06/18/09: We Are No Longer The Pink House!
Patrick and I thought this day would never come…the day we would no longer live in the PINK house! (Warning – get ready for an image-heavy post!)
Although we immediately fell in love with the general charm of our house, the one thing we never liked was that it was a pink house. The salmon-colored body color with the dark pink accent just wasn't our style. Unfortunately our dreams of a different color were crushed when we got a number of painting estimates two years ago. Fast forward to 2009 (i.e. a couple of years of saving $) and exterior paint that looked like this…
…and we decided we were in dire need of revisiting the exterior painting subject. Like urgently.
So we called one of the painters from two years ago (who was our favorite based on the historic house painting experience) and said "if the cost is the same as 2 years ago we'll go with you." Before we knew it we were told "we'll be there tomorrow morning." Holy dog doo doo – this was really about to happen!!
The first step in the process was to pressure wash the house. This was to get rid of any loose paint. Here is the south-facing wall of our house after it was pressure washed:
Pressure washing in action:
The next step was to scrape off any semi-loose paint that the pressure washer didn't get off:
Close-up of a south facing window after the pressure washing, scraping, and sanding.
Choosing the color has been the hardest part of the process. I keep joking that it was harder to decide on an exterior color than it was to get married, haha. (Of course I have such a wonderful husband that it wasn't a hard choice to want to spend the rest of my life with him!) But seriously, I have some serious color commitment issues. I mean, this is the color I'm (hopefully) going to be stuck with for the next 15 years! This is a big investment! We knew we wanted a more neutral color and decided to head in the grey direction. After a visit to the Sherwin Williams paint store and picking through their selection of greys we initially picked two trial colors: "Uncertain Grey" (how fitting) on the top left, and "Rare Grey" on the top right. We immediately decided the "Uncertain Grey" was way too blue and decided we liked the "Rare Grey" better. However, we were wondering if the color was too pale and thought we may as well invest a few extra bucks and try two other darker shades from the same color swatch: "Link Grey" on the bottom right, and "Cast Iron" on the bottom left. Finally the big decision was made…"Link Grey" (bottom right) was our decision.
During the painting process we needed to address some house repair issues. The gables on both the north and south facing walls had old diamond shingles on the side. We've wanted to get rid of these, so this was obviously the right time. Come to find out there were two more layers of shingles underneath the diamond ones.
The next step was priming. For a day we thought we were quarantined in our own house with all that protective plastic over the windows and doors!
Here the north facing gable has the newly installed siding (from good ol' Randall Brothers). I think this photo is really interesting because it shows the various stages…old scraped color, newly primed siding, and newly placed wood siding.
The north facing side of the house with primed body and primed window sashes:
The north facing side of the house with final body color:
On the back of the house we had an area that we've also been wanting to fix for a while because the insulation has been hanging out.
The only problem was that a mama bird had set up a home in our insulation that we were about to board up! I like to tell myself that the three little baby birds we had to take out of our house were moved by the mama bird over night because they were gone the next morning. (Shhhh, I don't want to hear your opinions of what else may have happened with them – I'm sticking to my story!)
Here is a beautiful detail shot of the brackets on the front of the house. Previously the dark pink brackets blended in with the cedar shingles. Now the white brackets against the "Link Grey" colored roof decking by the cedar shingles has a nice, bold contrast.
While we were on a roll we thought "why stop here?" We are already working on our new entry door…may as well replace those dangerous entry steps!
The whole stair process was entirely rushed and unsatisfactory (unlike the painting process), but perhaps I will come back and go into more detail about that another day. In any case, here the steps were being poured:
Two and a half weeks later we have the final product – "Link Grey" is the main body color, "Classic Light Bluff" is the trim accent color, "Bunglehouse Blue" is the window sash color, and "Cast Iron" is the chimney color. As pointed out on a previous photo, we had the underside of the roof painted the main house color to create a greater contract against the white accent color.
In this "after" porch photo you can see we actually used a fifth color for the porch ceiling based on what we know was often historically used. The ceiling is called "Atmosphere". We were advised by the lady at Sherwin Williams that this is the color most commonly bought for porch ceiling purposes, so that is how we decided on it.
The front of the house in its final form (...well, at least for now...). New neutral grey color with nice contrast to the cedar shingles and dark red brick. And new stairs that you don't have to stumble down anymore. We love it!!!
Although we immediately fell in love with the general charm of our house, the one thing we never liked was that it was a pink house. The salmon-colored body color with the dark pink accent just wasn't our style. Unfortunately our dreams of a different color were crushed when we got a number of painting estimates two years ago. Fast forward to 2009 (i.e. a couple of years of saving $) and exterior paint that looked like this…
…and we decided we were in dire need of revisiting the exterior painting subject. Like urgently.
So we called one of the painters from two years ago (who was our favorite based on the historic house painting experience) and said "if the cost is the same as 2 years ago we'll go with you." Before we knew it we were told "we'll be there tomorrow morning." Holy dog doo doo – this was really about to happen!!
The first step in the process was to pressure wash the house. This was to get rid of any loose paint. Here is the south-facing wall of our house after it was pressure washed:
Pressure washing in action:
The next step was to scrape off any semi-loose paint that the pressure washer didn't get off:
Close-up of a south facing window after the pressure washing, scraping, and sanding.
