New sidewalks and smile a new lease on life

Of course all that roadwork slowed down and finally stalled our in house renovations and the front deck so maybe next spring we can get things finished.

Another thing that happened this summer that stalled things even more was the lose of our beloved Mojo.   He had been part of this family for nearly 16 years and we are still missing him badly.
We invited a new poodle puppy into our life a couple of months later.   Life will never be the same... 

 Now 8 months old and full of  intelligence, vim, and vigor Jazz has become an even more important part  of our household then we ever expected.  She is opening doors for me that have been closed for years. Her need for exercise gets me out of bed on days I would rather forget the world exists, her antics make me smile when the world is black.  Saturday we will move from simple just being a good dog training to task training and eventually on to full Service Dog status for her and me a new life outside my house and safe places.

 

Look at how bright and white these new sidewalks are.  I keep thinking there is snow on the ground when I glance out the windows.   Of course I am slowly learning to look at the GRASS.  Yes we actually have grass now at least near the new sidewalk complements of of the city.  It looks odd because it is still green when the rest of the grass in the front yard is now browned off for the winter.

We have sidewalks!

Few days ago they put in the new street curbs and now we even have a sidewalk but still no road.  Boy does it look odd.  . Once they actually get the road finished we can get to work on the deck/front steps.  Garage is nearly done and I am really looking forward to seeing how it looks.

I still have one box for the garden to get setup but the others are growing well.  I think we will have some nice salads year.   Now if I could just get the cucumbers to grow as well as the onions, lettuce and radishes. I currently have 6 tomatoes doing well and 3 struggling in our intense heat.  Beans are coming up in all the right places so we will have a nice selection of beans later and beets and Swiss chard too. 

I hate construction!

Today it became very apparent that the guy from DOT did not know what he was talking about.  Our  day lilies are not safe where they are.  We need to dig up and move all the day lilies from the bed near the cherry tree and about half of the day lilies on the driveway side of the yard.   On the up side for the first time since we moved in we have good water pressure...

We have gotten our side of the garage primed and ready for paint.  Toli decided not to paint it pure white but rather a very pale lavender similar to the color we have in the breakfast nook.  That color changes throughout the day from "white" to grey to very pale lavender.  Like the breakfast nook we will be using a greyed green for the trim.

I am going to be job hunting later this week.  After being seduced with pretty photos of bunnies and low prices I weakened and ended up saying yes to a total of three new angoras.  One is an adorable lilac tort English Angora.  He will be for display only I am NOT getting into the Fraggle Rock bunnies.  The other two are both Satin Angoras.  Do si do is a chocolate agouti doe that will hopefully make some chinchilla babies when bred to d'Artagnan.  The black buck needs a name yet but he will be a good match with Cloud Flower my sable pearl.

More garden changes

OOPS!  I forgot both the cucumbers for Toli and our first attempt to grow potatoes when planning the garden.  Thanks goodness for this online Garden Planner.  It let me play around online with box sizes and placement as well as plants and plant placement.  Really found it handy.

So drum roll please Here is what we are planning for the backyard "garden" area.   Notice how many boxes I ended up with.  5 big boxes is not what we had in mind when I started this year but it was the only way to fit everything in.  The biggest problem was fitting in my squash and his cucumbers...

Toli has been busy making the extra boxes needed and I get to do the heavy work and blend the soil for the boxes.  He is at least helping me put it in the boxes.  I also want to move my compost pile out of the corner and over near the wooden fence.  I am hoping to actually find  room for a 3 bin setup which will make life easier next year when I need compost for the garden boxes.

Slowly but surely the house and garden are getting done. 

Toli has all of our side of the garage ready to prime and paint.  He still needs to work on our neighbors side of the front.  He has to repair their door and sand down that side then all the prep work will be done.   Grin yes we are doing the FRONT of the neighbors side of the garage.  They paid for him to do it and will buy any supplies needed for their side.  It actually is in our best interests to make at least the front look cared for since our garage is one building shared with the neighbors.

The back door is done but I still need to scrape the bathroom ceiling and paint it.  Then there are those front steps...

