Notes From the Garden

First real garden pickins of the year. Basil and the first cucumber. 

There are a handful of tomatoes that will be ripening this week: a few cherries, Santiam and an Early Girl. I'm pretty sure the Santiam is going to beat out the EG. Peppers are coming along and dahlias will be in full bloom soon. 

Just as the dark was falling, I put nine little black-eyed susan starts in the ground in the bed in front of the pool. I hacked at the now-unruly honeysuckle vines this afternoon. They're going to need more work and a bigger trellis to take over, but things are under control for the moment. 

We got a ton done yesterday. Mowing the lawn is an hour+ investment, and I'm not sure me zigzagging around only mowing down weeds really saved me much time. The grass is dead now. I refuse to water until we have a sprinkler system and nice lawn. Todd dismantled my black widow wood pile and relocated it to the back of the garden along the neighbors' fence. The wood's been seasoning for three years and I am SUPER EXCITED to dig into my stash of extra-dry oak, cedar and magnolia. 

I spent two hours ripping bermudagrass out of the edge of the garden. I probably shouldn't have bothered, but I just hate it so much. Most of it is gone now and I'll poison whatever's left. No mercy. That stuff is tenacious.

Last night we sipped pear cider from Growler King with Tim while he worked on laying out the kitchen, mudroom and half bath. I'm not sure I've looked forward so much to any other project in this house being done. Oh, it will be a glorious day. And on that note, the activities of the last two days have caught up to me and it's time for bed.

Upstairs Update

Along with the bathroom, the rest of the upstairs is getting there. Demolition is scheduled for Todd's office:

Crappy fiberboard walls, old windows and old insulation, out. New drywall, new windows and extra-fluffy insulation, in. We also hope we're done with the fly infestation. Flypaper and this battery-operated flyswatter have helped with that problem. Theory is that a rat died in the attic somewhere and a fly laid eggs in it. It was like the plague in Egypt (Moses, Pharaoh, Exodus...stick with me here). So. Many. Flies.

Anyway, they're mostly dead now, which is its own problem. But it's preferable to having them alive. I really hope there's no more eggs that will be hatching.

Moving on... here's the guest room, which is overflow for everything that currently doesn't have a home and the contents of Todd's office, which is going to be demoed soon. Floors look good though, huh?

 Just focus on the floors.

Ok, they don't look that great in this shot, which is the top of the stairs, but they do need to be cleaned. The picture's really orangey, which isn't how they look. The upstairs is still mostly a construction area, so we're not being too hyper about them right now.

This one's a bit better. Thinking the railing is going to get a coat of glossy black someday. 

 Down the stairs... this actually looks really crappy. The floor does not look crappy. It's not perfect, but it's such a vast improvement over what it was that it seems ungrateful to be anything other than thrilled. We had Mr. Sandless do them, which uses some kind of polymer finish instead of polyurethane, so it's all green and non-toxic.

 Lastly, so much promise in the middle of the chaos. That chimney makes my heart sing. This is the fun part, where it's all starting to come together, and the vision we had in the beginning is starting to bleed into reality.

Upstairs Bathroom Almost Done!

"Almost" is somewhat relative around here, and that probably goes for most renovations. But when all you're missing is a door (pfft, optional), some baseboard, a light fixture and something to cover the attic access, then my friend, I believe you're at "almost."

Anyway, here's what the upstairs bathroom, a project a year and a half in the making, looks like now.

 The gorgeous tub with a lovely view.

Two-story cubbies for necessary items.

 That'd be the attic access that I'd like to build a shelf insert for, but again, priorities. Right now, just a door would be fine.

 I suppose we'll have to figure out how to provide some privacy, since that window is huge.

And here's the vanity and sink, finally installed!!!! (There aren't enough exclamation points in the world to make this glorious development.) I'm so happy with how it came out. The vanity is from Faucets Direct and it's pretty solid. The glides seem a bit cheap, but they won't be getting tons of use.

It was literally the only cheapish vanity I could find that looked even remotely close to the freestanding furniture look I wanted. The alternative (in an alternate universe) was a $1600 Kohler model, which was lovely, but painfully priced. Hours of digging turned up this gem, and I'm very happy with it.

The sink is also from Faucets Direct. It makes a bit of gurgling noise when it drains, but it looks gorgeous. So glad we went with a vessel for upstairs; it's a very understated statement piece. (Yep, I know what I just wrote.)

To make the faucet handles high enough, Trevor built a box out of the same slate the vanity's topped with. It sits on top of that. We could have positioned them on the outside of the sink bowl, but I think that looks kind of weird, or would have for this setup.

One more :)

These are the vanity pullouts. I'm not sure how I feel about them from a storage standpoint, but again...guest bathroom...don't have to use it...whatever.

This is the wall facing the vanity. The roof slopes down, but at least you don't almost hit your head (anymore) when you get up from the toilet.

Yep, plenty of headroom there. You'll note we're still missing the actual door to the room (details) and a transition piece, which I need to make out of salvaged wood from elsewhere in the house.

I love how clean and modern it came out. We've considered moving upstairs when it's finished because we like it so much, but then I think about the actual moving part, and how we would probably not hire movers to do any of it for us, and .... I reconsider. 

Incidentally, just to remind you what this bathroom used to look like, I'll leave you with this. Keep in mind that this house somehow photographs a million times better than how it actually looks, which in this case, was dreadful. You can read more about the old upstairs bathroom if you dare. 