Choosing the color has been the hardest part of the process. I keep joking that it was harder to decide on an exterior color than it was to get married, haha. (Of course I have such a wonderful husband that it wasn't a hard choice to want to spend the rest of my life with him!) But seriously, I have some serious color commitment issues. I mean, this is the color I'm (hopefully) going to be stuck with for the next 15 years! This is a big investment! We knew we wanted a more neutral color and decided to head in the grey direction. After a visit to the Sherwin Williams paint store and picking through their selection of greys we initially picked two trial colors: "Uncertain Grey" (how fitting) on the top left, and "Rare Grey" on the top right. We immediately decided the "Uncertain Grey" was way too blue and decided we liked the "Rare Grey" better. However, we were wondering if the color was too pale and thought we may as well invest a few extra bucks and try two other darker shades from the same color swatch: "Link Grey" on the bottom right, and "Cast Iron" on the bottom left. Finally the big decision was made…"Link Grey" (bottom right) was our decision.
During the painting process we needed to address some house repair issues. The gables on both the north and south facing walls had old diamond shingles on the side. We've wanted to get rid of these, so this was obviously the right time. Come to find out there were two more layers of shingles underneath the diamond ones.
The next step was priming. For a day we thought we were quarantined in our own house with all that protective plastic over the windows and doors!
Here the north facing gable has the newly installed siding (from good ol' Randall Brothers). I think this photo is really interesting because it shows the various stages…old scraped color, newly primed siding, and newly placed wood siding.
The north facing side of the house with primed body and primed window sashes:
The north facing side of the house with final body color:
On the back of the house we had an area that we've also been wanting to fix for a while because the insulation has been hanging out.
The only problem was that a mama bird had set up a home in our insulation that we were about to board up! I like to tell myself that the three little baby birds we had to take out of our house were moved by the mama bird over night because they were gone the next morning. (Shhhh, I don't want to hear your opinions of what else may have happened with them – I'm sticking to my story!)
Here is a beautiful detail shot of the brackets on the front of the house. Previously the dark pink brackets blended in with the cedar shingles. Now the white brackets against the "Link Grey" colored roof decking by the cedar shingles has a nice, bold contrast.
While we were on a roll we thought "why stop here?" We are already working on our new entry door…may as well replace those dangerous entry steps!
The whole stair process was entirely rushed and unsatisfactory (unlike the painting process), but perhaps I will come back and go into more detail about that another day. In any case, here the steps were being poured:
Two and a half weeks later we have the final product – "Link Grey" is the main body color, "Classic Light Bluff" is the trim accent color, "Bunglehouse Blue" is the window sash color, and "Cast Iron" is the chimney color. As pointed out on a previous photo, we had the underside of the roof painted the main house color to create a greater contract against the white accent color.
In this "after" porch photo you can see we actually used a fifth color for the porch ceiling based on what we know was often historically used. The ceiling is called "Atmosphere". We were advised by the lady at Sherwin Williams that this is the color most commonly bought for porch ceiling purposes, so that is how we decided on it.
The front of the house in its final form (...well, at least for now...). New neutral grey color with nice contrast to the cedar shingles and dark red brick. And new stairs that you don't have to stumble down anymore. We love it!!!
05/25/09: Holiday Weekend
Ahhh yes, a holiday weekend. A great way to get projects accomplished with that one extra day off!
We kicked the long weekend off in style. The new Cajun restaurant at the end of the street opened up the weekend before, so we rounded up a few neighbors and probably tested their working limits...fourteen of us ordering 20 minutes before closing time! Twelve of us made it back to our house, munching on alligator sandwiches, gumbo, and other Cajun goodies. Since our newbie neighbors moved in a few weeks ago at the end of the street we decided to invite ourselves over to check out their renovation. Somehow that turned into neighbor house hopping and we checked out the progress of two other houses. What a sight that must have been – our mob of 10 walking down the street. (We lost some people after dinner.)
So after a fun neighbor gathering on Friday we got down to business the rest of the weekend. Most of the projects were fun, but one of them was a pain in the ass. A little over a year ago we hired a company to blow insulation into our attic. As the weather warmed up our recessed kitchen lights started overheating and turning themselves off. (Which, as annoying as it is, is probably a good thing as it keeps our house from burning down!!) We called the company to complain and they brought back the crew to put pipes around the recessed lights so they can have some breathing air. I think their excuse was "We didn't know they were recessed lights" or something silly like that. You know, the kind of comment you'd expect from a company who spends their entire work day in an attic. *end sarcasm* Well, whatever they did it didn't seem to be working because the lights still kept shutting themselves off. It has taken us a while to work up the energy to go up in the attic to solve the problem because the project is quite a task. It involves empting all the clothes out of the hallway closet, moving half the stacked boxes underneath the clothes out of the closet, putting in the short ladder to reach the attic door and slide it out of the way, and finally get the long ladder to climb in there. Like I said, it's a task! Fortunately for heat's sake the weather has been "cold" (relatively speaking) and rainy all May, so the attic was probably cooler than it could have been under normal circumstances. Unfortunately attic's usually get hot even when the weather outside is mild. Patrick was trying to maneuver his way across the insulation covered attic beams to the recessed kitchen lights – which are thankfully near the attic opening (as opposed to all the way across the house).
The idiots from the insulation company had taken pipes that were barely as large as the recessed lights, and half ass taped them together with duct tape. Then they pretty much managed to fill the pipes back up with insulation when they recovered the area. Geniuses, simply geniuses. So we opted to remove the half ass coverings and scrape any insulation close to the lights to the side. Yes, I know that reduces our insulation, but it feels much better not to have your kitchen lights create a light show blinking on and off, and it makes us feel more at ease knowing the attic won't catch on fire.
