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.
01/26/09: Goals for 2009
I wanted to make a quick blog entry about my goals for the house in 2009. This way at the end of the year we can reflect back and see how many of the tasks we actually finish.
1) Finish stripping the dining room, paint the walls, re-stain/poly the wood work.
2) Finish painting and putting back together the built-ins in the kitchen and bathroom.
3) Finish painting the kitchen.
4) Replace the stairs to the front porch.
I know the list seems short, but some of these projects are huge. The dining room we have already been working on for almost two years. I'm sure there are some things I am leaving off, so chances are I'll come back and edit this at some point.
1) Finish stripping the dining room, paint the walls, re-stain/poly the wood work.
2) Finish painting and putting back together the built-ins in the kitchen and bathroom.
3) Finish painting the kitchen.
4) Replace the stairs to the front porch.
I know the list seems short, but some of these projects are huge. The dining room we have already been working on for almost two years. I'm sure there are some things I am leaving off, so chances are I'll come back and edit this at some point.
01/13/09: Bungalow New Years Love
I can't believe another year has passed! MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY 2009 EVERYONE!
I also can't believe the entire month of December somehow flew by without a single blog entry. All I can say is life has been crazy! (In a good way.) We have been crazy busy with our business...which is never a bad thing, but even less so when everyone else is talking about recession and lay-offs and such. Unfortunately those 11pm work nights for most of December also meant our house process just about came to a screeching halt. (That, and as Patrick noted in the previous blog entry, we were also out of town for a little bit.) Thankfully we were able to push ourselves to work a little bit more on paint removal in the dining room. We had a deadline to meet – the Westview book was being republished in time to make it back for Christmas and we wanted to update one of our detail fireplace pictures with a dining room shot...
...so at least from that angle it looks decent. And as we enter 2009 the business workload hasn't slowed down, so we'll just have to discipline ourselves to not entirely abandon all of our unfinished house projects. Actually that makes me laugh...unfinished projects...you get so used to them you don't even notice anymore. We've had comments from people that we have "cool" kitchen crown molding and then we have to explain that it wasn't actually meant to be unpainted, but was rather just another unfinished project, haha.
There are times where I feel that we're not getting anything done on the house. The first few months so much happened and things seem to progress so slowly now. I suppose I need to remind myself that the first few months of work consisted of bringing the house up from a non-inhabitable space to an inhabitable space. Thankfully our house is very much livable now and we're just working on the aesthetical items. As I was scanning through the folders of photos documenting our house process in 2008 I was actually excited to realize that perhaps we got more done than I thought. We painted the bedroom, worked on dining room paint removal off and on throughout the year, had the attic insulated, finished the interior of the bathroom built-in, had the brick foundation re-pointed and partially rebuilt, and tore out our shameful broken concrete front path and replaced it with a beautiful historic brick path.
In addition to reviewing our own house progress many things have happened in Westview in 2008, and we're excited to be able to say we've been part of it. We've been active with our neighborhood association, the Westview Community Organization, and the Neighborhood Planning Unit (the official citizen advisory council to the City of Atlanta), as well as meetings with City Council Members, the Bureau of Planning, participating in the Atlanta Home Show, and the list goes on. Of course as many things in life the good also comes with some bad mixed in. We experienced a tornado narrowly passing our neighborhood (thankfully!) only to cause much damage downtown. We've witnessed the City of Atlanta spiral into a financial disaster, closing Fire Station #7 in neighboring West End, cutting city services and increasing our water fees. We were there to see mortgage fraud mastermind Kevin Wiggins get sentenced to 8 years in prison for leaving our neighborhoods devastated in the early 2000s.
But like a sprout pushing its way through the soil in spring Westview is up for an exciting year. I think 2009 will be big for Westview. I can feel it. Sometimes change is so gradual you don't see it. But this feels like change. We're gaining more and more homeowners who are also busy fixing up their homes. We have a new homeowner on our street working on the house, and another house under contract a few doors down from us. And we see new faces appearing at the Westview Community Organization meetings or emailing us saying "Hey, I'm a new neighbor...". Hopefully all these new neighbors coming to Westview and working on their houses will inspire us to work extra hard in 2009. You know, keeping up with the Jones'...
