Spring cleaning and a rug

May 8, 2014 / Winnie / Leave a comment

My white board full of stuff to do.…is all outdoor stuff so I needed to re-group and find another project….

All my projects outside…need nice weather. Oh Well. Another day.

So it looks like Spring Cleaning has begun at my house. I moved all of the furniture from the living room to the hall so that I could give the floor a good scrub down.

Yeah….fun times. You know you are SOOOOO jealous.

Since I had everything out of the living room – I thought that today would be a great day to re-introduce a cowhide rug to our lives. It took many moons for me to find the right cowhide for the house. I had seen one in a model house as a bedroom rug and that inspired my search. I purchased this one last year and it lived on the floor for a month. My kitty took a disliking to it, so I had to put it away. Since my kitty has since passed, the rug can come out of hiding.

Hello beautiful……yeah. The orientation of the rug will change over time, as I love the rug…..just not how it is sitting in the room at the moment….but for now I am just living it with. I will need to do a little bit of work on the creases that appeared during storage. See this link for what was suggested.

Have any of you had to put something away or sell it because an animal has ‘disliked’ it….or peed on it….or scratched the crap out of it???

More wood work for the patio….and a little bit of snow

May 6, 2014 / Winnie / 1 Comment

I have a long list of items I want to complete this week…..see my white board below? I decided on staining the Adirondack chairs today. I got one chair completed – I am using the same stain….the Behr -Weather Proofing in Redwood.

You can see in the above picture the beautiful completed chair. It is so lovely. I was all set up to complete the second chair when my neighbor came to the back fence to chat with Jules and I. She told us that a storm was rolling in and that hail and snow were expected over the next 2 days. Jules went in to hyperdrive and moved all my plants into the dining room. She was a girl on a mission.

And they are now awaiting less threatening weather. Can you believe it? Snow forecasted….in May. I will be waiting to finish my other chair as well.

Dave decided to put the scrap wood to use as well. He made a slated holder for our recycle bins. Those bins are ridiculously ugly. Now that the holder is done…..I feel like it should have been taller….but it’s done and I am happy that we used up more scrap wood. The very end has a space big enough for another black garage can and I will be purchasing another one to hold the wood scraps we will be keeping as fire starter.

Parting shot of our newly mounted garden tool holder…..with Jezebelle watching over us from the doorway…..can you see her beautiful eyes?

Details, Details, Details….putting together a functional back patio

April 29, 2014 / Winnie / Leave a comment

The heavy lifting for the back yard is over and done with…As previously recorded here, here and here. I have moved on to pulling the details together to make the area functional.

First up – seating for the fire pit. I found some wonderful low chairs from Lowe’s and purchased two. I absolutely love the way they look.

I also purchased 2 Adirondack chairs from Amazon. They needed to be put together – and I did the first one by myself….took a little while with Jane (First Officer of Destruction) around. *Cough*…….could have taken me…..*cough*….2 hours…*cough*. Dave and I teamed up on Saturday and put the other one together in 30 minutes.

Next up – pulling my patio set from the wwwaaaayyyyyyy back of the shed. I purchased this set at the end of the season last year and I am so excited to use it all summer.

Two smaller projects – moving the compost we have been ‘making’ to the raised garden (you can see in the above and below picture) and adding in solar lights to the fence. Dave drilled holes into the 4×4 posts and placed solar lights down the length of the fence.

As a final note – we were able to use the fire pit. It was a tad bit chilly, but we powered through and it finally feels like spring….even if it did snow the next day 🙂

Scrap Wood…Unite!!

April 23, 2014April 23, 2014 / Winnie / 1 Comment

All that scrap wood…..what to do, what to do? As previously recorded here, here and here – Dave and I have been hard at work putting together our terraces and new fencing. With all of the fencing up – I am now evaluating the wood scraps that I have left and narrowing down the projects that I would like to do to use them up.

First up – a new address sign for the front of the house.

Let’s get this party started…..those numbers I have been holding on to for about 6 months. The numbers are from The Hillman Group – 5″ Brushed Nickel Floating Mount.

I used left over 2×4’s and the 3 foot long slats that were remaining from our fence.

I used Behr – Weather Proofing in Redwood as my protector.

The ever helpful numbers came with a stencil with the drill holes marked to make it easy on me.

Awesome!!!! Incidentally, the stain on the front porch is the same as the address sign.

Second up is less eye catching but is the starting point for my container garden on the lower level terrace.

I built those two planter holders with left over 4×4 posts and 2 3ft slats. With all of the gravel and only one raised garden planned for this year…..I am planning on pulling together a layered container garden to bring more green to the back yard…….maybe something like this (with more MT friendly plants)