This is a picture of Patrick balancing on beams. It was about 5 minutes before he hit his head on a lantern he hung up from a nail, causing the lantern to plop into the insulation and me cracking up laughing. Apparently laughing at a hot, sweaty, stressed out guy balancing on a beam in an attic frantically looking for a buried lantern is not a good idea. He got mad at me for laughing and asked me to help find the light instead. Of course that only made it worse as I had to hold in my laughter while trying to explain where I thought the lantern may have fallen. Towards the end we switched places and I crawled in the far reaching corners at the tip of the roof where Patrick was having a harder time crawling into. The good news is, so far no lights have gone out since then. Keeping my fingers crossed for those July and August temperatures...
The next project was much more calming…and we were able to breathe a little easier. We made a new corner bed and planted Rosemary. Awwww, look at Patrick – he still has some insulation stuck on his unshaven chin! The Rosemary is next to him in the background. In the foreground is a lantana we planted last year.
This project makes me laugh...we got a Pink Knockout Rose from my parent's friends that we've been trying to plant since we got it a month ago. Of course since we didn't have a planned project we didn't know where to put it. So finally today we ended up planting it. Only to plant one rose we created a whole garden bed. (An extension to the Rosemary bed.)
But digging garden beds never comes without surprises in our garden. I swear we feel like archeologists whenever we get out the shovel. My biggest complaints are coat hangers (they seem to have gotten less frequent these days though) and broken glass. I swear I can't dig without gloves because every shovel has at least one piece of broken glass in it. You can ask Patrick how often I curse because I come across another one. In any case, this uncovering was a bit more exciting as it was next to the former garage location. Some of the "artifacts" included a saw, a hammer, a tire wrench, a large hinge, and other miscellaneous items.
Other uncovered items included some larger rocks, which we decided to put amidst our other garden bed. I'm loving the Monte Negro Lilies by the way! The other two varieties haven't bloomed yet. And I'm upset about this non-stop rain as it seems to be drowning my row of Lavenders.
And voila, our new driveway garden bed! In the back you see the Pink Knockout Rose. We used the new garden bed opportunity to plant some other things we still had sitting around in pots. By the Rose we also planted a Weigela Carnaval that we transplanted from next to the stairs, some Shasta Daisy's I grew from seeds over the winter, a Gerbera Daisy left over from last year, and a miniature Rose I received for my birthday. The other items you can see are the grape vine, which has grown tremendously this year, a little stepping stone path we made from uncovered concrete blocks (found from digging in that garden bed), the Rosemary, the Lantana and Lantana cuttings that I'm trying to propagate in a pot.
Phew, so now that it feels like we got a ton of work done over the weekend we'll see what this upcoming week brings us with the painters! *biting my nails*
We kicked the long weekend off in style. The new Cajun restaurant at the end of the street opened up the weekend before, so we rounded up a few neighbors and probably tested their working limits...fourteen of us ordering 20 minutes before closing time! Twelve of us made it back to our house, munching on alligator sandwiches, gumbo, and other Cajun goodies. Since our newbie neighbors moved in a few weeks ago at the end of the street we decided to invite ourselves over to check out their renovation. Somehow that turned into neighbor house hopping and we checked out the progress of two other houses. What a sight that must have been – our mob of 10 walking down the street. (We lost some people after dinner.)
So after a fun neighbor gathering on Friday we got down to business the rest of the weekend. Most of the projects were fun, but one of them was a pain in the ass. A little over a year ago we hired a company to blow insulation into our attic. As the weather warmed up our recessed kitchen lights started overheating and turning themselves off. (Which, as annoying as it is, is probably a good thing as it keeps our house from burning down!!) We called the company to complain and they brought back the crew to put pipes around the recessed lights so they can have some breathing air. I think their excuse was "We didn't know they were recessed lights" or something silly like that. You know, the kind of comment you'd expect from a company who spends their entire work day in an attic. *end sarcasm* Well, whatever they did it didn't seem to be working because the lights still kept shutting themselves off. It has taken us a while to work up the energy to go up in the attic to solve the problem because the project is quite a task. It involves empting all the clothes out of the hallway closet, moving half the stacked boxes underneath the clothes out of the closet, putting in the short ladder to reach the attic door and slide it out of the way, and finally get the long ladder to climb in there. Like I said, it's a task! Fortunately for heat's sake the weather has been "cold" (relatively speaking) and rainy all May, so the attic was probably cooler than it could have been under normal circumstances. Unfortunately attic's usually get hot even when the weather outside is mild. Patrick was trying to maneuver his way across the insulation covered attic beams to the recessed kitchen lights – which are thankfully near the attic opening (as opposed to all the way across the house).
The idiots from the insulation company had taken pipes that were barely as large as the recessed lights, and half ass taped them together with duct tape. Then they pretty much managed to fill the pipes back up with insulation when they recovered the area. Geniuses, simply geniuses. So we opted to remove the half ass coverings and scrape any insulation close to the lights to the side. Yes, I know that reduces our insulation, but it feels much better not to have your kitchen lights create a light show blinking on and off, and it makes us feel more at ease knowing the attic won't catch on fire.
This is a picture of Patrick balancing on beams. It was about 5 minutes before he hit his head on a lantern he hung up from a nail, causing the lantern to plop into the insulation and me cracking up laughing. Apparently laughing at a hot, sweaty, stressed out guy balancing on a beam in an attic frantically looking for a buried lantern is not a good idea. He got mad at me for laughing and asked me to help find the light instead. Of course that only made it worse as I had to hold in my laughter while trying to explain where I thought the lantern may have fallen. Towards the end we switched places and I crawled in the far reaching corners at the tip of the roof where Patrick was having a harder time crawling into. The good news is, so far no lights have gone out since then. Keeping my fingers crossed for those July and August temperatures...
The next project was much more calming…and we were able to breathe a little easier. We made a new corner bed and planted Rosemary. Awwww, look at Patrick – he still has some insulation stuck on his unshaven chin! The Rosemary is next to him in the background. In the foreground is a lantana we planted last year.
