Garden Progress

We got a bunch done in the garden area over the weekend. After hours of back breaking wet dirt hauling uphill (harder than you would think I promise), I decided renting another skid steer was worth it to get the garden ready.

     Here's a before picture. The boys are climbing on the latest tree casualty. You can't see in the after picture below but it got ripped out. Dirt mound on the left got moved up to the top of the lot.

 
Thank you machinery for making things easy. Oh and maybe I should mention Cam who was behind it for the most part.

 Here's where I hope I don't get in trouble. We gave Cruz a turn driving the skid steer with Dad standing near by of course.

 You can almost see his expression in the picture. It was pure elation.

We got a trencher attachment and Cam went to town lining out where the fence will go. We trenched it all the way around so we could bury the fence a foot deep to keep out critters. After an armadillo got in my garden last year, I'm taking all precautions necessary!

Now I just hope we can get post holes dug and fence in before rain fills in the trench with dirt.  Garden is roughly 40 x 80 feet.

 Before

Now
 

 Before

Now
 (the rows are for being made for blueberry bushes)

Project list and some progress (or lack of) pictures

There is so many projects going on here! And there are lots of upcoming to do's.  I am making a list for my mental sanity. We are really good at starting projects. Finishing a project is definitely a slower process :)

Outside:

1. We are still moving dirt around to finish the bike track. We decided to switch it up a bit and add some different jumps at the end. Moving dirt without the skid steer is slow going to say the least! However, I will say I have been getting an awesome workout everyday. My arms will be so buff by the time we are done :)

2. We started on a flagstone pathway down the side of the house where there is a lot of foot traffic. We got a craigslist score on flagstone for super cheap. The only problem is the stone is all different heights which made it a bit more frustrating since some are 4 inches high and others only 1 inch (no wonder is was a deal?!). I gave up on making it level from one rock to the next. As a result, it is a lot more "natural" looking than I imagined. Oh well. It's functional. Still need to finish this one.

3. This is a need to do soon: Build a block retaining wall so Cameron can park his truck again. We tore out the existing falling apart railroad tie parking pad that was there previously.

 Here it is before we tore it up. This is a bad before picture since the brush is in the way but you get the idea.

Here's where it is at now. And now you know why it needs a retaining wall up really soon.

4. Once we finish up the flagstone walkway we need to get sod asap. The area next to our house becomes a constant mud pit when kids turn on the hose to wash anything. It also washes out with rain. I can't wait to get this one done.


Inside:

1. Hang doors.-- Cameron finished painting them over the weekend. Yay! I will have doors on my closets again. I'm so sick of staring at clutter everyday.

They have been without doors for 6 months. 6 MONTHS.

2. Our electrician is coming this week to fix the fixture location in the dining room, add a new ceiling fixture in living room (we have nothing now), and add some can lights in the basement.

3. After the electrician comes we will have to patch everything up- especially the basement. We had a dishwasher dilemma (the dishwasher got filled with dish soap instead of dishwasher soap) and some leaking happened. As a result we tore out a bunch of sheet rock to dry things up fast and keep mold at bay. The basement needs a LOT of patching.

The basement as is. This is obviously a "real life" picture.

4. Hang new fixtures (living and dining), and install can lights in basement.

5. Our dining table is getting made! We ordered the table top online and the legs are being done by a friend. I'm excited! We need to do the finish work for the top of the table once it arrives. I'm thinking a natural or grey stain for it.

6. Patchwork on walls/ceilings needs to be textured, primed, and painted.

7. The basement is screaming for some new paint on the walls. It is bad down there- really bad.

8. We are hiring out (hallelujah!) the rest of the popcorn ceiling scraping (entry hall, upstairs hall, master bedroom, and my art room). We aren't bothering with the kitchen since someday soon (I really, really, really, really, hope) to be ripping down that drop ceiling.


I could go on forever... and ever...  But these are the things I hope to get done by the new year.

Kids Pump Track

Our entire last few weeks consisted of working on the bike track and smoothing out the rest of the lawn. Progress shots:

The top part started to get some shaping and packing after a good rain and a lot of tamping.

 Here's a view from the top. It's kind of hard to see but you get the idea.

Yard Plans

Sometimes, when Cameron is away on business trips I keep busy by drawing and planning. Here is what I've been working on:

This is the plans for the new cleared lot. The aerial view looks good but I'm trying to figure out lots of the little real life details. This is what I still need to figure out:

1. What kind of ground cover I will use between berries, bike track, and fruit trees. Our current lawn is Bermuda which of course is really aggressive so I won't be using that. I'm leaning towards Fescue right now because it looks good. But some other possibilities I'm thinking about for ground cover are are mulch, gravel, or a spreading perennial (i.e. wooly thyme).

