Sidewalk Progress

The sidewalk project is becoming the Office project of 2010. It just never seems to end!

My dad came over yesterday after work to help me dig out some more of the sidewalk. We got to the garage and the turned the corner between the lean-to and garage. That's where we literally hit a snag. A HUGE rock, which might be partly acting as a primitive footing for the lean-to, was in our way. The distance between the two buildings is only 3' so I already had to make my sidewalk narrower in this area. Now I have a huge rock sticking out about 6" into that. The lean-to is going to be our main project next summer (if it makes it through the winter!) and I was already planning on pushing it away from the garage another 2 feet or so. Plus we'll be pouring a concrete foundation, so the rocks will be gone. So I decided to just work around the large rock for now, save the bricks that will go there and install them next summer after the lean-to is re-built. I found a LOT of broken china by that rock though.. so I can't wait to see what we find next summer when we excavate for the frost walls!

After my dad left, I decided to work on the sidewalk until R came home from work. That way I'd have more time today to devote to the Kitchen. I got pretty far in that hour and a half! Between that and a couple hours this morning I made it around the corner!! I'm running really low on bricks though. I ended up making the sidewalk about 8" wider than I had originally planned, so we'll have to make another trip to Lowe's for more bricks soon. I'll get pretty close to the end though. I also put sand between the joints almost to where I ended, so we could walk on the sidewalk for most of the way to the garage (it's at a point now where it would be almost impossible to not step on it). I've gotten so many compliments on it so far!! The chimney guys... three neighbors! Everyone thinks it looks great and is shocked when they hear I did it myself!

Me and My Indecisive Brain..

Is it that I'm indecisive, or am I a perfectionist? Either way, I ripped up everything I did last Monday. The whole sidewalk.

Let's start this at the beginning. This morning I went outside to work on the sidewalk. I gathered my bricks and tools and got to work. As I was working, I realized that if I pushed the bricks up closer to each other, the joints were smaller and looked better. Long story short, when the bricks were more level, the joints were smaller. So I ran inside and got the level. Now that I was able to make them 100% level, I realized that my bricks from Labor Day were slightly off. So after doing about 4' of new brick, I went back and started working backwards, leveling the sidewalk. This actually worked out well because I had run out of weed paper and was too lazy to go to Lowe's and I didn't want to put down any more brick without weed paper underneath.

Anyways.... by the time I got back to the beginning, I was off by more than a brick height. The level bricks were about 3" higher than the original ones. I was disgusted with myself! Staring down at it, my dad and I realized what I had done. Last weekend, my main concern was keeping the first row of bricks level with the bottom stone step. From there, I was trying to keep the last row of bricks level with the grass. And the result was a sloping sidewalk. So I sat there and thought about it... A level sidewalk won. I could always build up the grass along the sidewalk and slope it down to the existing grass level. The yard slopes down in that direction anyways, so it wouldn't look weird.

This picture shows just how un-level I was!

Once I was done, I realized that it being level made it look a million times better! It looked more professional. In fact, I commented to R that it looked too nice for our house :) Especially next to the lean-to, which would probably collapse if you breathed near it. (Can you say Project: Summer 2012?)

Hangs Head in Shame...

This post embarrasses me even before I write it.. I'm so ashamed... I should have my house taken away from me.. bad bad renovator...

Remember this post? It's from Memorial Day. We went to Lowe's and bought bricks for our back sidewalk because they were on sale. Also because I was sick of walking in wet grass every time it rained. I don't like wet shoes.

Remember this post? Also from Memorial Day weekend? I dug up the asphalt in our backyard in preparation for the new sidewalk.

Well.. here we are. Labor Day weekend. An entire season (and 3 months) have gone by with not one bit of work happening. So so incredibly pathetic! I complain and complain about the bad asphalt sidewalk, then dig it up and would apparently rather walk through mud and grass for three months. So ashamed...

Wanna see what 3 months do to a dug up sidewalk?

I think my blogging rights should  be revoked... You can't even tell where I labored in the heat for 2 full days! It was all a waste! The bricks that I laid on top of the grass (only a month ago) to test out that pattern (I had two other patterns there that also each lasted a month) are covered in grass.