This project makes me laugh...we got a Pink Knockout Rose from my parent's friends that we've been trying to plant since we got it a month ago. Of course since we didn't have a planned project we didn't know where to put it. So finally today we ended up planting it. Only to plant one rose we created a whole garden bed. (An extension to the Rosemary bed.)
But digging garden beds never comes without surprises in our garden. I swear we feel like archeologists whenever we get out the shovel. My biggest complaints are coat hangers (they seem to have gotten less frequent these days though) and broken glass. I swear I can't dig without gloves because every shovel has at least one piece of broken glass in it. You can ask Patrick how often I curse because I come across another one. In any case, this uncovering was a bit more exciting as it was next to the former garage location. Some of the "artifacts" included a saw, a hammer, a tire wrench, a large hinge, and other miscellaneous items.
Other uncovered items included some larger rocks, which we decided to put amidst our other garden bed. I'm loving the Monte Negro Lilies by the way! The other two varieties haven't bloomed yet. And I'm upset about this non-stop rain as it seems to be drowning my row of Lavenders.
And voila, our new driveway garden bed! In the back you see the Pink Knockout Rose. We used the new garden bed opportunity to plant some other things we still had sitting around in pots. By the Rose we also planted a Weigela Carnaval that we transplanted from next to the stairs, some Shasta Daisy's I grew from seeds over the winter, a Gerbera Daisy left over from last year, and a miniature Rose I received for my birthday. The other items you can see are the grape vine, which has grown tremendously this year, a little stepping stone path we made from uncovered concrete blocks (found from digging in that garden bed), the Rosemary, the Lantana and Lantana cuttings that I'm trying to propagate in a pot.
Phew, so now that it feels like we got a ton of work done over the weekend we'll see what this upcoming week brings us with the painters! *biting my nails*
05/24/09: Exciting Project Updates
I know our loyal readers are eagerly awaiting our next post, so I wanted to share a few projects that we have going on.
First up is the veggie garden. It has grown quite a lot with all of the rain. (Scroll down the page to see the photo when we planted the veggies.) I am loving the raised bed because it hasn't really had any weeds and we were able to give the plants some great soil to grow in. I also think it looks pretty cool. The tomato plants are huge, and the green peppers are already full of peppers.
The next project is *drum roll please* - PAINTING THE HOUSE! We have wanted to paint the exterior for quite a while, but it is a huge task. The house hasn't been properly painted in years, so there is a ton of prep work involved. We did hire professionals for this project, so it should get done fairly quickly. The first step was to pressure wash the exterior, which they did on Friday. You should have seen the dirt pouring off the house.
This is what it looks like after the pressure washing. Next up is scraping and sanding.
Picking a color has been a big challenge. I won't tell you what we decided on quite yet.
The last project (but definitely not the least) is stripping our new front door. Our friends Josh and Carl over in Howell Station were kind enough to give me their old front door for my birthday!!! Huge thanks to the both of them! The door is going to look great with the newly painted house.
We'll post more about each of the projects as they progress, but there should be some big changes soon.
First up is the veggie garden. It has grown quite a lot with all of the rain. (Scroll down the page to see the photo when we planted the veggies.) I am loving the raised bed because it hasn't really had any weeds and we were able to give the plants some great soil to grow in. I also think it looks pretty cool. The tomato plants are huge, and the green peppers are already full of peppers.
The next project is *drum roll please* - PAINTING THE HOUSE! We have wanted to paint the exterior for quite a while, but it is a huge task. The house hasn't been properly painted in years, so there is a ton of prep work involved. We did hire professionals for this project, so it should get done fairly quickly. The first step was to pressure wash the exterior, which they did on Friday. You should have seen the dirt pouring off the house.
This is what it looks like after the pressure washing. Next up is scraping and sanding.
Picking a color has been a big challenge. I won't tell you what we decided on quite yet.
The last project (but definitely not the least) is stripping our new front door. Our friends Josh and Carl over in Howell Station were kind enough to give me their old front door for my birthday!!! Huge thanks to the both of them! The door is going to look great with the newly painted house.
We'll post more about each of the projects as they progress, but there should be some big changes soon.
05/14/09: Exterior Peel Away
My parents were in town for the past three weeks, so we got limited things done around the house. Instead we got to go on the Inman Park Tour of Homes and marvel at what other people have done with their historic houses, and then we took a little extended weekend getaway to the Jekyll Island/Amelia Beach/Saint Augustine area. So many lovely old homes!
But sightseeing time aside, one of the things we did get to do was apply a test patch of Peel Away on the exterior brick by the steps. You know, the pink colored one!
One done, a lot to go!
So now that my parents have left and we’re feeling the empty nest syndrome I guess it’s time to get the energy back up for some house work!
But sightseeing time aside, one of the things we did get to do was apply a test patch of Peel Away on the exterior brick by the steps. You know, the pink colored one!
One done, a lot to go!
So now that my parents have left and we’re feeling the empty nest syndrome I guess it’s time to get the energy back up for some house work!
04/21/09: Won't You be Our Neighbor?
I have wanted to make this post for a while. A few doors down from us a beautiful old bungalow was recently renovated and it went from being a complete eyesore to being one of the nicest looking houses on the street. Steffi and I had a look in the house before it was renovated, so we have some great "before" and "after" shots. It has a lot of the original details, and the quality of the work is top notch. I think the photos speak for themselves.
The house is for sale, so if you are interested in being our neighbor contact Nia Knowles. There are more photos and her contact info at http://www.flyinside.com/tour.php?id=33178.
