Late March is one of our favorite times of the year! The temperatures start rising, the plants start emerging from their slumber, and we can look back at what the cold temperatures helped us accomplish inside the house. When it’s warm outside we have a difficult time staying indoors. So back to one of our favorite past times… you guessed it, we’ve been paint stripping in the dining room again. I’m happy to say we’re getting really close. It’s only been seven years! The day Steffi lets me paint the walls will be a very big deal (she says the paint stripping has to be done first so we don’t mess up the paint).

I do about 98% of the work with the heat gun and paint scraper, but Steffi’s 2% takes 98% of the time.

Look really closely at this next photo. Yes, that is a dental pick in her right hand. Now do you understand why it takes so long?

The outside is beckoning, so we better hurry up.

Cross your fingers for our dining room!

This past weekend we finally got around to a project we had been planning since last winter – we built a cold frame. If you’re not familiar with cold frames they are basically mini greenhouses that allow you to garden outside during the cooler months. We’ll probably use ours to grow lettuce and other veggies in the late fall/early winter and then start seeds in the late winter/early spring.

We’re always collecting old architectural materials that would otherwise be headed to a landfill, so we just drug what we needed for the project out of the basement. The materials included one 2×4, tongue and groove paneling, an old window, two galvanized hinges (from Lowes) and a lot of nails. In a previous life the tongue and groove paneling was the ceiling of our next door neighbor’s back porch. It is still painted the original sky blue. The window came from a house at the end of our street.

Tongue and Groove Ceiling

We first built the front and back walls by nailing the tongue and groove boards to 2x4s. We made sure to leave overlap on each end for the sides. We wanted to hide the ends of the boards on side walls behind this lip. Once we had the front and back walls built we setup the cold frame so we could measure the width of side walls. This allowed us to skip the geometry lesson required to figure out angles and such.

Setting up the front and back walls.

Once we cut the boards to the correct length we went ahead and nailed them to the sides.

Adding the side walls.

The only boards left to cut were the angled pieces at the top. This seemed like it would be tricky at first, but it’s not really. You just measure the height and width and connect the dots. We used a 2×4 as a straight edge to mark the angled side. The cut was long and it crossed two board, which presented a little challenge, but it wasn’t all that difficult.

The finished sidewalls.

With the construction of the box complete the only thing left was to add the hinges. We picked up a pair of four inch galvanized t-hinges at Lowes.

Attaching the hinges.

And we’re done!

Ready for some plants!

I wanted to give a quick update on the progress on our new patio. We’ve been loving this new addition to our yard, and it has provided us a lot of extra space for landscaping. We’ve been busy tilling, plant shopping, hole digging, planting and mulching.

To get started we made a trip to our favorite garden center, Grower’s Outlet, to pick out some plants. Since part of the area around the patio is sun/part-sun and part of it is shade we were able to get a nice variety of shrubs and perennials.  When we got home we set them out to determine the size of the new bed.

Setting out new plants around the patio.

The next stop was to Northside Tool Rental to pick up a tiller. This was our first time renting from them, and the experience was very positive. I called ahead to make sure they had the tiller we wanted, and in no time we were busy tilling. We rented the Mantis, which I would highly recommend for projects of this size. If you need to do a bigger space I would probably recommend something larger, but for creating flower beds it was perfect.

The Mantis tiller hard at work!

Once the initial tilling was done we used the garden rake to shift some dirt around, and then I went over it again with the tiller to ensure the dirt was nice and loose.

Steffi raking the dirt in the new flower bed.

And finally we can start planting! For the shade area we planted some white azaleas, hostas, ferns and a lacecap hydrangea.

Azaleas, hostas, ferns, and a hydrangea in the shady area behind the patio.

For the sunny spots we have a forsythia, purple coneflowers, small “soft touch” holly bushes…

Steffi working on planting the cone flowers.

And this amazing David Austin “Bishop’s Castle” rose that we bought at Pike Nursery. It is extremely fragrant, so we hope we will be able to smell it while sitting on the patio.

David Austin Bishop’s Castle Rose

Last but not least, we put down a lot of mulch. Hopefully it will help with weeds, moisture, splashing mud, etc. We still have a few more plants to add, so check back soon for more updates! Also, we setup a Facebook page for Westview Bungalow so you can stay in touch and always be alerted when we have new updates, so hop over there and “like” us!

It always looks so nice when freshly mulched! If only it would stay that way…