Two of my four garden boxes are in place and filled with something like Mel's Mix. Toli will be putting on their grids today and then I will start to plant.  The smaller 3 by 3 box and the 1 x 4 box will have to wait until the wind dies down so I can mix the "dirt" for them.   Grin I did way overbuy some parts of the dirt mix so may have to sweet talk Toli into another long narrow box to plant tomatoes in since I have ended up with more indet mater plants then I have room for if I want pole beans...  Actually I have lots of room for plants it is just those climbing plants that I am lacking room for.   When all the boxes are in place and ready to each box will have a trellis on one side so there will be a total of 15 ft of trellis space unfortunately with at least 8 mater plants in there that will take up most of that room leaving me none for cucumbers or pole beans or other climbing plants.

Garden changes

As posted before the boxes were all laid out then along come Toli...

The boxes got moved now three are along the garden fence line and one is out in the middle where the old trellis is.  Together we got landscape cloth under all 4 boxes and they are ready for the soil mix.

We will do that tomorrow as we got all the ingredients for it today.  Unloading all the bags took some time and Toli was like that is a lot of soil.  Told him I have a lot of space to fill in the boxes and that any left over could be used in the day lily beds.  Now I need to figure out how to measure out and blend the right amounts of each ingredient to get close to the right percentages for Mel's Mix that I am trying to get close to.

Well the boxes are all laid out in the garden area where I want them to be but now they are waiting for me to find a way to buy dirt or in this case the ingredients for something like Mel's mix for Square Foot gardening.  The boxes are all deeper then his 6 inch depth so will take a lot of soil mix.  I think I figured to fill them to the top they would need nearly 48 cubic feet of soil.  I think this year I will just put in a 6 inch layer and add more soil next year.   

Hope we get the dirt figured out asap as my little home grown seedlings need to go in the ground.  I have a few tomatoes, a couple of eggplants and some flowers.

My tomatoes are not all the normal red maters most are used to.  I have loads of Lime Green Salad which is a little dwarf with green when ripe tomatoes, a couple of Matina and of Gregori's Alti which are both red heirloom that handle cool temperatures and ripen early. I even have a gasp hybrid I have raised from seed called Oregon Spring.  This is a red early ripening, cool tolerant hybrid. I lost my Taxi seedlings so bought a yellow hybrid called Lemon Boy.   I have not tried Lemon Boy before so that will be interesting.

No peppers survived the can't reach them time so if I want any in the garden I will need to buy some.

Boxes, boxes and more boxes

Rain is threatening today so no painting on the outside door as planned.  Instead Toli and I sorted through his pile of untreated scrap lumber and found wood for a total of 4 garden boxes. He is working on the boxes right now.  Once they are built we will have to find places for them and get them ready for planting.  One is a narrow box that will go near the fence and be planted with pole beans and maybe a tomato or two.  The other 3 are squares and will get my bush beans, lettuces, and other salad fixings.  My squash will actually go in the front yard this year since the day lily beds are in need of being redone and that will leave room for a couple of bush squash.

Talked to building department today and found out exactly what we need for a building permit.  Sigh I could not believe all the crap they want.  I expected some of it but not all of it.  Thank goodness I had taken Nicks advice and have one of the folks at the box store drawing up the deck plans. That will take care of those plans but we still have to find the pins marking our lot and draw up a plot plan for the permit and of course everything has to be in duplicate...  Not sure I really want to mess with building folks but sigh it is that or pay someone to do the work for me.

Early on in my paint research I was shown some stuff from RustOleum that they make for doors.  I liked the sounds of it and today we picked up a can of the Ivory for the back door.  The stuff smells as it is oil based and takes more smelly stuff for the clean up. Toli got one coat of paint on the door today and will put another one on tomorrow if the weather holds.  I think it will work out nicely for that door but not sure I will want it on the front door.

I took yesterday off to attend a rabbit show that was being held about 6 blocks from my house.   I walked in and the first thing I saw was a big, beautiful Satin Angora boy.   Turned out he was not there to show but rather to sell.   Yes he came home with me.  His name is now d'Artagnan.  My new beautiful baby boy is probably an ermine which means his spinnable wool will stay nearly white but he may get a bit more color on his noes and ears.

 As I had promised her breeder I took my little doe Cloud Flower with me to get some opinions on her.  Due to her small size I was not sure if she would be big enough to fit the standard so was not expecting much. Grin she ended up with a BOB which sounds impressive but isn't really in this case.   Satin Angora are fairly rare especially in this area.   The only ones at the show were Cloud Flower and a beautiful older chinchilla doe.  In show A the chinchilla doe beat Cloud Flower and in show B Cloud Flower beat the chinchilla doe. 