Exterior:
Living Room Fireplace:
Dining Room Built-in:
Kitchen Built-in:
The house is for sale, so if you are interested in being our neighbor contact Nia Knowles. There are more photos and her contact info at http://www.flyinside.com/tour.php?id=33178.
Exterior:
Living Room Fireplace:
Dining Room Built-in:
Kitchen Built-in:
04/17/09: Plants, plants, plants
We've had quite the eventful week. With temperatures hovering around 70 in the day and 50 at night we determined last weekend would be the weekend to go plant shopping. Initially we anticipated going Saturday, but knowing how busy our favorite nursery (Growers Outlet in Loganville) gets we decided to skip out of work a little early (that's like crazy talk for us!) and go on the mini road trip on Friday afternoon instead. Can you tell we're spoiled intown people who consider anything further than 10 miles away a road trip? Haha. So we made the one hour ride up there. I was so excited I had butterflies – how dorky am I! I've been trying to come up with a good garden plan for the area next to the shed for a little while. Since our back yard gets pretty shady in the summer when all the trees are grown in, and since the bed I was planning was on the north side of the shed I had to make sure the plants were shade loving. Plus we want to keep as many plants perennials as we can.
So some hours and $97 later we ended up with around 60 plants. (More if you count the fact that some plants came in six packs.)
Plus our friend from West End gave us a whole bunch of hostas! Thanks Debbie!
So of course it was night and we wouldn't get to planting until Saturday, but at least we could plant all day instead of spending half of it at the nursery. Which was clearly needed time with all those plants! So we finished dinner and I was in the process of pre-rinsing the dishes and..."Oh crap!" (me)..."What happened?!" (Patrick)..."I cut myself with the steak knife" (me – staring in shock at my cut between the index and middle finger with flesh just floppin' around under the running water). Well that didn't really fit in with my plans of planting. *big sigh* Such an inconvenient spot too where you can't really put a bandaid or anything. Interestingly enough it didn't hurt at all. Well, I guess I shouldn't say "at all" because it obviously wasn't comfortable, but the pain was less than the three days I always suffer from an ant bite! Needless to say I was more of a planting assistant the next day…
One of the things we finally were able to plant was the raised garden bed that we built a few weeks earlier. It looks like this year we'll have a garden bed with only tomatoes and bell peppers. From left to right we've got the bell peppers, "Sweet Million" tomatoes, "Roma" tomatoes, and "Celebrity" tomatoes.
So like I mentioned, my big project was the north side of the shed. In previous years I think we've done bad planting, not being conscious of the requirements for the plants we were putting there. (I'll use the "I'm a newbie gardener" excuse.) So we tore out the dead rose we bought our first spring and transplanted the other living rose to the southern side of the house. Then we planted three Cast Iron plants, two McKana's Columbines, two Tiger Stripe Foamflowers, four Chocolate Chip Bugleweeds, and one Lungwort Opal.
In the space by the back steps we dug up the Weigela Carnaval we planted the first spring and transplanted it in a pot for the time being. In place we put another Cast Iron plant and Debbie's Hostas. I'm not sure which kind they are. Same scenario as the north side of the shed, this area seems to get a lot of shade in the summer with all the trees, so I think between the shade and the fact that the area floods during rain the Weigela wasn't happy in that spot. Hopefully these plants should fare better in this location. I'm liking it in any case!
On the other side of the steps we've planted Purple Fountain Grass the past two years (annuals). This year we thought we'd try three little Fiber Optic Grass. The ivy that we've moved around for years in that spot seems to be following the rule of "the first year it sleeps, the second year it creeps, the third year it leaps". It's been rather contained up until this point, but this spring it's really exploded and is growing up the side of the stairs. I know I've been cursing the English Ivy growing all over our property, but as long as we can contain this one I like the idea of it clinging onto the ugly cement stairs.
In the front step pots (the ones that have the Confederate Jasmine) we planted a Verbena, a Creeping Jenny, and a Potato Vine (left to right).
We planted three more of Debbie's Hostas in our "woodland garden" behind the shed. Then our neighbor decided to cut the tree off his shed one evening this week. Back in November a neighbor's tree fell, landing on their shed and partially ours. Back then the neighbor cut the tree on our property off, but had left the trunk lying on his shed until now. To our dismay we found the trunk on our fence and woodland garden the next morning. Not sure what he was trying to achieve by rolling the trunk off the shed's roof and onto our fence? I know the fence was only crappy chicken wire and I want to get rid of it real bad, but that didn't mean I wanted it crushed by the tree in the meanwhile! Although our bigger worry was probably our poor little plants getting crushed! All things considered if it had to crush any plants, the plants it fell on were the best option. It smashed one new Hosta, which happened to be the smallest of all the ones we planted, and one Fern. Who knows, maybe the Fern will recover and the Hosta come back next year?
I missed taking photos of a few other things that were planted so I'll post about them next time. In the meanwhile my fingers are still wrapped up from my cut. I'm eager for it to heal now! A week of wrapped together fingers is getting annoying.
So some hours and $97 later we ended up with around 60 plants. (More if you count the fact that some plants came in six packs.)
Plus our friend from West End gave us a whole bunch of hostas! Thanks Debbie!
So of course it was night and we wouldn't get to planting until Saturday, but at least we could plant all day instead of spending half of it at the nursery. Which was clearly needed time with all those plants! So we finished dinner and I was in the process of pre-rinsing the dishes and..."Oh crap!" (me)..."What happened?!" (Patrick)..."I cut myself with the steak knife" (me – staring in shock at my cut between the index and middle finger with flesh just floppin' around under the running water). Well that didn't really fit in with my plans of planting. *big sigh* Such an inconvenient spot too where you can't really put a bandaid or anything. Interestingly enough it didn't hurt at all. Well, I guess I shouldn't say "at all" because it obviously wasn't comfortable, but the pain was less than the three days I always suffer from an ant bite! Needless to say I was more of a planting assistant the next day…
One of the things we finally were able to plant was the raised garden bed that we built a few weeks earlier. It looks like this year we'll have a garden bed with only tomatoes and bell peppers. From left to right we've got the bell peppers, "Sweet Million" tomatoes, "Roma" tomatoes, and "Celebrity" tomatoes.
