Category: Our Projects

Meh.

So operation stucco will commence (perhaps) at the weekend…in the meantime, the patio shoveling is basically complete.  After things settle, there might be some touch up, but for now…done.

The sad thing is… now that I can have some fun and get the furniture in, I’m not feelin’ it.  I’ve dragged most of the available furniture up here and dragged it back down.

I want the butterflies to live here, and since we are a family of four, we really need at least 4 seats up here.  I haven’t found more vintage flies yet.  Everything else is variable.  I thought I’d move the red chairs to the back and just have the loveseat and the flies… I dunno.  I’ll keep rearranging….

The Things and I sat out here at sunset under the tree and read.  For once, the outside temp was cool enough to truly enjoy.  I think this new lounging area will be heaven for us once tweaked and finished.

Let’s play musical side tables, shall we?

Can you say Christmas? Blech.  Back to the drawing board…

Oh, and in case you were worried about what we would do for exercise now that the patio gravel is down….

Yeah.  That’s the rest of it, slated for other areas that interest me very little at the moment, but we need the parking spot back…so it must resume.  $#!@.

Project Pea…Continued

We’ve had a lot of rain (again) which makes the horsetail and other plants happy.  It makes me wet.

Horsetail is easily blown over by those high winds……

I’m hauling the peas every morning after the Things are off to school so I can avoid working in the triple digit weather with 100% humidity.  If it drizzles, I work, if it pours, I wait until it stops.  I try to take several breaks anyway.  When I start, I can fill the buckets 3/4 of the way..after about 10 trips, the volume starts creeping down and I know it’s time to knock off for awhile.

So how far have I gotten?

I’ve gotten one layer down now.  Problem is..we need about 3 more in order to hide the exposed areas where the “stucco” ends…like here…..

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?  Perhaps we should stucco further down the wall on this side!  Ya THINK!?!

The guy we used to build all this in the fall was scheduled to come back and do some “touch-up” on the stucco this spring, but he never showed.  We didn’t chase him since we figured the touch up wasn’t really totally necessary at the time and we were all square with him financially.

If we had all the stuff, it would be a no brainer DIY.  This has it’s own set of issues since I don’t know if we can replicate the “formula” for the color to match.  If I  go through my receipts, I can find the brand etc he used and try?  If I remember correctly, he used 2 bags of black to one bag of brown…but I’m not sure.  I should just call him and just say..”Hey, how have ya been?  Gimme the recipe!”

I dunno, in the meantime, I need to haul a bit more (ARGH!) to cover some thin areas, then the CC and I need to sit down and discuss this other, much less exhausting option.

Pea Gravel Patio

Well, it’s only been about 9 months since the walls were built…we are finally finishing the top patio in the front.  In our feeble defense, it’s just been lower on the list since we wanted to spend spring and summer filling the new beds and getting stuff planted.

It was tough to decide which gravel to use.  Since we needed massive amounts, the budget needed to be less than $50/yard.  That pretty much left us with limestone or pea gravel.  The granite chips were 3 times that so…no dice.  We can’t use decomposed stone fines (my 1st choice) because they set up too hard and the water will run off away from the tree …we need the water to drain down so that it gets at its roots.

I’ve used limestone before for gravel patios and it worked great, but I wanted to explore something softer and easier on the feet. I’ve always hated pea gravel…it felt very dated and ugly to me, but I found a few nice gardens that changed my mind.

This patio used pea gravel in between the hardscape…

Photo via Studio G

… and this post showed a nice pea gravel patio

Photo via Rock Stock & Quade

Now we have a monster sized pile of pea gravel to put on top of the large limestone.  I started spreading it in the rain since it’s as cool as it’s ever going to be (only 87°!).  I discovered I can only fill the buckets half way or it hurts.  Up all the steps, dump and repeat.  2 buckets are best since it keeps me balanced instead of bending over a single full bucket.

Phew…gonna be a long week.  Problem is….I think I might hate the color….stay tuned for a hopeful improvement…maybe when it’s dry…maybe.

Movie Night

I’ve always been dead against a TV in our living room for MANY reasons.

1) This room should be for conversation.

2) I don’t want to spend all the energy and money required to hide a TV properly.

3) Unique to this house, the living room is situated so that nothing inappropriate for children could be watched since it could be heard up in their bedrooms (or they could creep out of their rooms and peek through the railings below).

For all of the above reasons, we have a TV in the playroom and in our bedroom and that is more than anyone needs.  In the past, I’d agreed that if I were to be swayed to eat my words, it would need to involve a projector so it could be well hidden, yet allow a decent view for all in the room.  This has been high on the CC’s dream list with visions of four foot high rugby matches causing his eyes to glaze over.  Me…sounds cool, but I’m a proud late adopter with landscaping on the brain.  Pricing proved that this techie scenario would, indeed, remain a dream.

By a stroke of good fortune, we have been granted semi-permanent use of a projector!!   All our walls and ceilings are white which makes things pretty nice for viewing purposes.  The logical place to view would be where the large painting is, but I didn’t want to take it down and figure out where to keep it out of harms way while we were testing this out.  So we turned the sofa to face the doors so we could project onto the empty slanted ceiling.  This required a bit of a reclining position, kinda like in a planetarium. Great fun, but in no way a permanent solution.

BTW, I don’t need to tell you how much the Things LOVE this concept.

Sorry-crap photos…I need to learn how to take ’em in this low light.

The view from the nook/catwalk area is too slanted for viewing, but it was cool to see the images as you walked up the stairs nonetheless.

This was all brought to life via this big hot mess behind the sofa.

Now that we know this can work (for family viewing only)…a game plan is afoot to get it right.  Hook up the Roku to it, run a cable line and most importantly, figure out a way to get it to project onto the fireplace wall without disrupting the painting.  All the A/V stuff can hide out in the bookshelves.  I don’t want to see a wall mounted pull down screen, so I’m considering options.  Perhaps putting the painting on hinges so we can lift it up out of the way and project directly onto the wall?  Barn door sliding mechanism?

I dunno…must think on this one…best troubleshooting project I’ve ever had.  The lack of patience on the part of the Things will be a driving force to find a solution.  The nagging will be relentless….

Holiday Progress

It doesn’t look like much, but we did actually accomplish more than stuffing our faces with carnitas over the July 4th holiday.  We have finally had a break from the Nashville Monsoon so I could finish that pesky spot of deck floor staining.

The old railings were really getting in the way of completing the stain job, so, even though we don’t have the hog panel yet, buh bye.

We’ve kept up the support posts since we will reuse them, but now we are thinking of rebuilding and widening the stairs.  We didn’t change them when they added onto the deck since they were attached to the old section and were perfectly fine.  We’ve got some planning and potential reconfiguring to do….of course…UGH!

So while deck progress is now at a potential screeching halt, the CC tackled a little work on the compost pile…

We are now using it although far from done…he has finished one gate, but could only find the ugliest hinges ever.  He has promised to paint/camouflage them since we grudgingly conceded that mail order stainless hinges were not required for a compost pile….although it would look SO much better.

AND, groan…we started to deal with the fallen tree.  One solid day of heat and sawdust.  I dragged branches to the road and stacked future firewood while the CC got all manly with the chainsaw.  There’s more to do, but what’s left is hidden from public view in the jungle so we can take our time finishing up.

We were so exhausted after that day…we packed up Thing One and Thing Two and headed to the pool.  I cracked out an old find from the depths…I think these were my dad’s.  Love ’em…even though the Things thought they looked “funny”.  I was too whipped to care if I looked “funny” in them or not.