There's a third rock step under there that we had honestly forgotten we even had. That's how long it has been unseen! Here's my excuse (there's always an excuse in situations like this, right??). It was too hot (in the summer. Whaaaat?!? That's craziness!) The area where the sidewalk is in direct sun all day until about 3 or 3:30 in the afternoon. On super hot, humid days, that's when we're close to calling it quits. I'm not going to start a new project then when I've spent all day doing something else! Ok, and there were a bunch of weekend vacations/trips in there too.

One of the other brick pattern options..

A couple weeks ago I made my dad promise me that on Labor Day he was all mine. We were tackling that sidewalk... rain or shine... humidity or nice day. Sunday night we're watching the news and they're forecasting rain all day on Labor Day. No. It's not going to stop me! I told my dad we were still going to do something! I didn't care what, or how much, just as long as we made some sort of progress!

My dad came over early in the morning and we immediately got to work! I cleaned up weeds around the rocks while he dug and pulled all of the grass out of the dirt ditch I had made back in May (which, by the way, turned into a nice muddy river during rain storms..). Then I started leveling the dirt as best I could. My non-existent ADD came to visit for awhile while I was digging. I found a bunch of broken china, some really old nails and a toy monkey (or Baloo from Jungle Book... we can't decide what it is). Plus some garbage. And a million rocks.

While I was waiting for my dad to finish so we could start putting down sand, I stared at the bottom rock step that I had just rediscovered. To the right of the second step was a smaller stone. It's off in the grass and kind of pointless. I realized that if we moved it and put it to the right of the bottom step it would almost even out the steps (the third step is almost half the width of the other two). Turns out it fit perfectly. So perfectly in fact that I'm convinced that it once belonged there. We filled around it with some of the extra red rock from between the other two steps, but we need to buy some more to complete it.

We first put down about a half inch of sand. On top of that went some organic weed paper. Then about another inch or so of sand, to make it level. I decided that I wanted the bricks to be level with the bottom rock step. This means we'll have to raise the grass on the other side of the sidewalk about an inch once we're done.

I didn't get to finish, but I got about 25% of the sidewalk done. Unfortunately, it's going to rain all week so I won't be able to get any work done, but now that it's started, it'll be easy to do a couple rows of brick on a weeknight for an hour or two.

Hurricane Damage

Two days before Hurricane Irene's arrival, we were directly in the path of the storm (as in, on a map, the eye of the storm was shown directly going over us). Ugh. Luckily, the night before the storm, it got pushed west, so while we'd still get impacted, it wouldn't be as bad as initially thought.

We woke up this morning to a loud noise outside our windows. Turns out the huge tree directly across the street from us fell (luckily, into their yard, not onto our mailbox or the road).

As I was looking out the window at this, R went to all of the other windows. While looking out the Twilight Room back window, he saw this fall on our shed/coop!

Luckily, these two trees were the main problems of the day. We were two of the only people in the state with power. It flickered out for about 2 minutes around 8:30 AM and was fine for the rest of the day. We did lose internet/cable/phone around 3:30 PM, which wasn't cool... internet and cable were all that were keeping us busy! So much for our Game of Thrones marathon..

Around 6:00, we joined all of our neighbors outside to assess the damage. It appeared that our yard was hit the worst. No one had any damage to their houses, and the only trees to come down were across the street from us and in our backyard (we had a couple fall down in the woods, in addition to the one on the shed).

Our next door neighbor had some huge branches fall down and into the road (the town came during the storm and moved them out of the road for her). We cannot figure out how they didn't hit the power lines because they were over the lines, but some how managed to fall under them and into the street..

I lost three tomato plants.. and a couple tomatoes which fell on the ground.

Tomato-killing branch..

Shed killer..

Here, Irene did some good. She was kind enough to knock down most of the dead branches off of the huge trees by the well. We were going to have to have someone come to cut them off (they were up really high), but now all we had to do was drag them into the woods.

While I was walking around taking pictures and picking up sticks and branches, Ryan was trying to figure out how to get the tree off the shed. Our neighbor from across the street was helping out our next door neighbor and saw Ryan and the tree. He offered to help out, and showed up a couple minutes later with his chainsaw, another neighbor and his chainsaw!