So like I mentioned, my big project was the north side of the shed. In previous years I think we've done bad planting, not being conscious of the requirements for the plants we were putting there. (I'll use the "I'm a newbie gardener" excuse.) So we tore out the dead rose we bought our first spring and transplanted the other living rose to the southern side of the house. Then we planted three Cast Iron plants, two McKana's Columbines, two Tiger Stripe Foamflowers, four Chocolate Chip Bugleweeds, and one Lungwort Opal.
In the space by the back steps we dug up the Weigela Carnaval we planted the first spring and transplanted it in a pot for the time being. In place we put another Cast Iron plant and Debbie's Hostas. I'm not sure which kind they are. Same scenario as the north side of the shed, this area seems to get a lot of shade in the summer with all the trees, so I think between the shade and the fact that the area floods during rain the Weigela wasn't happy in that spot. Hopefully these plants should fare better in this location. I'm liking it in any case!
On the other side of the steps we've planted Purple Fountain Grass the past two years (annuals). This year we thought we'd try three little Fiber Optic Grass. The ivy that we've moved around for years in that spot seems to be following the rule of "the first year it sleeps, the second year it creeps, the third year it leaps". It's been rather contained up until this point, but this spring it's really exploded and is growing up the side of the stairs. I know I've been cursing the English Ivy growing all over our property, but as long as we can contain this one I like the idea of it clinging onto the ugly cement stairs.
In the front step pots (the ones that have the Confederate Jasmine) we planted a Verbena, a Creeping Jenny, and a Potato Vine (left to right).
We planted three more of Debbie's Hostas in our "woodland garden" behind the shed. Then our neighbor decided to cut the tree off his shed one evening this week. Back in November a neighbor's tree fell, landing on their shed and partially ours. Back then the neighbor cut the tree on our property off, but had left the trunk lying on his shed until now. To our dismay we found the trunk on our fence and woodland garden the next morning. Not sure what he was trying to achieve by rolling the trunk off the shed's roof and onto our fence? I know the fence was only crappy chicken wire and I want to get rid of it real bad, but that didn't mean I wanted it crushed by the tree in the meanwhile! Although our bigger worry was probably our poor little plants getting crushed! All things considered if it had to crush any plants, the plants it fell on were the best option. It smashed one new Hosta, which happened to be the smallest of all the ones we planted, and one Fern. Who knows, maybe the Fern will recover and the Hosta come back next year?
I missed taking photos of a few other things that were planted so I'll post about them next time. In the meanwhile my fingers are still wrapped up from my cut. I'm eager for it to heal now! A week of wrapped together fingers is getting annoying.
04/09/09: Flooding and Pile-Be-Gone
The weekend before last we had a rather unpleasant experience. While trying to shower we noticed the water wasn't very warm. The hot was turned all the way up, no cold on at all, and the water felt just bearable to shower under. We thought that was strange and went on about our day, running some errands, etc. When we got back we thought we'd look if something was wrong with the hot water heater, which is located in the crawl space. When we opened the door we found a rather unpleasant surprise – standing water, about 6 inches deep! Our basement had flooded! There had been about 5 days of non-stop rain and apparently the earth couldn't soak it up fast enough. We haven't had that happen before. I mean, we don't go in the crawl space on a regular basis, so I wouldn't know if there’s been any standing water before, but obviously this was high enough that it put out the gas flame on the hot water heater.
So of course we panicked. We scrambled to get some buckets and attempted to fill them and pour them out in the yard. Of course the yard itself was still so saturated with water that there were tons of puddles everywhere, which didn't exactly help! Then we tried using the ShopVac, but that didn't get us anywhere quickly. I think we tried like 3 or 4 other methods of getting the water out of there until it started getting dark and we were frustrated. We called some neighbors who happened to have a water pump that we were able to borrow from them. The plan was to do it the next day.
Well, the next day came and we were all prepared to get pumping, only to find all the water had disappeared on its own over night! What a relief. Thankfully the water heater was alright too.
This past weekend felt much more fulfilling. We removed a dead electric wire going from the house to the garden shed and an old exterior light dangling from the side of the house. The only thing I'll be missing about the wire is the pretty birds that liked to hang out on it.
Patrick also decided to tackle the bathroom built-in drawer while I was racking up some more leaves. I think we had removed the majority of the paint on a previous occasion, so he was able to sand it down so that we can paint it again. Look at our vibrant tulips in the background!
And last, but not least, we got rid of all of our big piles of junk on our driveway!! You know, the piles that made us look really, really trashy! We're so excited!! One pile was made up of the concrete remains from the front path and was sitting on the driveway at the front of the house. The other pile has been accumulating junk over the last two and a half years on the driveway in the backyard. And because we have some awesome neighbors we were able to get rid of both of them. The front pile we were able to remove several weeks ago when our neighbor Jim let us throw all the concrete debris in his dumpster. Somehow we managed to miss taking photos of both the pile when we made it (too focused on building the path), as well as when we got rid of it. The other pile we were able to eliminate this past weekend because our other neighbors, Paula and Wesley, had a dumpster for their renovation that they weren't going to fill up all the way. This has been huge for us! They were big piles of embarrassment and now they're gone. (Thanks Jim, Paula, and Wesley!) Now if that rain tomorrow will just wash away the rest of the dirt…preferably without flooding our crawl space again.
