Time Flies When You're In A Garden

Let me tell you about my Bad Ass Garden!

Be prepared this summer to enjoy tomatoes, corn, zucchini, cucumbers, pickling cucumbers (yes I make homemade, knock your socks off, jalapeno pickles), spaghetti squash, rhubarb (it is sad to note that rhubarb doesn't produce much in the first year, but wait until next year for some rhubarb pie!), blueberries, raspberries (thanks to our neighbor Diane who loves to give me starts), giant pumpkins, oregano, chives, onions, basil and a large pot of rosemary. I also decided to grow some peppermint along with three types of lavender.

It's all been planted in raised beds that were tilled up with steer manure and peat moss. I checked the soil pH, the drainage is fantastic and I gave each start a little jump with some fish fertilizer. Let me just tell you that fish fertilizer made my hydrangeas rally after little care for the last 2 years.

I used a Jiffy greenhouse to plant marigold and snapdragon seeds. The starts look great and I've planted a few of the marigolds in the vegetable bed as I read that they are a pest deterrent.

Another fun and ultra simple thing to plant are sweet peas. I planted them just outside the downstairs patio door so that when you open the door in the summer, they will smell just great. I got a wild multi colored set of seeds which are doing really well. In the last photo below you can see how I made a trellis from stakes, nails and twine to hold them up as they start to get longer and want to travel.

I still have 3 rhododendrons that died on the side of the house to dig up. I purchased a pink hydrangea and a purple rhody to take their places.

I also want to find a purple lilac tree and a pink dogwood. Both are blooming right now and they look awesome!

One last thing that I did was transplant a begonia from a plastic pot from the store to a lovely green ceramic pot which sits right outside our door.

So now the rain has come and the forecast states it will rain for the rest of this week. I'm super stoked that I got the garden planted! I will post more when things start to really take off!!!

Hope you enjoyed this post! If you have some gardening techniques to share or starts you want to get rid of let me know!

I'm planning to get some horseradish and green beans in soon along with some multicolored poppies and nasturtiums.

Almost There

We reached a major milestone this weekend: we ordered our new wood floors!

FINALLY.

We decided on a style called "Cappuccino Maple" by Simple Floors. We really liked their selection and the quality of their products couldn't be beat in the price range we were looking in.

From the get-go we wanted a dark wood. We also wanted the hand-scraped look, not a super-smooth finish, and wide planks. Oh, and it had to be real wood, not laminate. The flooring we chose is what's called an engineered hardwood. What that means is the flooring is real wood, but the planks are not a solid 1/2" thick piece of Maple, Oak, or whathaveyou like with traditional wood flooring. Instead, with engineered wood flooring, each plank has a 3/8" thick plywood base and on top of that is a 1/8" thick layer of the flooring quality wood (in our case, Maple). 1/8" of wood doesn't seem like much, but wood flooring really doesn't wear out or anything, and unlike laminate flooring, it can be refinished.

The bad news about ordering the new flooring is that they just planted the trees the floors will be made from about a week ago, so it will be another 10 years or so before we can get our flooring delivered. Okay, it's not quite that bad, but we do have to wait 4-5 weeks before it can be delivered. Sad face for us.

So in the meantime, here's a few example pictures of the flooring we chose:

Iron Chef: Renton

Kitchen remodels are expensive. REALLY expensive. So, we won't be doing that for at least a couple years. However, that doesn't mean we can't give the kitchen a makeover!

After starting on the front yard a couple weeks ago, "winter" finally hit us and it's been raining buckets for about two weeks now. Since working in the yard in the wind and rain is pretty miserable, I decided to turn my attention to the kitchen for a couple weekends. If you recall, our kitchen was pretty darn ugly. Usable and in good condition, but outdated and ugly nonetheless. At least the dishwasher, refigerator, oven/stove and microwave are new though, so we didn't have to worry about those.

Here we have the kitchen in its "before" glory:
To get the party started, I removed all the doors and drawers from the cabinets and cleaned everything really well with Simple Green cleaner. I then gave them a light sanding and re-cleaned them with the Simple Green. Once they were dried out I gave everything a coat of primer.

Looking better already:

Once the primer was cured it was time to add some color. We decided on a color called "Vessel Gray" which is steel gray color. It's a nice neutral color that adds a bit of modern look to the kitchen.

