wintertime projects and by all accounts should have plenty to do until spring. Unfortunately much of what we need to do involves painting which is my least favorite. Maybe I will work on teaching the cats to paint trim while we are away at work. From what I can tell they have not been doing much while we are gone, however there are not nearly as many spiders inside as I assumed there would be. Perhaps that is what they do all day.

Laura's Fireplace Re-Grouting Progress.

New Triptych of Mt. St. Helens Photos in the Living Room. Before, During and After the 1980 Eruption

Hoists

2009-09-18T21:02:00.000-07:00

We're really into the outdoor projects, Justin and I. The inside is by no means finished but we're running low on summer evenings and autumn is nipping at our heels. So before the rain becomes a daily annoyance, we're getting our house prepped for new gutters. Mostly this means painting the rafter tails to seal up the wood but in the back of the house, it means a small structural repair. You see, when we pulled off the old gutter back there, there was a 4 inch sag in the center of our eve. We should have noticed it because our gutter had a way of collecting all of the rain water in the middle of the gutter and then spilling it over the side. But, we have had a long, dry summer and I suppose we put it out of our minds, until it became inconvenient. Our gutter removal crew (Justin) made the discovery of the sag last weekend when he pulled off all of the silt-filled gutters and our gutter contractor didn't have a plan to address the problem, except running the downspouts to the low spot which seemed pretty half-assed. So we decided to undertake a little structural repair ourselves and Justin dreamed up a pretty clever solution. The short version is that we levered up the low spot in the roof and attached a structural fascia board to the rafter tails to hold everything in place. The pictures fill in some of the detail.

Checkin' off the list

2009-09-13T19:44:00.000-07:00

Our to-do list is getting shorter. It still seems endless but we have been checking off the boxes and a pretty good clip these days. Here's a run-down of what we checked off this weekend:

buy and plant foundation plants in front yard
caulk south facing windows
touch-up paint on south facing windows
touch-up paint in living room
remove hardware and prep interior doors for paint stripping
clean out garage
remove gutters

As you can see, we were busy! We'll be painting rafter tails this week to ready the house for new gutters. We want to get those on before the rainy season starts.

Labor Day Weekend

2009-09-07T19:04:00.000-07:00

We took this holiday literally. We labored. Most of our time since last December when we purchased the bungalow has been on fixin' up the inside. The outside has been a bit of an eyesore, at least to me who is used to lots of flowers. At my last place, I hired a landscape designer to help with a plan and since implementing that plan and tending to the plants for several years, I know what I like and what I don't. With that confidence, I put together a landscape design for the front yard over the last few weeks and this weekend we installed it over the three day weekend.
On Friday night, Justin went off-script and started spreading some of the compost we had delivered. I wasn't ready for 4 days of labor so mostly I watched and made dinner. Bright and early on Saturday, we trucked it over to the rental yard and borrowed a sod cutter. Justin loves the sod cutter. He says it's like driving a Tasmanian devil. Justin drove the machine and I rolled up all of our weedy sod, readying it for the dump. We then spread 12 yards of compost around the freshly barren lawn. That took it out of us for Saturday. Except for a fun visit to the nursery for plants (I need a little bright spot to all of the dirt!). Sunday morning the weather was disgusting-hard driving rain. Although we were planning to rototill all of the compost to amend the soil, the prospect of working in the rain wasn't appealling. Instead, we trucked it out to the burbs to some more nurseries for more plants. It rained for most of the shopping but it sure beat laboring in the rain. By the time we returned home, the rain had let up and we got our rototilling on. By the time we had tilled the yard and raked it mostly even and cleaned up, it was time for bed. Today, we headed out to a couple more nurseries to see about filling out the rest of the plant list (we still have a few more plants to get!). And then we planted. Justin dug the holes and I filled them in. He also built a threshold to go around a basement window to hold back the dirt from the wood around the window.
We are sore and tired but there's a chicken roasting in the oven for dinner and a great view out of out dining room to our new front yard.

Here are some photos:

In process: sod removed and compost spread.

After planting:

Ah, How Cute

2009-08-25T19:57:00.001-07:00

Here's Tink tongue-bathing Cricket and spooning. She's such a sweetie.

Puttin' Up

2009-08-25T19:31:00.000-07:00

Yep, that's right. I'm a canner. As much as I reject gender roles, I can't help but enjoy the traditional homemaker tasks. I like to dust and cook and I'll take folding laundry any day over heavy lifting. So, this weekend when it came to canning 75 pounds of tomatoes, I said "Sign me up!". My friend Jen came over to share the bounty (actually she brought the bounty) and we made sauce and pickled cucumbers for a full shift. My dogs were barking when we wrapped up around 5 with quite a haul. Here's a photo taken before the last set of processed cans came out of the canners:This was our first opportunity to use all five burners on our range simultaneously. When we picked out the stove, we thought that fifth burner might come in handy for just this sort of thing.

Exterior!