Does this look cramped to you? That's because my back was against the wall and it was the widest shot I could get...this bathroom was meant for hobbits and designed by idiots.

Not that I'm bitter. If it wasn't such a demented layout in the first place, I never would have ended up with that dream you saw earlier!

What's New, Part II

Since there was plenty of light to still take some decent pictures, this is a much better update. Starting downstairs, with the dining room... I'm thrilled that the dining room table is finally cleared off and everything is put away. Some of it ended up "put away" in the guest room (more on that later) but at least I'm not walking past it 10 times a day.

Side note: love having trash dresser (the white one, behind the dining room table) downstairs so I can see it. I thought we wouldn't have space and it would have to live in the guest room, but it doesn't!

 The dining room is far from perfect, though. There's still this situation. Three things wrong with this picture: 1) burnt out lightbulb, 2) paint job, 3) THAT THIS ABOMINATION OF A LIGHT FIXTURE IS STILL IN MY HOUSE.

 I also put the books back in place a few weeks ago.

 I read somewhere that there's nothing like moving a book collection to make you rethink having it in the first place. So true. But they do look good.

 This is in the living room. It's one of the first pieces of art I've hung, which is kind of a big deal because I had hardly any art, period, when we last lived here, and very little actually hung. Paint needs to be touched up below the picture. It's a stolen sketch from One Kings Lane; I saved the image, turned it into a vector graphic and blew it up to the perfect size for the $3 clearance frame it's in. Stolen art is so satisfying.

Lastly, for this post, these are some of the colors I'm considering...

For this closet off my office, in which I've stuffed my decrepit stairclimber. (Bad light, bad pic, whatever.) Obviously this is where I work out, and I think it'd be fun to paint it a super-energetic color. I love purple on walls, but fuchsia or tangerine would complement the navy in the office proper. We shall see. I have plenty of other priorities at the moment.

Reincarnation of the picnic table

New cedar and a coat of deck stain. The patio is looking spiffier by the day!

What's New, Round I

So this is a motley assortment of very ugly photos, but I need to start somewhere because we've been doing SO much since we moved back about seven weeks ago. And it's dark outside now, so I can't take anything out there right now.

Sunday afternoon, I decided to tackle this mess (clarification: that's the CLOSET, not the booze):

 It's a closet in our dining room that somehow became an ideal dumping ground for paint supplies when we moved in four and a half years ago. From the ground up, that's an old rug in a trash bag, second shelf is mostly old paint and also an old towel, more paint, painting stuff (rollers, including three used (??) ones, miscellaneous crap, then the top shelf had a roasting pan, a set of dishes (boxed from when we moved from Pasadena five years ago), our wallpaper steamer and...a lot of dust.

I found three open containers of spackle: small, medium and large size. Two open and rock-hard tubes of silicon caulk. SIX paint rollers. Why?

Cleaning this closet also revealed uncapped wires in a box in the ceiling. I don't know if they're live or not, but have no reason to believe they aren't. So that's cool.

Anyway, I threw away all the stuff and got it into much better shape. Unfortunately, the following image doesn't really showcase all my work that well. You'll have to trust me; 1.5 garbage bags and half a roll of paper towels later, it's much better.

After years of driving me nuts, I finally replaced the retro 60s-era hardware on the built-ins in our hallway. Martha, ya done good (they're from her line at Home Depot). These were about $4 each, so it's not turning out to be a particularly cheap project at six in the hallway and another six in our bedroom for the built-in dresser, but it makes me happy every day to walk by non-ugly, non-retro hardware.

In the way of other updates, we had a garage sale, probably a month ago, and ditched a bunch of furniture and excess junk. And we went to the dump. Oh, the glorious dump, where you can throw away an entire full-size pickup truck load of trash for $21. I love the dump. So there's been a lot of paring down, and it has felt fantastic.

We've also done some painting, some replacing of hideous light fixtures and old outlets and some gardening. I redid my headboard (tufted, it's fab), hung curtains and plotted the kitchen remodel. The downstairs bedroom floor was refinished. The upstairs floor was refinished, too, and the bathroom is complete except for baseboard and a door covering the attic access. Todd's office upstairs is in the crosshairs for demolition and new drywall and insulation. Half the beds are mulched and the driveways got sealcoated by likely a fly-by-night operation, but that's a story for another post.

Clearly, there are a lot of overdue blog posts. But we're not going anywhere for a while, and I'm going to write them all. We're home. We finally have some traction here and stuff's getting done. It feels great.

For this deliciously summery moment...

I'd like to thank Todd for tirelessly slaving over the pool for WEEKS to make it swimmable and my parents for the non-sweating Tervis tumblers. They had the vision even at Christmas. When it was cold. Which it is definitely not right now.

And also myself for thinking of putting frozen strawberries in lemonade. That was a stroke of brilliance.

Honorable mention to the weather, which has seen fit to spike to over 100 degrees. It's not even July yet!

Good timing

Been wanting these for years. Got two of the last three to be imported for the foreseeable future, plus a small, slightly cracked one for $10!

They're about two feel wide and I think they'll live on either side of the garage door, planted with shrubs and annuals. Yay!!

Spotted in the garden...

First tomato of the year! Winner: santiam.

Storage space dream come true

Might not be the most creative or glamorous dream, but nonetheless, I give you... enclosed attic storage space!!

One more...

Love.