Finding a place to lay out all the doors and drawers to dry was a bit of challenge.
Once I was done with the cabinets, I turned my attention to the counter top. It's just a plain-jane laminate counter top, but it had yellowed/discolored a bit over the years and had a lame pattern printed on it. It was in good condition otherwise, though. I found a new paint made by Rustoleum that is designed specifically for painting old laminate counter tops. It's a Xylene-based paint and is supposed to cure to an epoxy-like finish and also wear as well as a regular laminate counter top. With that said, I was pretty excited to try it out.

For anyone reading who has seen this stuff and has been wanting to try this with their old counter tops: DON'T. This stuff sucks. First of all, the stuff smells REALLY bad. The whole house smelled like a chemical plant for three days after I applied it. Just being in the house for more than 10 minutes gave me a headache. Also, the stuff is really difficult to work with. It dried quick and gets tacky really fast and it drips easily too when you're painting verticle parts of the counter. It's supposed to "self-level" to even out any imperfections in the paint... it doesn't. Once cured it's supposed to resist staining and chipping... it doesn't. Hell, even putting something heavy on the counter for an hour or so results in a divot forming in it.

Long story short, the counter looks better than it did before, but I'm far from impressed with the stuff. It looks good from afar, but far from good I guess you could say. Sarah says she likes it though, so maybe I'm just being too much of a perfectionist.

Me high as a kite from the Xylene fumes while painting this crap on.
Once the counter top fiasco was completed, I finished off the kitchen by putting all the cabinet doors back on with new hardware, adding a new sink and a new faucet. I also ran a water line to the refrigerator so the ice machine works and I also added a garbage disposal while I was installing the new sink.

Before I show the "after" pictures, one last look at the "before":
And now the moment we've all been waiting for...


The "after":Looks like a whole new kitchen, huh? Once I can tear out the ugly linoleum that's in there now and install the new hardwood floors (hopefully next month), it will really bring it all together.

Oh yeah, I also added some under-cabinet lighting to brighten things up a bit and give a nice ambiance to the kitchen when it's not in use.
Not bad for $400, huh?

Overall, I'm really happy with the transformation. It will definitely do for the next year or two until we can do a proper remodel on it.

Man, I love Craigslist

After this weekend, we were left with this huge pile of rocks and about 300 pounds of scrap metal from taking the fence down. I also put the old water heater, french doors and a mini fridge out with all this stuff.
By the time I got home from work yesterday, this was all that was left:

The rest of it should be gone by the time I get home tonight. Go Craigslist.

UPDATE: Everything was gone when I got home from work except for one of the large stones. Anyone want a free rock?

http://seattle.craigslist.org/est/zip/1649769424.html

And another update! Here's what our pile looks like now:

DIRTy work

Sarah and I were locked out of the house this weekend so Ron could work on painting the upstairs. Luckily for us it was beautiful out so we took advantage of the weather to start work on the front yard.

Before I get into what we did this weekend, let's do a quick recap of the work on the front yard thus far.

When we first moved in, this was the front of the house (yes, there was a house back there):

After that big fir tree committed suicide by throwing itself on the power lines, we cut down almost everything in the front yard (and a bunch of stuff in the back yard) and made this two-ton pile of yard waste (there's an Audi hidden behind that pile that you can't even see):

After we got all those branches chipped up and hauled away, the front yard looked like this (much better, but not better enough):

Here's what the house looked like from the street after round 1.
Alright, now that we've reviewed what was accomplished in November, back to this weekend's progress.

The chain link fence in front of the house was ugly and served no real purpose. So, I tore that out. Taking the fence down was easy. Getting the posts out was not so easy. However, after a couple hours of work, I was victorious. Goodbye fence.

While I worked on the fence, Sarah dug up all the old plants, along with all the random bricks and stepping stones that were in the yard. There were a lot of them. You can see them all stacked up in front of the house in this pic.

Looks a lot better already, huh? However, now we have a bunch of ugly rock walls all over the yard.Lucy helped by barking at the shovels and rakes. Leroy helped by laying in the sun and rolling in the dirt while we worked. He's growing up fast and is almost Lucy's size already and he's only 15 weeks old. He is also a momma's boy and follows her everywhere.
On Sunday we tore out all the rock walls in front of the house. Holy crap some of those rocks were big! Lifting and moving all those things was hard work, Sarah and I were paying for it today with sore muscles.
You can see here how the pile of rocks is almost as big as my Passat. Sarah really busted her ass with me this weekend and she moved some serious rocks. If this whole nursing thing doesn't work out for her, I can always put her to work standing in front of Home Depot.