I also can't believe the entire month of December somehow flew by without a single blog entry. All I can say is life has been crazy! (In a good way.) We have been crazy busy with our business...which is never a bad thing, but even less so when everyone else is talking about recession and lay-offs and such. Unfortunately those 11pm work nights for most of December also meant our house process just about came to a screeching halt. (That, and as Patrick noted in the previous blog entry, we were also out of town for a little bit.) Thankfully we were able to push ourselves to work a little bit more on paint removal in the dining room. We had a deadline to meet – the Westview book was being republished in time to make it back for Christmas and we wanted to update one of our detail fireplace pictures with a dining room shot...
...so at least from that angle it looks decent. And as we enter 2009 the business workload hasn't slowed down, so we'll just have to discipline ourselves to not entirely abandon all of our unfinished house projects. Actually that makes me laugh...unfinished projects...you get so used to them you don't even notice anymore. We've had comments from people that we have "cool" kitchen crown molding and then we have to explain that it wasn't actually meant to be unpainted, but was rather just another unfinished project, haha.
There are times where I feel that we're not getting anything done on the house. The first few months so much happened and things seem to progress so slowly now. I suppose I need to remind myself that the first few months of work consisted of bringing the house up from a non-inhabitable space to an inhabitable space. Thankfully our house is very much livable now and we're just working on the aesthetical items. As I was scanning through the folders of photos documenting our house process in 2008 I was actually excited to realize that perhaps we got more done than I thought. We painted the bedroom, worked on dining room paint removal off and on throughout the year, had the attic insulated, finished the interior of the bathroom built-in, had the brick foundation re-pointed and partially rebuilt, and tore out our shameful broken concrete front path and replaced it with a beautiful historic brick path.
In addition to reviewing our own house progress many things have happened in Westview in 2008, and we're excited to be able to say we've been part of it. We've been active with our neighborhood association, the Westview Community Organization, and the Neighborhood Planning Unit (the official citizen advisory council to the City of Atlanta), as well as meetings with City Council Members, the Bureau of Planning, participating in the Atlanta Home Show, and the list goes on. Of course as many things in life the good also comes with some bad mixed in. We experienced a tornado narrowly passing our neighborhood (thankfully!) only to cause much damage downtown. We've witnessed the City of Atlanta spiral into a financial disaster, closing Fire Station #7 in neighboring West End, cutting city services and increasing our water fees. We were there to see mortgage fraud mastermind Kevin Wiggins get sentenced to 8 years in prison for leaving our neighborhoods devastated in the early 2000s.
But like a sprout pushing its way through the soil in spring Westview is up for an exciting year. I think 2009 will be big for Westview. I can feel it. Sometimes change is so gradual you don't see it. But this feels like change. We're gaining more and more homeowners who are also busy fixing up their homes. We have a new homeowner on our street working on the house, and another house under contract a few doors down from us. And we see new faces appearing at the Westview Community Organization meetings or emailing us saying "Hey, I'm a new neighbor...". Hopefully all these new neighbors coming to Westview and working on their houses will inspire us to work extra hard in 2009. You know, keeping up with the Jones'...
09/27/08: Two-Year Housaversary
As I'm sitting here on this Saturday, the 27th of September 2008, in the middle of a financial crisis that is leaving citizens sitting at the curb of their foreclosed homes and ex-employees crying about how their fortune 500 company has fallen apart, biting our fingernails at who will win the presidential election, and Atlantans scrambling to find a gas station that has not sold out of gas, it is hard to believe that Patrick and I have a reason to celebrate. But there is. It is our two year "housaversary"!
And because I only have half an hour left in this day as I'm typing this (and because SNL is coming on now) I think I will simply quote myself from one year ago...
"Here I was hoping to break out some great blog about our one-year homeownership anniversary...and all I got was this crappy photo. :-P"
Only cross out the "one" and make it a "two". :) Oh I'm so lazy.
So here is a toast to all of you homeowners! And here is a toast to our two-year house anniversary! And a toast to many more homeownership years!
<3 P & S
And because I only have half an hour left in this day as I'm typing this (and because SNL is coming on now) I think I will simply quote myself from one year ago...
"Here I was hoping to break out some great blog about our one-year homeownership anniversary...and all I got was this crappy photo. :-P"
Only cross out the "one" and make it a "two". :) Oh I'm so lazy.
So here is a toast to all of you homeowners! And here is a toast to our two-year house anniversary! And a toast to many more homeownership years!
<3 P & S