They didn't take the tree completely off, but got a lot done. We offered the wood to them and one neighbor offered to turn a bowl out of it for us :)

The Finished Coop

 

We finally finished up the coop this weekend. Well, enough so that the chicks can move in. We still need to build the shelving for the other side of the shed and build the outdoor space. But my patience had run out on having indoor chickens.

The finished interior coop takes up half of the shed. Nugget and Gladys love it! They love being able to run back and forth and fly up (they actually fly up to the top of the wall and sit up there and we have to rescue them..). Their new space is more than 4 times as wide as the playpen. Plus they get to play in the hay, which they love!

A Permanent Dryer Vent

This is what we've had to do every time we do laundry for the past year... Stick an adjustable dryer vent out the window. Not cool when it's snowing or raining, or when bugs decide to take you up on the open window invitation.

So we had my dad come over this afternoon to help us install a permanent dryer vent. We not only needed expertise, but also his non-exisitant fear of heights (our laundry room is on the second floor and there was no way either of us were getting up on a ladder).


We first had to decide on a location. I thought that from the outside it would look best if the vent were centered under the window. However, from the inside, that would mean I'd still somewhat see the metal vent between the dryer and washing machine. So we decided to just put it directly behind the dryer, about a foot off the floor. Of course in an old house nothing works out the way you want.

Both R and I were working on other projects, and after about an hour I went upstairs to check on my dad. Still no vent.. not even a big hole in the wall! He kept drilling small holes in the wall, only to have his drill get stuck and refuse to go any further. He kept leaning out the window to see what he could possibly be hitting (like the shutter?), but there wasn't anything he could see. Finally he got a big enough hole (about 2' higher than we had originally decided on) to see inside the wall... There was a big corner brace coming off of the beam in my bedroom closet, going down to the floor at a 45° angle. Now that he could actually see what he kept hitting, he was able to go a little bit above it and cut a larger hole. Only to run into more problems. The first layer was plaster, then lathe, then the brace (plus some other random vertical boards, which looked newer, and didn't really have any purpose, lots of blown in insulation (basically just a bunch of fibers), then some newer blown in foam insulation, then really really thick sheathing (this is where the drill kept getting stuck) and finally the wood siding.

What was suppose to be a quick afternoon project, of course, was anything but that. Because of everything in the wall it was very very hard for my dad to get a hole big enough for the vent. Eventually he was able to get it to fit, but of course by then it was 6:00, and we were all exhausted. Spending over 6 hours laboring in the sun and 85° weather isn't a lot of fun. 

Some night this week R will have to caulk around the vent, fill in the holes in the wall and reconnect the dryer. Until then I can't do laundry.. don't you feel bad for me? :) But basically it's done.. which makes me really really excited.. No more opening a window just to do laundry!

The Start of a Chicken Coop...

We started building the indoor coop today. First we had to go to Lowe's for supplies.. We spent about $90 and got 2x4's, insulation, flooring and hinges for the door.

We ran out of time and were only able to get the shed cleaned out and the walls up today. We weren't able to fit the plywood in our car, so we'll have to wait until next weekend to do the insulation and plywood. Once the plywood is up we'll put down the floor and install the chicken wire. Then it'll be ready for the chicks! The exterior play area is going to take a little bit more time. The space is currently housing a bunch of dead rotten trees that were cut down by the previous owner and just left there in a pile. The tree branches will also need to be trimmed a little. Just the clean up will probably take at least a whole day.

Designing A Chicken Coop

I spent all day today designing our chicken coop. The chicks have been ready to go outside for over a week now.. They're getting too big for the playpen and a little smelly. My Dining Room is definitely ready to be rid of them too. The room is covered in a corn dust from their food. If I clean everything, it's covered in dust again in less than an hour. It's ridiculous!

My mom offered to buy us a coop as a wedding anniversary present (our anniversary is in June). She gave us a set amount, and had a coop in mind, but told me to look around online to see if I could find something else I liked. I found a couple really cute coops that were in the price range, but according to user reviews, only fit 2 chickens comfortably. We currently have 5 (though 2 or 3 we'll be giving away), but we expect to get more in the near future. The coops that would fit more chickens were crazy expensive... even if my mom was offering that much I could never spend that much on a coop.