Oh, and speaking of neighbors, our street is rockin' it! We're about to have three new neighbors. Even more exciting – they're all homeowners. And funnily enough they're all moving in at the end of this month. In general I feel like there's been a swing of new people (homeowners!) buying houses in the vicinity. It feels really refreshing. I'm glad to see we're making progress and filling some of these empty homes. My prediction of 2009 being a big year for Westview seems to already be proving to be true…
So of course we panicked. We scrambled to get some buckets and attempted to fill them and pour them out in the yard. Of course the yard itself was still so saturated with water that there were tons of puddles everywhere, which didn't exactly help! Then we tried using the ShopVac, but that didn't get us anywhere quickly. I think we tried like 3 or 4 other methods of getting the water out of there until it started getting dark and we were frustrated. We called some neighbors who happened to have a water pump that we were able to borrow from them. The plan was to do it the next day.
Well, the next day came and we were all prepared to get pumping, only to find all the water had disappeared on its own over night! What a relief. Thankfully the water heater was alright too.
This past weekend felt much more fulfilling. We removed a dead electric wire going from the house to the garden shed and an old exterior light dangling from the side of the house. The only thing I'll be missing about the wire is the pretty birds that liked to hang out on it.
Patrick also decided to tackle the bathroom built-in drawer while I was racking up some more leaves. I think we had removed the majority of the paint on a previous occasion, so he was able to sand it down so that we can paint it again. Look at our vibrant tulips in the background!
And last, but not least, we got rid of all of our big piles of junk on our driveway!! You know, the piles that made us look really, really trashy! We're so excited!! One pile was made up of the concrete remains from the front path and was sitting on the driveway at the front of the house. The other pile has been accumulating junk over the last two and a half years on the driveway in the backyard. And because we have some awesome neighbors we were able to get rid of both of them. The front pile we were able to remove several weeks ago when our neighbor Jim let us throw all the concrete debris in his dumpster. Somehow we managed to miss taking photos of both the pile when we made it (too focused on building the path), as well as when we got rid of it. The other pile we were able to eliminate this past weekend because our other neighbors, Paula and Wesley, had a dumpster for their renovation that they weren't going to fill up all the way. This has been huge for us! They were big piles of embarrassment and now they're gone. (Thanks Jim, Paula, and Wesley!) Now if that rain tomorrow will just wash away the rest of the dirt…preferably without flooding our crawl space again.
Oh, and speaking of neighbors, our street is rockin' it! We're about to have three new neighbors. Even more exciting – they're all homeowners. And funnily enough they're all moving in at the end of this month. In general I feel like there's been a swing of new people (homeowners!) buying houses in the vicinity. It feels really refreshing. I'm glad to see we're making progress and filling some of these empty homes. My prediction of 2009 being a big year for Westview seems to already be proving to be true…
When we got married five years ago we went to San Francisco for our honeymoon. One day we rented a car to visit Muir Woods, and they were selling Giant Sequoia saplings in the gift shop for just a few dollars. We thought it would be fun to bring one back to Atlanta. For the first few years we lived in an apartment and then a loft, so the Sequoia had to live in a pot. It didn’t grow very much, but it hung in there. We swore as soon as we bought a house it would go in the ground.
Soooo now we have owned the house for over two years and the Sequoia finally got planted in the backyard! We couldn’t decide where to put it, and lets face it – this isn’t like planting a rose bush. This tree is supposed to grow fast and tall, so we wanted to make sure where we put it wouldn’t block the sun and would allow it enough space to do its thing. We won’t live long enough to see it reach full maturity (over 200 feet after 100+ years), but it will be exciting to watch it grow.
I know it looks like the Christmas tree from Charlie Brown, but it was a lot smaller when we bought it.
Grow little one, grow!!
In addition to the Giant Sequoia we have been preparing to plant our vegetable garden. The past two years we planted the vegetables straight in the ground, and the results weren’t near as good as we had hoped. This year we decided to try a raised garden bed. We have read about them quite a bit in magazines, and people always seemed to speak highly about them.
We built the bed out of untreated pine 2x10s. They will slowly rot away, but treated wood is not good for you or your plants. We also saw these wonderful stained beds online, so we couldn’t resist dressing ours up a little. The red stain is water based, so it hopefully isn’t toxic. (It is advertised on the label as being “safe” – whatever that really means.)
We constructed the frame for the garden bed on the driveway. The spikes in the corners hold it in place.
We went to Green Brothers Landscape Supply and bought some special dirt for the raised bed. It has crushed granite, which they claim is the "secret" ingredient.
Steffi filling it up. Check out the red stain! Our raised bed has style.
Today it was snowing in Atlanta, but this should be the last of the cold weather. We are hoping to plant some of the crops this weekend, and we will make sure to post frequently about the progress.
Soooo now we have owned the house for over two years and the Sequoia finally got planted in the backyard! We couldn’t decide where to put it, and lets face it – this isn’t like planting a rose bush. This tree is supposed to grow fast and tall, so we wanted to make sure where we put it wouldn’t block the sun and would allow it enough space to do its thing. We won’t live long enough to see it reach full maturity (over 200 feet after 100+ years), but it will be exciting to watch it grow.
I know it looks like the Christmas tree from Charlie Brown, but it was a lot smaller when we bought it.
Grow little one, grow!!
In addition to the Giant Sequoia we have been preparing to plant our vegetable garden. The past two years we planted the vegetables straight in the ground, and the results weren’t near as good as we had hoped. This year we decided to try a raised garden bed. We have read about them quite a bit in magazines, and people always seemed to speak highly about them.
