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

No Boundaries...Around Our House

Okay, so you know how we recently tore down the shed? And I didn't actually give you guys a photo of the end result? Did you notice that? Well, that's because immediately after tearing down the shed, we started on this little project...

Look at that leaning, wobbly, gonna-fall-down-at-any-second crap. Not pretty. So it should be no surprise that the instant we got a decent stretch of sunshine we --you guessed it-- demolished it.

We started out by prying out the worst of the panels. 

It began with one...

And quickly turned into three...

Then all of a sudden (it seemed), there was a huge gap in the fence and our backyard looked like this. Which just won't do. As you all probably all know, we're very much in the Northeastern opinion that "good fences make good neighbors" (oh, Robert Frost, you smart, smart man), so we did what any sane person would do: we immediately began rebuilding. In short, we rented a truck, bought $400 worth of panels, some posts, some hardware, a stud gun that could shoot nails into concrete...huh. Not that short. Nevermind. Moving on.

Yay! One panel up! But then...

Insert four-letter expletives here. Yeah. That's &%$@ing concrete. And despite our best attempts to mount post hardware into it (which usually works), all we succeeded in doing was chipping that...blasted concrete foundation to...heck. (See that amazing restraint?)

So what did we do? And what's that thing Denny is holding, you ask? That, my blogosphere friends, is a mini-jackhammer. Yeah. We keep one on hand for just such occasions (uh, not really; it was rented, just like our panel-hauling truck).

Denny decided that the best thing to do would be to simply blast away the concrete wall where we needed to put posts, then pour new concrete to secure them. Not only will the posts be guaranteed to not rust at the bottom (what happened to the last posts), but they'll also be sturdier. And if you're gonna build a fence, you might as well do it right the first time.


So that's what we did last weekend. A lot of demolishing the concrete wall at eight foot intervals, a lot of picking out the giant chunks, a lot of digging away smaller chunks...Basically Sunday was a bust (haha). The good news is that now that we have all that done with, we can move on to more exciting things, like rebuilding our lovely wall of privacy (which I will fully document and then put on the internet...just doesn't make much sense, when you think of it like that...huh...).

The Great Yard Demo of 2011

As I said yesterday, this weekend was super productive. It was also a complete blast. I feel that’s worth noting because you know how some weekends come and go and you’re like, “Man, we got a ton accomplished!” but you’re also a little, “Okay, I’m ready to relax now! Uh, wait…Monday?! Wtf.” Yeah, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt that way. But this weekend (I repeat) kicked butt in every way possible.

First of all, my Mom and littlest brother were in town again, so we had the usual lots-of-delicious-food-lots-of-intensive-shopping experience and also a not-so-usual circus experience. We went to see the Ringling Brothers Boom-A-Ring show, which ended up being very cool. The magic act was pretty neat, the elephants were amazing, even the clowns weren’t exactly…uh, terrible (I hate clowns, in case you didn’t pick up on that). There were some parts (non-clown-related) that were pretty hilarious, too. Like instead of having lion tamers, apparently these days they have kitty tamers. Yeah, as in a borderline-cool cat-lady brings out her felines and Fluffy performs all kinds of tricks, from walking tightropes to jumping hoops. It was simultaneously baffling and amusing. But, thankfully, the elephants haven’t yet been replaced (what would you use instead? Holsteins?) so I ended up with some pictures like these:

But why am I babbling on about the circus? You didn’t come here for that. So, I guess we’ll jump right into the real meat of this blog, which is the Almighty Home Improvement Adventure.

Anyway, only Mom, Shawn, and I went to the circus (Denny declined to attend), so when we got home, we were greeted with a couple of amazing transformations on the yard front.

Yep! Denny chopped down all of our cartoons! I mean, trees. Yeah, I’ll admit, I forgot to take pictures of these trees and bushes in their “before” state, so you’ll just have to use your imagination. That whole side of the house was slowly being encroached upon by one massive holly tree, a rhododendron, some kind of juniper (or something similar), and a gloriously thriving snowball bush. So Denny (who was sick of parking his car in the bushes, apparently) got out his chainsaw and chopped all but the snowball down. Now, not only do we have a place to put our waste bins, but we’re also less likely to have problems with pests gaining access to our house. The snowball bush we’ve decided to keep, since it blocks the view of our bins from the road and can be easily clipped into submission.

He also got rid of the hedges out in front of our house.

Hmmm…I know that doesn’t look like much of an improvement, but you have to keep in mind that the “before” picture was taken in July (back when Seattle was still getting more rain than sun, resulting in fresher, greener looking plants) and that by removing the shrubs from the house, we not only have more space around our walkway and drive, but we also will (again) have less of a pest problem. Eventually we do have plans to plant some flowers, but they’ll be much shorter and more manageable than the hedges ever were.

Ooh! Speaking of flowers, while Denny, Mom, and I were at Lowe’s this weekend, we picked up these scarlet beauties.

Look how well those mums tie into the colors in my new doormats! I get giddy every time I walk by them. :)

Well, after returning home to all of that glorious change, I instantly became motivated to chip in and help out with some more demolition (you know how I love to chop down plants!). So, taking some inspiration from this previous transformation, Denny and I got started on trimming up the arborvitaes along the fence. This may not be everyone’s cuppa-tea, but we really like the groomed look that comes from trimming them up about two or three feet. It makes them look less like bushes and more like funny trees.

So, Denny got to work chop-chopping away, while I got to work snap-snapping away. It only took about fifteen minutes, but the difference was pretty huge.