So... I went back to my original idea. Converting our shed into a coop. We have the cutest little shed in our yard by the woods. It isn't being used now and it's far enough away from our neighbors houses that they won't bother anyone. It even has a window.

I decided to only dedicate half of the shed to the chickens. The other half would be perfect for storage... both chicken storage and garden storage. Even though we aren't using it now, I figure if I put up shelves I'll be more likely to use it. We also made the decision to put the outside play area off to the right, hidden by the woods and shed. When we put in a fence for Madison, we'll be more comfortable letting the chicks free-range, but until then, they'll have their fenced in outside area. This will also be better for when we go away on weekends or on vacation. They'll still be able to go outside but we won't need to worry about them getting out or being eaten. After many many hours, this is what I came up with:

The coop will take up half of the interior space. The storage space will be in the front. We'll also put a plywood "roof" on top of the coop that we could use for large storage tubs. There will be human doors outside and inside. We will be insulating the walls and ceiling and then installing plywood over the insulation. On the floor we're going to putting down vinyl roll flooring, which will make it easy to clean with a mop or hose. I'll be putting hay over the vinyl floor.

A Hodgepodge of Work

June has been a very busy month for us. Nothing huge got completed. We did do a little bit here and a little bit there though.

Every weekend since Memorial Day has either been filled with family obligations, rain or very humid weather. So really no change on the back sidewalk, other than yesterday. I spent a couple hours in the afternoon digging out the grass in the area where the sidewalk will be.

I finished painting the Twilight Room... I just need to get in there and take some pictures now. It rained for days after I finished painting it so I used those days to move some furniture in and unpack some boxes.. which means it's now a mess and not ready for pictures.

Yesterday morning I spent about an hour weeding our front walk. It's something that kept getting ignored because everyone knows to use our back door, not the front. So the sidewalk has been unseen and forgotten. It looks a lot nicer now... like someone actually lives here. I'm too embarrassed to show a picture of what it looked like before! Yea, it's nothing special now and will be replaced sometime in the future, but at least it's not overgrown anymore. While I was weeding I did get to enjoy a little show. I heard a ton of sirens at the end of the street and a couple seconds later about 15 state police motorcycles came down the street, followed by about 10 EMS motorcycles. Then about 50 (most likely more) more motorcycles came down the street. It was a huge motorcycle parade. Not sure where they were going. One guy's motorcycle broke down right in front of our house, so he and a bunch of his friends were out there for awhile trying to fix it. In the end another guy came and loaded the bike into his truck.

We've also been working on the drywall in the Kitchen (good rainy day work). Because everything is so un-level in the house it's tough to work on the drywall... do we make it straight or do we keep it un-level like everything else? The sanding is the worst thing in the world.. sanding takes place on the weekends, but during the week I need my Kitchen to cook in. Which means that I have to move everything out of the Kitchen on the weekends and then back in on Monday morning. It's getting old.

We also finally chose our Kitchen floor, which is exciting! Hopefully we'll be buying that soon!

I've also been busy doing some unpacking. And by unpacking I mean filling up the Twilight Room closet with all of my office stuff. I came to the conclusion yesterday that I don't think I'll ever in my life need to purchase any pens or pencils.. I have more than enough for a small country.

We also discovered why the Kitchen fireplaces turns into a waterfall every time it rains. Turns out the cover over the chimney broke during the winter and has a huge huge hole in it.

Choosing a Paver Color

The back/Kitchen door is the door we use on a daily basis. There is a path/sidewalk/a couple pieces of asphalt leading from the driveway to the big stone steps in front of the door. As ugly as it is, it wasn't exactly one of our top priorities. We're focusing on the interior problems first, and will deal with the exterior and landscaping when we're done. However... With all of the rain we've had this spring, the little path has gotten to be a huge annoyance. After only about an inch of rain, the pathway transforms into a stream. It must have been installed a long time ago, and incorrectly, because over time the asphalt has sunken in the ground. In some spots it is completely under the grass. In others it has sunken to form a "V". So if it is raining, or rained yesterday, you have to walk on the grass alongside the path. Which isn't any better than walking through the river path. The bottom 6" of my pants and shoes get soaking wet and I'm mad by the time I make it to the car.

