21 House's First Snow Day

 Well, we got snow! I know that's maybe not the most exciting thing to report on as I get back into blogging-swing-of-things, but it's pretty exciting to me, anyway. It's not even that much snow, or that much of a big deal (like last year's massive and unexpected snowstorm that ground Seattle to a halt for several days straight). But as we begin to spend a little more time in our home, there are so many firsts. Like our first Christmas, with our first pretty not-so-little tree, our first time having company over, our first snow. It makes me kind of sentimental (okay, okay, pretty heavily sentimental). So here are some snowflake-framed pics of our first snow.

 Here's Denny's beautiful fence! Look at how sweet the little snow piles are on the "hats." Denny wanted me to point that out, in particular. :)

Oh, and that? That's our shed! Okay, so it's not really, but it will be. Denny and his dad have been working on it for a couple of weeks. It's going to be beautiful! We're hoping to get it all assembled and put together this weekend. I'll definitely report back once it gets constructed. See? Look at me writing for my own sweet little blog? This is definitely a good start to the new year!

The Return of Privacy

So, as promised, here is the long-awaited update of our fence-rebuilding project! As of yesterday morning, this is what our fence (and our giant pile of dismantled-shed/fence/trash) looked like...

As you can see, we had three posts up and set in concrete, as well as four panels in place. Since we knew that we had a busy day ahead of us, we got up early and dove right into working to get the rest of those posts up. In no time at all, we had that fourth post set, but since we needed one more to finish our line, off to Home Depot we went-- where we accidentally bought a too-short post. Which we didn't find out until we put it up temporarily to measure the spacing and (in the words of Homer), "DOH!"

See? 10' post...10' post...8' post. Fail.


So back to the Depot we went to buy the right one. We exchanged the 8-footer, but were barely able to get it into the ground and concreted (is that a verb? oh, well-- it is now!) before we had to leave the house. Thus ended our fence-building for the day.


Today was another early morning, not to mention a freakin' cold one! Seriously, when we got up this morning to continue working on the fence, the ground was frozen solid, the panels were covered in tiny ice crystals, and my body instantly began arguing with my mind, telling me that this was just plain stupid and we should go back to bed immediately. Luckily, though, was able to ignore those words (of wisdom) and I dove right in to helping Denny, who'd already been up for a half hour and was busy loading up our borrowed trailer with shed and fence debris. 

After a couple of trips to the transfer station, our pile went from unwieldy and hideous to manageable and...well, still kind of hideous, but on a much smaller scale. :) In fact, it was so manageable that we were able to pop up another panel before I even had a chance to take an "after" picture of the mess. Aaah! To be rid of that garbage!


So our next step on this Odyssey-of-a-project was to finish that last little gap at the end. Now, this may seem like no big deal, but let me just say this: 1) the gap was an odd length (not an even 8 feet, but closer to 10 feet long), 2) we had no desire to shorten the line of fence (it would have put it at odd angles with the line of the house), and 3) they don't make 2 foot fence panels. All of this combined to make A Challenge To Overcome. Our solution (by which I mean, Denny's creative and utterly-genius solution) was to buy a small "gate" panel and to modify it to fit the gap between our last full-size panel and the final post. We elected not to put in another post between the full-size and the modified panel since they're super sturdy and were going to go on level ground, next to a large, solid end-post anyway.


First, Denny took some very precise measurements, and then to be safe, he measured again. And then one more time.

Next, he made some initial cuts at the structural points, then flipped it and repeated the cuts (since the circular saw wouldn't go all the way through the first time), then he finished the rest of the line and popped the gate panel into two pieces. In order to finish off the newly-cut side, we simply took a matching piece of red cedar 2"x4" and screwed it to the side, then cut the extra length off. Easy as pie.


After a few minor adjustments, we put up the full-size panel and then fit the modified one into place.

As you can see, the daylight was fading fast (thanks, stupid winter hours...) but we managed to get it in. Voila! The gap is gone. We officially have Privacy. 

Of course, there's still a bit left to do. Those posts? Yeah, they're not always going to be that tall. And they still need "hats," as Denny calls them. We also still need to fill in the holes around the fence posts with dirt and tamp them. But at least until then, we won't have to look at the houses across the street the whole time and they won't have to look at our pile of whatever-else-we-decide-on-a-whim-to-demolish. Like I said, good fences = good neighbors.


PS: Yeah, I know there aren't any pictures of the full-length, semi-completed fence. What can I say? It got dark fast. So, the third (and hopefully final) installment of this story will just have to wait until I can get some daylight hours for picture-taking. Say...Wednesday? Alright, it's a date! See you then! -Ash

The Much-Anticipated Garage Update

Remember those old pictures I showed you of the garage? How it used to look like this?

Then (thanks to one fallen hammer and its replacement—oh, and a little effort from Denny, I guess), for a while it looked like this?

Well, now it looks like this!

You see, a couple of weekends ago, Denny’s parents came up to see the house for the first time and they brought with them a few tools and a lot of desire to help out around the place. Denny’s mom brought up her old mower and by some miracle managed to turn our knee-high, freshly-rained-on yard into this manicured beauty:

(And, no, I didn’t mess with the color saturation on that picture, it just ended up being that gorgeous that day!)

And Denny’s dad helped Denny construct a new workbench in the garage! They built this solid, little bugger in about an hour and a half and, let me tell you, it’s a vast improvement over the old one. For example, instead allowing the green structural beam there to inhibit them, they carefully built around it, like so:

This allowed them to get an extra two and a half feet of useable workspace and helped support the longer bench. It also helped make it possible to move the left end of the bench further away from the fuse box, so now not only is it up to code (always a plus) but I also don’t have to worry (as much) about sticking my hands in spider webs when I go to access the breakers!

Oh, and in case you’re thinking to yourself, “But they got rid of all that storage, those silly geese,” here’s a little comparison of house much space we actually gained by tearing down the old, not-really-all-that-functional shelving.

Before:

After:

That’s a lot of real estate! We probably tripled the amount of actual bench and, since we have plans to install shelving and drawers in the future, we definitely won’t be missing that ratty old spider-infested unit. This is what we hope the bench will look like one day soon:

Only, ya know, not grey, green, and animated. ;)

PS: Like my goofy graphics? I've been using Picnik for my photo editing. It's easy to navigate and way cheaper than buying Photoshop. I highly recommend it, if only because it has a teeth-whitening option for pictures of people. Oh, and the basic version is free, which is pretty cool, too.