Next, we decided to do something a little more heavy-duty; we decided to chop down all those annoying bushes in the middle of our backyard. Now, I don’t know who decided that planting a massive garden of shrubs in the middle of the lawn was a Good Idea, but I have something to say to them: You were wrong. When perfectly weeded, they weren’t the absolute most hideous things in the world. In fact, you could argue that in their own mature and well-developed way, they were actually kind of pretty. But the fact remains that what could look like a slightly odd garden could just as easily (if not more so) look like a weed farm. See?

The close-up reveals the truth. That place was a jungle that we had no desire to maintain. It also inhibited us from using most of our yard, because who wants to walk around the other side of that forest only to have this view (and approximately a 3’ wide chunk of grass to utilize)?

So after weeding and spraying it (a couple of weeks ago), we got it just enough under control to look like this:

The next step was to get out the chainsaw and start leveling the place (sidenote: we wanted to transplant them all, by the way, but had no place to put them…so down they went).

In no time at all, our yard went from this to this…

While I got to work hauling away the remains, Denny started to dig out the roots.

Yeah, that’s my wee shovel that I usually keep in my car. It was not what you’d call the most efficient tool, but we hadn’t got around to purchasing a big boy shovel yet (by the way, that changed on Sunday afternoon when we went to Home Depot to kill some time). It was a lot of work, but Denny managed to make our jungle root-free within the hour, giving us this incredible before and after shot.

Again, I know that right now it might look a little sad, but we have big plans for this reclaimed chunk of land. You wouldn’t believe how much bigger our yard looks and feels now! We can’t wait to smooth it all out and plant some grass. Hopefully one day we’ll end up with something kind of like this…

[Only with a nicer shed, patio furniture, and some pretty pots overflowing with flowers!]

Until then, we'll be removing the old weedblocker left behind and trying to figure out what to do with this huge mess...

Umm...help? Someone? Anyone?

In Which I Am Weird

A couple of days ago, Denny and I took advantage of the lack of rain and headed outdoors to…dundundun! The BACKYARD.

Yes, very exciting stuff, I know.  Please, control yourselves. Your hysterics embarrass me.

Ahem.

Actually, it wasn’t all that exciting, but it was very satisfying to be able to check yet another thing off our list of things to do this summer. What did we check off, you might ask? We demolished the pet cemetery. Um, I guess that needs some explaining. You see, our realtor is a spaz. You might not think that explains it, but it really does. She simply couldn’t refrain from nicknaming everything in sight. For example, the sauna in the garage was the “grow room” (don’t ask) and the overgrown little garden out back was (you guessed it) the “pet cemetery.” Not because there were actual pets buried there (that we know of), but just because it was fenced off, kind of creepy, and not very accessible. Add that up and, in our realtor’s head, you had a pet cemetery.

The sauna was lucky enough to quickly shed its weird nickname, but the pet cemetery, sadly, never did.  I’m pretty sure that (many years from now) when we go to sell our house, we’ll be giving potential buyers the tour and pointing out, “Oh! And that’s where the pet cemetery used to be.” (Which will probably result in us living in this house until we die. Would you buy a house that had its own pet cemetery?)

The pet cemetery (spelled with a C, not an S—no Stephen King references, if you please) was pretty much a weed farm surrounded by a rickety fence and trellis. See?

Not only was it practically falling down, but it really served no discernable purpose, other than that of providing habitat for every known species of bug found in the Pacific Northwest. It had to go. Since I was the more excited of the two of us to see it leave, Denny suggested that I have the honor of the initial teardown, which resulted in this:

As you can see, I jumped into my role as destructo-girl with quite the vigor. However, that thing was actually more sturdy than it looked (that, or I’m not quite the brute I think I am) because Denny did have to put down the camera for a minute to come up and help me get it to this:

In no time at all, we were ripping up fenceposts  and hauling sections over to our already substantial woodpile (made up of remnants of the sauna and garage shelves).

Then came time for the much-celebrated weed-uprooting. Denny kept telling me to take it easy; that we’d just get out the weed-eater and chainsaw later. But I am…how do I describe it? A madman when it comes to weeding. I get CRAZY. Obsessed. Armed with my shears and some sturdy gardening gloves, I turn into the Michael Myers of gardeners, slaying every weed in sight. And it doesn’t stop there, given the chance, I’ll gladly hack down any shrub or flower that doesn’t appear to be in perfect health or location. “Ashley! That’s a flower!” “I don’t care! It’s in the WRONG PLACE.” Poor flowers. They just don’t stand a chance. Eventually, Denny gets proper control of me once more and I stand back to survey the damage, usually pretty pleased that my ruthlessness has resulted in a scene such as this:

The whole pet cemetery whittled away to a few twigs and leaves. (Those purple flowers were saved only due to Denny’s intervention—aka, tearing the shears out of my hand and sending me away for a timeout).  Knowing how I get, Denny pretty much left me to it, although he did pause (in his project of clearing out the woodpile) to snap this shot.

Can you believe the size of that thing? As you can see, I’m a little under 5’3” and the sliding doors are a standard 6’10”, which puts that monster in at…what? 9 feet high?! Holy *>%?! At one point, I think it was a rosebush, but it had since mutated into a pre-historic-looking-photosynthetic behemoth. I repeat: it had to go.

Overall, it was a good day, tater. The pet cemetery is no more (although I predict that the name will linger), I killed approximately 250 pounds worth of offending plant life, and Denny packed his dad’s black trailer to the brim with scrap awood, clearing up a sizeable chunk of our yard and taking us one step closer to a spider-free territory.

PS: Did you notice the wee leaf of secrecy? It’s blocking our street sign. I like it. I think it will be an ongoing tradition here at 21 House. The Wee Leaf of Secrecy. In capitals. Respect the Leaf.

PSx2: See, Amanda? I don’t ALWAYS wear black shirts. ;)

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.