2009-08-19T21:13:00.000-07:00

We must be crazy. Take a perfectly put together exterior and two do-it-yourselfers and all of a sudden the window trim needs to be replaced (and subsequently painted). It was just going to be a paint job...a touch up really. But Justin, the unfailing perfectionist didn't like the way the wood on the trim was coming off in chunks when he scraped the paint. Hence, the larger job.

We shall see how much time and money this little project will set us back. The silver lining: the north side doesn't need to be redone!

Here's inspector Justin on the ladder preparing to remove trim boards.

C.O.P.S. live

2009-08-01T17:56:00.001-07:00

Hmm, this was the scene from our front porch today. Someone did something naughty...

There were two women being apprehended. Our guess is that the car they were driving was stolen but who knows. There were some big guns!

Shuffle off to Buffalo

2009-08-01T17:46:00.001-07:00

While I was in Buffalo for work for the week, Justin supervised the big machinery tearing up our yard for a new side sewer. During this week of 100+ temperatures, we had plumbers laboring out in the sun digging a new trench. Fun times!

This weekend, we committed to installing the tile backsplash in the kitchen. We had all of the tile up on Saturday. Here's a preview prior to the grouting phase:

Steamy Days of Summer

2009-07-26T19:12:00.000-07:00

Seattle thermostats crept up near 90 degrees this weekend so we decided to go to the lake. It wasn't temperate there either but at least there was cool water to jump into when the heat was too much to bear. We returned to a home that wasn't too hot inside thanks to our passive cooling techniques (blinds).

Justin managed to muster up enough energy to do a couple of small projects around the house: installing a stainless steel backspash behind the range and installing a mini-blind in a closet. Let me wow you with photos of both finished products.

Our sleek new backsplash: step 1 of our kitchen backsplash project.

Mini-blind in the closet, bumped out a little by the closet shelf.

Would you like to come stay with us?

2009-07-12T20:05:00.000-07:00

We have an extra room to stay in now and it is awfully cute! Well, we have had the room since we moved in but just this weekend we finished the painting the the picture hanging and clearing the out the clutter from the move.

We're training our kitten to do home improvement projects so we can have an extra set of hands. So far, we've taught her to climb ladders which is important because she's pretty short. All the climbing tuckered her out so we caught her cat napping on the ladder of all places!

Justin did most of the painting this time around (although Cricket got her whiskers into it).

Here's the makeover of the awkward walk-in closet in the guest room:

And the final product. Doesn't it look cozy?We're all ready now for a house guest. Would you like to come stay with us?

It's a girl!

2009-07-09T19:47:00.000-07:00

We have a new addition and her name is Cricket.

DOB: 4/28/09; 2.25 lbs on 7/9/09

She loves to play!

Well, it's a start.

2009-06-21T21:21:00.000-07:00

The plan this weekend was to go on a hike up Mt. Pilchuck, an all day affair, but our hike leader canceled the hike due to iffy weather. So, I had an extra day burning a hole in my pocket. I decided to maximize it. I was up at 8, painting the kitchen on Saturday morning. I wrapped up around 9:30 and changed into my spandex bike gear. My friends came over with their bikes at 10 and we cycled around Mercer Island and back. I had a quick lunch and pulled out the blue paint to do all the touch-up. Finished that, decided the iffy weather was going to turn out to just be sunny and cool so I got out my gardening tools and dug in (literally). I weeded one of the planting areas in the front of the house and trimmed up the lone shrub, a lanky euphorbia. The OCD started to kick in and I decided to go for some of the more obnoxious weeds in the backyard too (it's full of them). So, it's a start. Summer isn't the best time of year to plant a new garden so I will just be defending my fresh bed against weeds until fall when I can get to planting. My yard waste bin is full until Thursday when I can get started on the blackberry bramble behind the garage.

Painted and ready for service. Next up: a tile backsplash and crown moulding for the kitchen

My freshly weeded flower bed. This is where my witch hazel is going.

I can see clearly now...

2009-06-09T19:05:00.000-07:00

Sad to say but this year I am really only container gardening. We need a plan before it makes sense to tear up the front yard and install something more ecologically friendly and attractive than a lawn and a plan we do not have-yet. It seems that we've just had a few too many other things to do besides create a landscape plan. I did start a plant list though and I'm trying to stick to 80% drought tolerant plants, especially in the full sun areas. I think I'll have a lot of lavender and spirea which I love. I am going to try a rock rose or two as well as some ornamental grasses and yarrow. I know from my last yard what I'm not going to install (sumac trees! Stipa gigantica!). I'm also going to splurge my water budget for a hydrangea or two and definitely a beautiful witch hazel tree. We'll be putting in a cherry tree and apple tree somewhere in the yard but I haven't a clue what variety yet. Something prolific...it is all about the fruit.

My container garden:

We have new windows in the basement! Seriously, the old ones were bad. Panes were broken, there were no latches on some and you could see through the frames to the outside. Someday we'll get around to framing out these walls, insulating and creating a more livable space down there but in the meantime, we'll just have one that is more air-tight.