We built the bed out of untreated pine 2x10s. They will slowly rot away, but treated wood is not good for you or your plants. We also saw these wonderful stained beds online, so we couldn’t resist dressing ours up a little. The red stain is water based, so it hopefully isn’t toxic. (It is advertised on the label as being “safe” – whatever that really means.)
We constructed the frame for the garden bed on the driveway. The spikes in the corners hold it in place.
We went to Green Brothers Landscape Supply and bought some special dirt for the raised bed. It has crushed granite, which they claim is the "secret" ingredient.
Steffi filling it up. Check out the red stain! Our raised bed has style.
Today it was snowing in Atlanta, but this should be the last of the cold weather. We are hoping to plant some of the crops this weekend, and we will make sure to post frequently about the progress.
03/15/09: General Updates
Alright, so we've worked on a few projects over the last couple of weeks. And with this rollercoaster weather it gave us a nice variety of things to do.
Two weeks ago when it was snowing we stripped some more paint. Patrick worked on the last bit of dining room base molding and I worked on some detail by the kitchen door. I think with Patrick finishing the base molding the only large surface painted areas remaining are the fire place mantle and the coffered ceilings. All the other work will be the painstaking detail pieces.
Then last weekend we had outstanding weather topping off at somewhere around 80F that made it ideal for some outside projects. For that matter it was almost getting too hot to work! I was finally able to tackle some of the leaves remaining from fall. Some people are really good about removing those as soon as they hit the ground. I'm the lazy one that waits to make sure that every last leaf has fallen before I bother removing any of them. One of my excuses is that they act as a protective winter blanket like mulch does, which is why I wasn't removing them before. ;-) So now I've been able to put seven brown bags by the curb, fill up the compost with a ton of leaves, and still have about three quarters of the yard left to go.
So while I was busy raking leaves Patrick decided to tackle the remaining fence posts in the middle of our yard. When we bought the house there was a fence going through the yard – perhaps because of a dog? Back in November 2006 we tore out the wire portions. I love how my comment at the time was "Next up: the poles gotta go" – that was over two years ago, haha. So as you can see it's taken us a while to get back to this one. Patrick pretty much struggled with it the majority of the workday. Oh how rewarding to get rid of that fence door!
Those little buggers sure were cemented deep into the ground.
So once I was done raking the front lawn and parts of the back yard I decided to take on a piece of the garden being swallowed up by English Ivy. (I'm surprised its leaves don't come with devil horns.) I guess this portion of the end of the driveway has been overlooked since it's been hidden behind our pile of garbage that we have yet to get rid of. My excuse is that in the winter it's too cold to work on this and in the summer you get eaten alive by the mosquitos and uhmmm, I don't have an excuse for spring or fall, except that I’m tackling it now!
*gasp* There is a wall hidden behind all that English Ivy! So after ripping out all the English Ivy I found about half a trash can full of junk – old beer bottles, old liquor bottles, clothes, rusty metal parts, Styrofoam, you name it. But underneath that was some wonderfully brown earth! I guess all those leaves that lay there for who knows how long composted themselves. The earth came in handy too to fill in the fence post holes.
Man we really need a dumpster.
Two weeks ago when it was snowing we stripped some more paint. Patrick worked on the last bit of dining room base molding and I worked on some detail by the kitchen door. I think with Patrick finishing the base molding the only large surface painted areas remaining are the fire place mantle and the coffered ceilings. All the other work will be the painstaking detail pieces.
Then last weekend we had outstanding weather topping off at somewhere around 80F that made it ideal for some outside projects. For that matter it was almost getting too hot to work! I was finally able to tackle some of the leaves remaining from fall. Some people are really good about removing those as soon as they hit the ground. I'm the lazy one that waits to make sure that every last leaf has fallen before I bother removing any of them. One of my excuses is that they act as a protective winter blanket like mulch does, which is why I wasn't removing them before. ;-) So now I've been able to put seven brown bags by the curb, fill up the compost with a ton of leaves, and still have about three quarters of the yard left to go.
So while I was busy raking leaves Patrick decided to tackle the remaining fence posts in the middle of our yard. When we bought the house there was a fence going through the yard – perhaps because of a dog? Back in November 2006 we tore out the wire portions. I love how my comment at the time was "Next up: the poles gotta go" – that was over two years ago, haha. So as you can see it's taken us a while to get back to this one. Patrick pretty much struggled with it the majority of the workday. Oh how rewarding to get rid of that fence door!
Those little buggers sure were cemented deep into the ground.
So once I was done raking the front lawn and parts of the back yard I decided to take on a piece of the garden being swallowed up by English Ivy. (I'm surprised its leaves don't come with devil horns.) I guess this portion of the end of the driveway has been overlooked since it's been hidden behind our pile of garbage that we have yet to get rid of. My excuse is that in the winter it's too cold to work on this and in the summer you get eaten alive by the mosquitos and uhmmm, I don't have an excuse for spring or fall, except that I’m tackling it now!
*gasp* There is a wall hidden behind all that English Ivy! So after ripping out all the English Ivy I found about half a trash can full of junk – old beer bottles, old liquor bottles, clothes, rusty metal parts, Styrofoam, you name it. But underneath that was some wonderfully brown earth! I guess all those leaves that lay there for who knows how long composted themselves. The earth came in handy too to fill in the fence post holes.
Man we really need a dumpster.
03/07/09: Westview Bungalow Just Expanded!
Well... the website design expanded to take up more of your screen. The house is still the same size. But just look at all the extra space we have in here! Now we can make our photos larger and you don't have to scroll so much to read the text.