I love Craigslist. Where else can you put up an ad advertising 6 thousand pounds of rocks, 300 pounds of scrap metal, an old mini-fridge, old French doors and a busted water heater and get 30 emails in an hour from people wanting to take it off your hands? It's already all been claimed and should be gone by the end of the day tomorrow and it's not costing me a cent to get rid of it. Yay for Craigslist!

By now you're probably wondering just what we're going to do with the front yard now that it's all torn up. The plan is to build a new rock wall, but using a different kind of rock. Also, we're going to build the wall all the way around the yard instead of through the middle of it. Then, we'll fill it in with a few yards of dirt and make it one large level area instead of the two-tiered design it currently has. To finish it off, I'll throw down some sod and enjoy my luscious green lawn.

Speaking of building a new rock wall, we totally scored on Sunday morning. Sarah and I went to Home Depot to pick up some supplies and look at their concrete block selection. When we got home, I was getting a few blocks out of the car that I'd bought to help me figure out how many I would need. As I was unloading the car, my neighbor Barry noticed the blocks and said "hey, are you gonna need a lot of those blocks?" In a glorious stroke of luck it turns out that Barry is re-doing his back yard and taking out a few walls made of the exact same rock we want to build ours out of. SCORE! By the looks of it, it should be enough to complete about 1/2 to 2/3 of our project, which will save us a nice chunk of cash.

Paint update

Painting has commenced! The walls are retextured and we've started priming. Can't wait to get rid of the salmon/baby blue/browish/yellow/pink walls!

Light at the end of the tunnel

After taking a few weeks off to replenish the bank account, we are back in action!

After finishing up all of the construction and laying the sheet rock, I called on my friend Lee to take care of the mudding, taping and sanding. Doing this kind of work is kinda like doing body work on a car: any one can do it, but it takes a special touch to make it look good. Lee has that touch. I don't. I'm far too impatient for that kind of stuff, so thanks Lee!

Once the mudding and taping was done, I took some time off work to give myself a couple three-day weekends in a row to really go to town and take care of all the little things that needed to get done so we could get ready for paint finally. I installed some recessed lights in the living room, re-did the window sill on the big window in the living room, added proper vents in the roof for the stove fan and bathroom fan, prepared the attic to add more blow-in insulation, did some miscellaneous repairs, did a lot of sweeping and cleaning, and just got everything ready for paint.
After several long days of crawling around in the attic, sanding walls and vacuuming, we're 100% done with construction and are ready for paint!

Here's how everything looks at the moment:

Looking from the dining room to the living room. Looking from the corner of the living room to the kitchen.
Looking into the living room from the hallway (and some of the new can lights I installed, I only put bulbs in three of them for now though).

Living room from the dining room.

Looking down the hallway from the living room to the master bedroom.

Lucy and Leroy wondering why I'm not playing with them.

The master bedroom, the entrance to the walk-in closet and the new French doors I installed (more on those later).

Making our final color decisions for paint!

Painting commences this weekend!

Operation: Where is the hot water?

It's been awhile since we've done an update on the remodel. The main reason for that is because we took a bit of a break from working on the house from about the middle of January to the middle of February. After the first part of the remodel in November and December, followed by the holidays, our wallets needed a break!

The final straw came during the second week of January when I decided to tackle the issues we'd been having with the hot water heater. When we moved into the house, we noticed that despite the fact we had an 80-gallon hot water heater, we only had enough hot water for one ten minute shower. Assuming it just needed new elements, I picked some up at Lowe's one morning and proceeded to drain the tank and go to work. Well, once I had it drained and torn apart, I look inside and see the bottom of the tank is covered in sediment, the elements are covered in mineral deposits, the dip tube is broken off and the poor old thing was just looking generally haggered. After realizing this, I said "screw it, I'm just gonna buy a new hot water tank!" So I did.

Luckily, my buddy Austin was hanging out with me that day so I had some help to drag the old hot water heater out of the house and then drag the new one in (not to mention the use of his A4 Avant to get the new one home from Lowe's). Now we have a shiny, new, energy-efficient hot water heater. All hail my manliness. And Austin's manliness too (you happy now Austin? =P).

Also, as an added bonus our electric bill dropped significantly last month. This new hot water heater will probably pay for itself in under a year!

A new addition to the family!

Say hello to Leroy Jenkins Bartley! Since Sarah and I work a lot, we decided Lucy needed a friend to keep her company during the day. After searching www.nwsource.com for almost two months, we found some people near us with a litter of Bostons. After going to "just look" at the puppies, we fell in love with Leroy and had to take him home.