2. What fence we will use around the garden. I would love, love, love to fence the whole yard and quit with all the individual fences but we found out to built a permanent fence to code around here it would have to slice through almost half the new lot- which would ruin all the plans.  Right now there are no trees up front and since it will be a while even after planting trees until we have full privacy I would like the fence to look nice. I love black fences because they sort of disappear from far away. And they just look better. It has to be deer, rabbit, armadillo, and groundhog proof!

For inside the garden in the paths, I decided to do a combination of gravel and bricks.  This is my inspiration picture.

 I'm pretty sure I will still do cedar raised beds, then bricks to edge the gravel. I couldn't find a picture of exactly what I'm going for but I know what it will look like in my head.

I feel really far away from the finished product but we are making some progress. Top soil got dumped last week.

Here is is after the kids ran all up and down it!

We have our work cut out for us!!!

Blue Sky

I've been wanting to get an update on here of rooms with furniture and new baseboards but I keep waiting for the day when my house is clean enough to have a photo shoot. Since we've had it done for almost two months, I think that's my wake up call that my house is hardly ever clean these days. We've been working on a few things to manage that as a family and hopefully I'll be able to show an interior update soon :)

In the meantime, we did do something major outside.
Our extra lot went from this...

To this...

Yay! I am so excited. I made a video so you can get a better idea.

More updates to come!

Front landscaping

I finally finished up the front landscaping. We were waiting for weeks for the compost to be ready but I couldn't be patient any longer and just got some from Lowes.

Before (pre move in)

Now

 

 

A few weeks ago

Now - Juniper and peonies in the front (my favorite flowers!)

Before

Now

Before

Last Year

Now

I did end up planting some extra bare root strawberries I had in the front. They haven't been eaten by deer yet and they are growing pretty good for the 5 hours of sunlight they get each day.

Before

Now

No spray painted tree :)

Landscaping in the front yard- Part 1

This year, I'm beefing up my landscaping in the front yard. I wanted to continue with my original plan.

Remember this?

I added the landscaping right by the door and porch but so far, nothing by the driveway. So I wanted to cut out the herb beds in the front. But I decided the herbs weren't necessary (since I already planted them all out by the garden) and and wanted to incorporate more evergreens and my favorite flowers, peonies.

 Here's what it looked like out front a few weeks ago. Yes, the house is begging for a new coat of paint. But I have to be patient and work on one thing at a time. So landscaping first.

Here is where I started to cut out the bed.

The only problem was on the other side my flower bed would be in almost full shade because of this tree. It looks ok here but it was really a sad looking tree. We had to cut down a branch for the power lines, and another for the basketball hoop. And then Cruz attacked the tree with blue and yellow spray paint. Long story short, I decided the tree had to go. So I asked Cam while he was on a business trip if he could cut it down and he agreed. While he was gone, I got the pick axe out and worked on digging and cutting roots.

Cameron got home that night and on Saturday he was outside with his handy dandy chain saw. I was so excited I forgot to take any pictures of the take down. Bummer! To get the stump and roots out, Cam hooked the tree up with a heavy duty rope to his truck and pulled that sucker out. It was awesome!!

We were left with a huge hole and nasty weed grass so we decided to replace the weeds with bermuda sod. That required us to shovel out all the weeds and existing grass and level it out.

 Haha that's Cruz behind that giant sod roll.

 They were super heavy and Cruz just about fell over.

 Don't ask me what Kian is doing in the picture because I really don't know.

The sod is all in now and getting watered really good with all the rain. I'm hoping to plant the beds and then share the finished product next week!

New Sandbox

This sandbox has been long awaited by the boys. Long ago, Cameron found some deck timbers at the dump and recycled them by making a frame for the sandbox.

We had to wait until the french drain was all finished to be able to install the sandbox. After that project was done the first thing we did was laid down some landscape fabric. As you can see this area is weed infested! Grass won't grow here since it gets all day shade.


After the fabric was laid, we added mulch on the outside and sand of course for the inside. I had one request, and that was a lid to keep out rain and leaves. Cam and I settled on plastic with a wood frame. He came home with these Real Tree Camo panels. Sigh...

Sometimes, I let Cameron have his way. This was one of those times. Unfortunately, the plastic camo panels were a little filmsy (aka easily destroyed by adventurous children) so he had to sturdy them up with some plywood underneath. As a result, lifting up the cover and closing it is a two person job because of the weight. This kind of defeated the purpose of using the plastic in the first place but oh well. It may need to be tweaked in the future but for now it works.

The lid is at angle so the rain can drain off. See that thing by the door?

Cameron rigged up a towel on a retractable chain for cleaning off before coming inside. It's been working great. 

The lid hinges in the middle and leans against the house when in use.  The wood in the corners is a nice place to sit in case you don't want to get completely sandy.

This little girl loves the sand. If you can't tell from the picture she was really sad but stopped crying once she got to play.