Making our house our home.

Monday, May 15, 2006

Destruction makes me happy.

If it would ever stop raining, we might be able to make some real progress. As it is, we've been working in fits and starts to get ready for the painters, who are coming in mid-June. So we've been told, at least.

Last weekend, we ripped down the aluminum awning over the front door. This was extremely satisfying, and the sight of our shiny new reciprocating saw drew in several male neighbors from across the street.



Despite the fugliness of the awning, somebody rifled through the stuff in our carport and took it by Monday morning. The least they could have done would have been to take the vinyl siding too.



I believe I've mentioned before that between the two of us, Craig and I have four college degrees. None of them are in anything remotely engineering-related. We are much better at destruction than construction. We'd planned to rip down the awning and put up our new special-ordered railing on Saturday. We managed to get a quarter of the railing up. Perhaps next weekend we'll deal with the fact that we're mounting the railing to a concrete step that just isn't level. Perhaps.

It looks really nice, though!



That same Sunday, we attacked the ugly brown vinyl siding someone had put up on the peak of the house and painted brown. We'd been planning to take it down and replace it with something like this, but we found a Great Gift from the House Gods under the vinyl - the original wood siding, painted the same color as the vinyl. Mystifying.



It doesn't look the greatest at the moment, but with some scraping, sanding, and painting, it should clean up just fine. We later found that the James Hardie shingle siding we wanted costs $450 for a 4'x8' panel, so we're in love with this wood right now.



Phoebe says: Just Say No! to cheap and ugly vinyl siding.



After Sunday's work:



Mother's Day weekend was cold, rainy, and generally nasty. Ellen spent Saturday shopping for plants at the Friends School Plant Sale and Linder's. On Sunday, it was nice for just long enough for us to build a little frame for vegetables. Craig got to use the reciprocating saw again!



I know I'm not supposed to plant the seedlings I bought this weekend for a week or two yet, but I'm itching to do it. With my gardening skills, though, those little tomatoes need every advantage they can get, so I'll hold off as long as I can. I also bought over 200 white impatien plants - even I can't screw that up too badly.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

We've been in a home-improvement limbo the past month or so - it's been too wet or too dry to do yard work, our materials weren't delivered in time to take advantage of the good weather, or we've been doing things that photograph pretty poorly. No one really wants to see pictures of me scrubbing the kitchen floor. There have been a few things going on, though. Here's a rundown.

First and foremost, we've been enjoying the fact that everything outside is finally greening up. I'm happy to announce that all of the bulbs we planted last fall are present and accounted for.



We dug up the bare patches in our yard, worked in some compost, and planted grass seed. It's starting to come up, but time will tell how it's going to last.





Craig put up our new light fixture for over the kitchen sink. We bought it from Lightworks Lighting in Minneapolis, who I'd heartily recommend to anyone with an older house style. We were able to pick out our finish, our shade, and customize the fixture with a pull cord switch. Prices were very reasonable, and not needing to pay shipping costs was a bonus. I don't have a good picture of what was there before, but you can get a bit of an estimation here.



The time of the Great Debrowning is getting closer (painters are scheduled for mid-June), and we've decided on "Jersey Cream" for the body color - it's the creamy-yellowy color on the right here. We plan to do white and dark sage green trim, but I need to go visit with the design consultant at Sherwin Williams before making a final decision.



I dug up the weeds and overgrown raspberry bushes in this little plot by our carport. This is the only consistently sunny spot on our property, so I'm hoping to have a little vegetable garden here. After the steady rains we got all weekend, this spot is covered in weeds again, so it needs some attention.



The weekend of April 22, we drove to Lyons, Nebraska to help Craig's grandparents move out of their house and into a retirement apartment in Omaha. Phoebe was a good helper.