Leroy, like Lucy, is a purebred Boston Terrier. For those not familiar with the breed, the Boston breed was created by crossing French and English bull dogs with a breed of terrier called the English White Terrier. If you've met Lucy, you've noticed she has a lot of the terrier genes in her with her huge bat ears, long legs and high energy levels. Leroy on the other hand got all the bulldog genes. He has shorter legs, a wide chest, an extra flat face and is built like a brick shithouse! We're pretty sure he's going to be a brute when he grows up. When we got him he was 8 weeks old and weighed 6.5 pounds. In contrast, when Lucy was 8 weeks old she only weighed around 4 pounds. Technically, Leroy is a genetic "reject" for the breed since he has an all-white head and a blue eye, but it's not we're going to be showing him or anything, he's so damn cute we don't care!

At first, Lucy was a bit jealous of the new arrival, but over the past couple weeks she has warmed up to her new little brother and is now teaching him all sorts of useful skills, such as using the dog door to go outside, how to drag muddy sticks and dog toys through the dog door, how to pee in the house next to the dog door and begging for food.

He's quite the cuddler too.

We're Back!

Wow, can't believe it's been over a month since the last update! The holidays were super busy for us and we didn't really have a whole lot of time to get much done around the house. We did manage to get SOME stuff though.

At this point, we are done with the construction aspect of the remodel. All the walls that need to be torn down are torn down, all the electrical is done and all the sheetrocking is done. Which is really too bad, because I love tearing shit apart!

The last part of the construction phase was to remove a section of the wall between the kitchen and living room. As a review, this is the wall I'm talking about:

This wall completely shut the kitchen off from the living room, which is no fun when you're trying to entertain guests. Back in the 70's when this house was built, there was some kind of obsession with evertything being its own room, you won't see a lot of contemporary 70's houses with an open floor plan. Well, I'm going to change that for this house.

I started by doing my favorite thing: tearing shit apart!

We were babysitting Lilly that weekend, so her and Lucy supervised:

All the cutting and pounding of sheetrock made a lot of dust!

Here it is with the sheetrock back in place. See how much opens up the kitchen and living room? The place where the table is in the picture below will be a countertop and more storage space when we are able to remodel the kitchen.

Stay tuned, more updates are coming soon!

Now We're Cooking With, uh, Microwaves

When we bought the house, it had all new appliances... except the microwave. Who replaces all their appliances, but not the decrepit old microwave that not only is ugly, old and broken, but now doesn't match anything else in the kitchen? Here is a pic of the microwave that came with the house:


Lucky for us, we have great friends who are receptive to our wants and needs. Enter Chad Hauer, who isn't only our Real Estate agent, but is also one of my best friends; not to mention a gentleman and scholar. He recently remodeled the kitchen in his house and upgraded to a fancy-schmancy microwave, so he sold me the almost new microwave that came with his house for a song.

"Great," I thought, "I'll just swap this new microwave out with the old one after work one night, it will be a breeze!" Or so I thought. The next two hours of my life can be summed up with one question:

WHO THE HELL LAG BOLTS A MICROWAVE TO THE WALL!?!?

After all was said and done, the new microwave is now perched in its new home, reheating leftovers. And NOT lag bolted to the wall.

Oh, the joys of home ownership...

It's Starting to Look Like a House Again

The weekend after Thanksgiving was a very productive weekend. My Dad came over and stayed with us for a few days and we went to town on the house and made some serious progress.

We started out Friday by doing the last bits of demolition that needed to be done, like removing the ceiling.

Once this was done, we got to work framing up the new walk-in closet and moving the doorway and closet for the other bedroom.

Grandpa Don came and supervised us on Friday.


On Saturday, we finished up the framing and then started on the electrical. Since we are changing the floorplan around quite a bit, pretty much needed to rewire the entire back half of the house. Also, while we were at it, we added some additional outdoor lighting, since there wasn't very much of it.



Sarah inspecting our work.


Thanks for the help Dad!


On Monday, I took the day off work to do the sheetrocking.


After this weekend, I'm quite confident that I did not miss my calling in life by not being a sheetrocker (or in construction).

Sheetrocking certainly is NOT as easy as it looks. You'd think that cutting a bunch of squares and rectangles out and screwing them to the wall would be fairly easy...

This last weekend, we started mudding and taping the sheetrock, so I'll save the pictures of the completed sheetrock for next time.