Last week I saw a commercial for Lowe's saying they were having a Memorial Day stone sale. All stone pavers were on sale.. 20% off. While at Lowe's a couple days later (to get stuff to build the garden) I checked out the pavers. I didn't really love any of them... but if I had to choose one, I'd choose the cheapest one they had. Just plain bricks.. in red or gray. Nothing special, but I didn't like any of the expensive ones either, so why not just buy the least expensive ones? 

This Saturday we bought a sample of each color. R wanted red and I wanted gray, and arguing about it at home is usually better than doing it in the store :) The bricks sat outside for 2 days.. and of course, one of those days it rained. Before the rain, I still preferred the gray one. The top rock step is reddish in color, but the bottom one is more grayish. Both colors looked good next to the bottom step, but I thought that the gray looked better against the grass (and I hate red). But after the rain, the gray looked horrible! I can't even explain it. So red it is.. And they're only $0.38/each (though that really does add up when you realize you need 585 of them).

With the help of my dad's friend, we went and bought the bricks today. As big and heavy duty as his truck is, we still had to make two trips (luckily Lowe's is literally one mile down the road). It was horribly hot and humid today, so this is as far as we got:

They're piled up behind our garage.. hopefully we'll get a less humid weekend soon..

We Build a Garden

Today was a beautiful day outside, so we took advantage of the nice weather to finally build our garden. We decided to make the garden 8'x4' and two 2x6's tall. USE UNTREATED WOOD!! You don't want the chemicals from pressure treated wood seeping into your vegetables!


Step 1: R cut two of the 2x6's in half. Those 4 pieces became the end pieces. Measure 18" lengths on the 2x3 and cut 6 pieces. Also cut 4 24" pieces, and cut the ends so they come to a point. While he was doing that, I used a measuring tape and marked out the location in the yard. We chose a spot that basically has direct sun all day long.

Step 2: Using 3 2 1/2" screws, screw a 2x3 posts into the center of the shorter 2x6's. Do the same for the pointed 2x3's at the ends using 3 1/2" screws. Dig two holes in the ground at either end of this wall and lower the pointed ends into the ground. Use a hammer or mallet if necessary. Make sure that the dirt is packed down around the posts.

Step 3: Install two 18" 2x3's on the two longer sides and then screw them onto the posts on the first end.

Step 4: Repeat Step 2 for the final end. We made our garden level (even though our yard slopes down here), but it isn't necessary. As long as the top of the walls all line up you will be okay.

We have two resident groundhogs and a bunch of bunnies, so we had to take them into account when planning the garden. They're too cute for us to take measures to get rid of them (the #1 way online to get rid of groundhogs is a shotgun... that is just not acceptable in this house!). So instead, we took measures to make sure they couldn't get in the garden.

Step 5: Cover the bottom of the garden with a roll of chicken wire. This will prevent the groundhog from tunneling up into the garden.

Step 6: Cover the chicken wire with weed fabric. This isn't necessary, but we will definitely appreciate it when there is little to no weeding to do! We used a staple gun to secure the wire and fabric.

Step 7: Fill garden with dirt. We used free composted soil that our town provides (it is made from the leaves the town picks up every fall) for the bottom two-thirds. On top of that we added 2 large bags of vegetable garden soil we bought at a home improvement store. Rake the top to mix the soil around a little bit. We also added a little lime.

Step 8: Install metal fence posts at the edges and in the middle of the longer sides. We used a metal garden fence which came in a roll and very easily attached to the posts. The fence is adjustable and can also be opened easily when we need to access the garden. But most importantly it keeps out our groundhog friends.

Cost:

Walls and Posts: (6) 2x6's, (2) 2x3's - $33
Chicken Wire, Fencing, Garden Soil, Weed Fabric - $78
Vegetable Plants: Watermelon, Cucumber, Tomatoes - $4
Vegetable Plants: Tomatoes, Squash, Beets, Beans, Broccoli, Strawberries, Raspberries, Pumpkins - $0 (from my dad)


Total Cost: $115 (which shocked me at first, but then when I really thought about it the $33 and $78 will be spread out for many many years. We really only spent $4 for all of our summer vegetables, which is how much we would pay for vegetables for one meal from the grocery store)