What's happening outside around the garden

When I put in the garden, we cut down 6 trees. Once the trees leafed out, I realized we needed to cut a few more. My garden gets exactly 6 hours of sunlight during the day which is ok but not great. I noticed my tomatoes are getting the start of a blight (it's been a cool, wet summer thus far) and I think more sunlight would help them. While my Mom and Jimmy were here we got rid of a few trees on the far west side. It took some effort considering now we had the garden to work around and didn't want trees falling on it.

The other problem was a branch that shaded only the tomatoes in the morning on the east side.  It wasn't necessary for the whole tree to come down since it was just the branch. But unfortunately the branch was 30ft high and our ladder only got up to about 20.

Cameron had told me about this cool thing called a rope saw were you could stand on the ground and cut the tree using what looks like the chain of a chain saw, hooked to a rope.

We practiced a bit first but knew it still got stuck on the branch fairly easy if you pull too hard.
Here's a video:

It worked!

...It was worth it

5 hours of popcorn removal. 6 hours to putty and sand. 2 hours of painting. And we are done with the ceiling! It looks so much better! 

Again I'm learning as I go along so next room I'm sure I'll be able to knock off like 2 hours of sanding time using a technique that of course I didn't realize till the end  :)

 

 Cam gave the boys a try at the priming.

 

The ceiling reflects way more light now and the room is brighter. Ahem-- don't mind the mess I didn't bother to clean for a picture.

Here we go again!

We are on our third room now removing the popcorn. Now that we're into main living areas, we need to work when kids are sleeping.

 Randomly one night after the kids went to bed last week I started on it. The guest bedroom that we scraped took about 45 minutes so I figured this might take an hour and a half since its a larger room. I looked at the clock when I started 9:00pm. Prepping is a big deal since you spray the ceiling and all the wet mud falls to the floor (I nixed the specialty popcorn scraper tool from the store because it chewed up the ceiling in our other room so bad). I finished prepping at 10:30. About 10 minutes after I started removing the popcorn I realized I needed help from Cameron if I was going to sleep that night. We finished at 1:30am...just with scraping.

The next day I puttied all the nail holes and anything else that needed it.
Friday night, I started to sand everything and only got about half way because I got tired.
Still working on sanding today. I'm trying to keep a positive attitude by telling myself it will all be worth it in the end...maybe if I say it enough times it will work :)

Plants and seeds are in

 Onions and then carrot seeds planted under the wood board. The board is to keep the seeds moist and have better germination. The onion starts sat on my porch for almost a month as I waited to get the garden done so wayyyy too long! I think a few are growing.

Thai basil on the left. On the right, ground cherries I think. After I started my seeds, I lost my cheat sheet and so I had no idea what variety was what. The obvious plants I knew.. tomatoes, peppers... but even with the internet I couldn't figure out the difference between my tomatillos and the ground cherry starts. I haven't grown either before. Can anyone identify these for me?

Left to right: marigolds, peppers, random popsicle stick, basil

The difference a $4 can of spray paint can make

I was surprised to see the spray paint I needed for the fireplace at Walmart. It's a $4 can of Rustoleum high heat black paint. Skipping right to the good stuff...

 I did a ton of prep because I didn't know how much over-spray I was going to have. At first I was just going to paint the gold but then decided to just go for the whole thing so it would all match.

Behind the scenes... this mask works magically. Seriously once I have it on right I can't even smell fumes.

Fireplace gets chopped

Here is Cameron's favorite part of our house. The den area, particularly the fireplace. Above is a pre- move in picture. Ok so I can't figure out if it's just because I've learned about design or what but the fact that it's not balanced really, really bothers me.

Cam and I discussed adding another bookcase to the other side to help balance things out. That made the list and is definitely happening sometime. The other issue I was having was that the stone hearth extended- again- only on one side. We talked about adding stone under the other bookcase we would add. But the problem with that is the existing stone is ridiculously heavy (there is only wood subfloor and beams underneath) and we were worried any more stone on that floor would cause some serious issues. We finally after lots more talking agreed that taking off the stone in front of the exsisting bookcase would be best.

A friend gave us a name of a guy who works with stone and he chipped out the stone for us. He also put new stone the other side that didn't exist before.

Ahh, a bit better right?... there are so many things still to do in here but the goals to get done soon are:

Try to update the fireplace insert by painting the shiny gold
Scraping off the popcorn ceiling and painting
Painting the existing bookshelf and adding another on the opposite side.
Ripping out the nasty pink carpet and adding a wood floor.

Oh and under the bookcase we hoped it would be more shelving (too good to be true). We found it was a piece of plywood and we are still debating about what to do there. We have have a few ideas but nothing set in stone yet.

Garden beds have compost!

The compost was finally ready on Saturday! Cam and I worked on the garden from 9am to 9pm. We had a couple breaks here and there but it was mostly work. The kids even pitched in a bunch. It took 3 loads of compost to fill the beds. I mixed in some peat moss too to lighten things up.

We did 4 x 10's made of 1inch cedar plus the mound you see next to the fence is a "raised bed" of sorts just without the wood. I'm putting tomatoes, cucumbers, and tomatillos there to grow up the fence.

 You can kind of see in this picture we finished the chicken wire which covers the bottom 3ft for the small critters.

I bought this organic fabric to use as ground cover for the tomatoes. When I opened it I realized why it was on sale at Lowes. It was paper! Along with the ground cover idea, I got it so that the kids would know not to step there. But since it's paper it needs to be covered with mulch. Thus defeating the purpose I got it. Sigh.

As you can tell from the pics about it was almost night. I was feeling so behind on my planting I put on my flashlight and worked for an hour in the dark to get my seedlings I started inside in the ground. I got some good protein by sucking in some of the bugs(not on purpose of course) that surrounded my headlamp haha :) Today I'll be planting more seeds directly in the garden. I'm so happy to be making progress :)