1 light or 2?

Toli inspecting his painting job

We were only supposed to paint the walls and window trim in the nook but after looking at the walls and the ceiling Toli changed his mind. After all the work done on the walls of the breakfast nook the rest of the kitchen looks horrid! Now we are going to paint all of the kitchen.

Wry grin that is what Nick and I have been trying to tell Toli needed to be done from the start.  Good thing I bought enough of my wall paint for the whole kitchen, the bathroom, and the hall.   

Yesterday I got the ceiling paint for the kitchen and Toli took down the fan/light so he could clean the ceiling in that area.  The fan was really put in very poorly even the box was hanging below the ceiling level!  Toli was not at all happy with what he found.   Having that light down makes me wonder if we should just patch that hole and install two ceiling lights in the kitchen.  One would be centered in the breakfast nook and one would be "centered" in the kitchen area.  I think the extra light would be wonderful and right now is the time to put them in...

Toli is home and ready to paint the windows in the nook.  I was allowed to be lazy and not paint today because the construction out front had the water off all day.  Since the road was torn up for new storm drains they also put in a new water main.  According to the construction worker we should have water pressure now :-)

The bathroom is on hold until we can get a delivery truck to our house.  Wry grin that torn up and closed road is a limiting factor.  As I told someone the other day you can't get to my house.  The fact of the matter is there are ways to get close but not with a delivery truck.  I am not at all sure how they are picking up trash right now since the alley is blocked at one end ...

Garage is on hold due to the weather and Nick being busy with Hunters home schooling this week.

Front steps are on hold until next month.  Building codes, building permits, and sigh detailed drawings are all slowing progress on that front.  If we get the design I have in mind built it will be really nice.  The damaged steps will be covered over by a low deck that runs 10 ft across the front of the house and 6 ft out from the house.  There will be steps completely across the front of the deck with a some sections of step on the sides sorta like \____/    Since the deck is so low the steps won't need a railing but we will put one along the sides of the deck.   I am looking forward to seeing it happen.

Painting finally!

Toli wanted to see what the green paint for the window trim looked like so last night he used it on the side of a  window.  The effect is very different then what I expected.  As he put it the color makes the window vanish and brings the outside in.

And today I finally got to put on a coat of my pale violet paint to see how it would look. The violet is very subtle and has a slight grey undertone which I think adds a nice dimension to the color.   You can see in the photo that it barely shows any color.  And that window really does vanish.

More prep work today.  Looks like it may be Sunday before I actually get to see how the pale violet will look in the breakfast nook.

Cold weather has put a stop on the prep work for the garage and the front steps are on hold for a building permit.

The bathroom has become a big point of dissension between DH and I.  We have all the stuff we need being delivered tomorrow to do a nice renovation in there but DH wants to store it for a few months...  Problem is I have seen where that will lead ie it remains in storage and nothing gets done.

Just back from Home Depot.  After looking over our projects Nick and I decided the cost of a paint sprayer was well worth it.  He picked out a big one that we can use on both the big 5 gallon cans of primer and paint for the garage and the smaller 1 gallon cans for use in the house.  With all the painting projects ahead of us it only makes sense.  Alex decided to show off how big the new paint sprayer is.

Today we will prime the breakfast nook and hopefully  tomorrow we will be able to paint it, I am not so sure of the colors the grands helped pick.  The current plan is for the walls to be pale violet and trim green... They do look well when we hold the paint chips next to each other.  Lets hope they look as good in real life. To be honest almost anything would look better then this.

The adventure starts

School is out so Nick is not working.  That leaves him with lots of free time to come over and motive my lazy butt.  He has been coming over and helping me (IE doing most of the work while I babysit) and slowly but surely we are getting things done.   Saturday he sanded the back of the garage, then we tackled the breakfast nook.  Ugh that was a messy undertaking.  The fridge is back in the little nook over the stairs leaving the breakfast area empty and ready to prep for painting.  Today I tackled the two windows in the nook getting them cleaned and ready for paint and this evening DH and I will be working on the remains of the wall paper in the breakfast nook.   Goal for the end of this week is to get the breakfast nook painted and the table back in place.  Oh yeah I may have to buy a couple of chairs so we have someplace to sit while eating...  

Next week we tackle the bathroom.