2015 Garden

This past weekend David's parents came to visit us and they were excited to get to work, so not to disappoint we got right to work. We did some landscaping but that'll be in a different post. For today, we'll start with the more exciting progress... the garden! The majority of it was collecting wood chips from a neighbor, spreading, tilling the garden again, smoothing it over, laying out the final design, transplanting plants, marking out the rows, and lots of watering. I love how it turned out and am excited to see how things grow.

Tomato rows marked out

Getting big and ready to be moved

Grow little one!

Leftover peppers I moved to individual pots

Garlic we planted last fall

Potatoes are doing great! 

I love how clean it looks now :o) I'm hoping the bed on the other side of the fence will help from grass growing into the garden like last year. Zinnias are planted in the bed

Sunflowers                   Chives                   Peppers                Green Beans                     Basil   

Before and After

The wood chips path really help to not step on our tiny plants

Avoidance of Plumbing

So lots has happened in the past couple of weeks but for today I'll catch you up on the bathroom renovation. Essentially in photos it doesn't look like much has happened, and that's kind of true. First, both David and I were out of town the weekend before last, we've had family in town this past weekend, and David is pretty pooped after working all day so not much progress gets done during the week. I do what I can during the days but there's a limit to my knowledge and skill. Also, neither of us are very fond of plumbing so we procrastinated really starting the work for as long as we could. But if this bathroom is to get done we had to suck it up and just start cutting!

For not we have completed probably 97% of the waste lines. The last 3% is waiting until we move some of the copper lines to avoid burning the PVC pipes while soldering. A majority of our time has also been staring at the existing lines and trying to be creative and smart about how we rework/clean up everything. Renovation work is a lot of steps backwards before you can really catch momentum forward. It's coming though, soon!!

Since we need to completely turn off the water lines to redo the copper pipes we are really trying to be thorough about our planning so once we start we can get it done quickly. Our goal is to have all the plumbing completed by the weekend. We have a good plan (or at least from this perspective it looks good) so completing the plumbing by the weekend seems very realistic, unlike our 3 week schedule, haha!

Flooring pulled up / Shower base in place to confirm size and location of hole

Exposed, no privacy anymore in this house :o)

A friend of ours was in town and crashing at our place so we put him to work! Hopefully we're still friends after putting him on the worst job of  reworking the connections to the main stack and connecting into the existing vent

Not the most convenient working conditions

Corey's handy work, looks like a plumbing purple murder scene

It Started With a Toilet Leak...Probably a Year Ago

So this post is the quintessential reason for the title of this blog. Last week we realized a leak from our main floor bathroom ceiling, which after removing the ceiling we deduced it was from the toilet in the master bathroom upstairs, which then led to this...

This wasn't exactly a huge surprise considering David and I had talked about expanding our bathroom some day since the total usable space (where you can stand up straight without hitting the ceiling) was about 40 sq/ft and the shower was 30"x30". Hey, we were not complaining, I thought it was nice with the plank wood walls, small enough to clean easily, enough space for the two of us. But with both of our brains considering ways to improve our home and its value, we figured one day we could update it to make it bigger. We figured we had the space to expand into the loft area and create the whole lay out of entering the bedroom to make more sense.

Well, a small leak from the toilet over probably the past year, which we would need to remove the damaged flooring anyway, gave us the excuse to pull the trigger and completely demo. We've made quite a bit of progress so far, with the hope of completion in 3 weeks. That may be unrealistic considering we're having to order things that might set us back, but we needed a deadline to shoot for to keep us moving and making progress even on days we feel like being lazy and not working on it.

Here is the progress so far from the past 5 days:

The culprit!

Flooring, toilet, vanity, shower doors and shower walls removed

Paneling and some dry wall torn out

The new entrance to the bedroom makes so much more sense now!

There will be a wall here but for now you can see the entrance to the bathroom            All closed off          

What's not seen:
-hours of removing nails from boards
-learning that the shop vac is awesome but doesn't do well with nails, they get stuck in the hose
-having an original plan for the shower and it changing
-lots of staring at wires and evaluating how they should/can be reused or if they need replaced with something longer
-insane amount of time researching vanities, shower bases, shower walls, shower doors, tiles and flooring
-measuring, measuring, and measuring some more
-sweating our tushes off in the attic prying up boards and playing in the insulation with our mice friends

Main lesson learned:
-Never caulk around the base of a toilet because you can't see a leak right when it happens

Let There Be Light!

Yes a little dramatic but it sure has made a difference. We got a new door for our back entrance and we have so much more natural light in the back of our house since we got full glass. Considering that half of our home is under grade there aren't many options for natural light other than lots of skylights (both David and I love natural light). Just getting a door with full glass has made a world of difference. Every time I walk past the kitchen I honestly think either the door is open or the light has been left on. So nice!

OLD                                                                                                            NEW

OLD                                                                                                             NEW  

Apple Trees

David and I have always wanted apple trees but this year we finally ordered some! We bought six semi-dwarf trees from Schlabach's Nursery where one of David's buddies bought some fruit trees and has had success with them. They ship them basically as sticks with the roots wrapped up in plastic wrap. We got one Gala, McIntosh, Cortland, Golden Delicious and two Honeycrisps. We put them in an opening on the east side of our lot where we had the most space that wasn't on a slop. I don't think they'll produce anything for at least a couple of years so here's to being patient!

Let's get planting!

   David assessing our plan marked out with pots  /  Lots of hole digging, this one was a doozy with its root

Twigs in the ground

Now all we can do is wait

Great way to end a beautiful weekend

Repurposing Hidden Treasures

Who needs a gym membership when you have rocks to move around your property! The past three years that David and I have lived in our home we've realized there are quite a few treasures that we've been able to repurpose.

Recently we've used some large slates, rocks and wood chips to fill in areas of grass that were too small for our riding lawn mower to fit. Trying to avoid always cutting those areas with the push mower or the weed whacker, I figured let's make them permanent mulched areas. Best part is it should require basically no maintenance and end up looking better at the same time!

The next thing we'll add to this picture is a fence gate!! One project at a time :o)

We found these large slates in the garden last year, weird, but we'll find a use for them!

128

Since we've moved in we've had an address post right where our driveway splits off from the lane. It was meeting the need of marking our driveway with our address, but I thought it could do with a little update. I kept the same post and just lobbed the top piece off to make it flat. We had scrap wood I used for the top pieces and hanging board and left over gray and white paint from past projects. The numbers were $4 each at Home Depot and I bought a foot of chain for $.57.

BEFORE                                                                  AFTER

I didn't get a before shot of the larger space but there were weeds, broken cement slabs and other random stuff that made it look junky. I started pulling all it out and then figured I could use these larger rocks we found in the yard (more on that in a later post) and left over fire rocks to fill in the area. It's a tough spot for our riding mower to get to and I don't feel like bringing the weed whacker that far down the driveway, so filling it in with rocks should work right?! I'll probably add more of the small rocks and maybe plant some perennial flowers, but for now the major face lift is complete.