Bedroom progress

I finished touching up, priming, and painting the bedroom ceiling. It ended up being a lot more work than expected because we got the ceiling a little too wet and when we scraped it damaged some of the drywall. But its all good because we have lots more ceiling to practice on.

Before

Progress

You can't tell too much but we also painted the walls and Cameron replaced the yellow electrical switches for white ones. We still have lots of work to finish eventually in here--for one, I can't wait to get rid of all the orange oak that goes throughout the house!

Timber!

Our area has a lot of trees. As a result, some tree cutting was in order to make sure my vegetable garden gets enough sun. We actually had to purchase a chain saw to get the job done. We figure it will pay for itself because the wood we cut we will use for heating our house.


I marked X's on all the trees I wanted chopped down. And Cameron dutifully began chopping away.

Small easy ones first then on to the harder ones. I wish I had taken a before picture to explain this better but I'll do my best here.

On one of the bigger trees, Cameron made his notch cut (in the right place to fall away from the house) then his back cut. But the tree (lets call it tree 1 so you can keep track) just wasn't budging and the chainsaw kept getting stuck in the tree so he notched the back cut to get in deeper (big mistake). As a result the tree started to fall towards the house but luckily landed on the two adjacent trees branches and held there. We decided we needed to cut one of the adjacent trees (tree 2) to get the other to fall. At this point it was too late to get it to fall the way it was suppose to. So we tried to figure out the best place for it to land. Tree 2 needed to land between the shed and house and tree 1 on the shaded garden next to the house. We measured with our thumb how high we thought the trees were- 50 ft was the guess. So to keep the trees from missing the house Cam sawed as high as he could reach. I went to the front yard with the kids and watched as Cameron cut the trees (all the while praying they would not hit the house). By a miracle, the trees landed exactly where we planned. Tree 1 was literally less than a foot from the house.  I made a little diagram of where they landed because I didn't take a good picture. 

Feeling macho now (not so much a few minutes prior) haha

 The kids were awesome helpers. We told them they could earn 10 cents a log if they loaded them into the wagon, hauled them to the pile, then unloaded them. Between them, they earned over $10 on the first day and $7 the second. Not too bad for a 6 and 3 year old! And by the second day little D was even trying to help!

 

After day one of wood cutting. We ended up with about double that.

Landscaping Plans

It's winter but I know there is lots of work to do to get our garden prepped for summer. First of I needed a plan. I had a book on landscaping which by no means makes me a pro-- it's just something I find really fun! So I spend lots of hours measuring and finding out what plants I want to grow in both the garden and landscaping. For our new house, I'm trying to do a mix of edible landscaping and traditional landscaping. The lot we are on is only .3 acres so I want to make the most of every foot. We are hoping down the road to be able to purchase the lot next door bringing us closer to-- but not quite an acre. But I drew up this plan for this year because even if we buy the lot soon, it will cost a substantial amount to clear trees and put up a big privacy fence around the yard.

Our veggie garden will be fenced because deer are around everyday. So for the preliminary plan we are thinking we will do a stiff cattle metal fence framed with wood. I am hoping they don't eat the other fruits I have throughout the rest of the yard. Here are the plans thus far, which are definitely subject to change :) ...

The graph on the left is the existing landscape. On the right is the future landscape. Each tiny square on the graph equals one foot.

Here are current pictures of the front so you can see where I'm coming from a little bit. I will post pictures of backyard soon.

We like our popcorn in a bowl.

Our house has 2300 square ft of popcorn ceiling. In case you're wondering, that's our ENTIRE house. Closets, the ceiling portion and the inside of the window seat, and even the garage (and I didn't count the garage in the 2300 either!) We are not fans and we are excited to see it go. First up, one of the kids bedrooms. Right now all the boys share a room and don't want to be split up so the other one is empty. So it was an easy one to tackle. Surprisingly we got it done in less than an hour. We just sprayed with a pump water sprayer a section at a time, let it soak in a few minutes, and then scraped. And since we are dealing with so much popcorn we got one of those nifty popcorn scrapers that allows you to catch the popcorn in a trash bag when it falls. It kept the bulk of the mess off the floor which was nice.

The results were magical. In my art classes we talked about how texture in a painting brings something forward as a focal point, or to the foreground. Well the same goes for a textured ceiling- it makes the ceiling feel lower and closer. And without the popcorn... Seriously the ceiling looked like it grew a foot. (The photo doesn't do it justice)

Next up, mudding and sanding for a smooth ceiling finish and then priming!

By the time we finish with the whole house we are going to be popcorn removal masters!