Spring yard updates…

Anyone interested in why I haven’t been posting to my blog very much lately? Well let me show you!

Remember that path I put in? And that messy mound of dirt to the left of it? I finally got a garden box in! I made it out of eight $2 fence posts from Lowe’s, and sixteen $.79 twelve inch stakes. So for around $30 I have a new 8 foot long garden box! I’ve planted yellow crookneck squash along the fence and cabbage along the front. I also added some Iris’ to each side of the box, much better!

 

Next I planted some Thyme ground cover in my stone entry…will be very cool in a couple of years!

In my existing garden box, we added a ‘hog panel’ trellis, again using the cheap fence posts to hold it up.

Funny story about the hog paneling, I saw it at IFA last year and have been wanting a panel for this trellis ever since. The problem was that I needed a 14’ length for the box. The paneling is sold in 16’ lengths, and we have bolt cutters that we could easily use to cut it down to size, but HOW do we get the panel home?

Turns out that if you cut it down to the 14’ length needed at IFA when purchased, you can then tie the panel to the top of your 1979 Mercedes station wagon…bend the front end of the panel down to your front bumper and attach, and allow the back of the panel to overhang the back of the car by about 3 feet. Then you drive REALLY slowly down the backest of back roads to your house (paneling bouncing in rhythm to your driving), praying you don’t pass any law enforcement along the way…

Worked for us! Hehehe…

(And yes, we could have cut it down to 7’ sections, but how much fun would that have been to drive home?)

By the way… the stuff is AWESOME! Very rigid and perfect for a trellis! and the 6’ x 16’ length cost only $24! Not bad!

So in the bed with the new trellis we have the following planted:

Peas, Lettuce, Cucumbers, Pole Beans, Radishes, Spinach, more Beans, Brussels Sprouts, Spring Lettuce mix, and still more Beans.

I’m trying out the square foot gardening thing this year.. will keep updates and results coming!

This pic isn’t vegetable related, but I wanted to show off our Wisteria while in this corner of the yard. It’s growing up the house and down along the lattice fence… we had at least 20 blooms this year, the most we’ve ever had! Pic’s of those will be posted later also.

These pots have snake gourds, rosemary, cilantro and those red things I’m blanking the name of…

These pots have Strawberries! And another flower I don’t know the name of..

Our hot tub tomato bin has 24 tomato plants in it this year… again trying the square foot gardening thing, it says 1 plant per square foot…

Another new addition to our yard this year… our recycled gazebo squash trellis! We reused a garden box that has been moving around the yard since I bought it, inside the gazebo, then added a little cedar fence panel border around the outside of the gazebo corners. The box has 12 Acorn squash plants in it, and the little border has about 9 million Marigold seeds in it.

The chair is there as additional trellis material. It’s going to be really fun covered in squash!

A better pic of the little border around the squash box…

Another fun project this season is this rock wall…Dudley got the idea of ‘harvesting’ random stones off the dry canal bed this spring. We spent a couple of evenings practicing our shot-putt abilities by digging stones out of the dry bed, then THROWING them up to the access road to the best of our abilities! I won’t lie, a few of them came right back at us, causing us to run screaming, but we managed to get them all up! Then is was loading them into our wheelbarrow, unloading them in our back yard, letting them ‘age’ for a month (or until we could move again), then stacking them along our old rotting wood trellis box to create the wall. Cute ain’t it?

And we wonder why it hurts to move in the mornings…

There are 3 new Raspberry bushes planted in this section of the bed.

This section has 6 Bell Pepper plants and 3 Pumpkin plants.

This is our old wishing well. We took the top off of it this year, and are now using it to grow Thyme and a couple of varieties of Basil.

This view shows all three of the “new” beds.. plus an old rusty barrel that I’m going to use for a zucchini planter.

More herbs! A massive Terragon bush, and 2 varieties of Parsley.

This one is full of Chives and Garlic. It’s awesome using fresh garlic out of your garden all summer long!

And last for today, this bed has a ginormous Oregano bush, and my Rhubarb plant I planted last year.

Ok.. that was a lot. And I didn’t even show off the flower beds and flowers yet! I’m thinking that’ll be the next post…

Enjoy!

Catch Up Photos!

As I mentioned in my previous post, life has been incredibly hectic lately… so better late than never.. here are some Easter pictures!

Drew doing his “scored lots of Easter candy!" jig…

The boys target shooting with their new Easter Nerf Guns… (Zombie animal targets from the local gun shop)

And updates on the Downstairs Hallway, I added the magnetic blackboard TC made me to the wall, the perfect place to hang kid artwork!

And some family photos down the other wall… Still not totally complete, but it’s getting there!

Next post: Updated spring and garden pictures!

Black Rock Boys!

We went out to Black Rock at the south end of the Great Salt Lake about three weeks ago, life has been so hectic I haven’t managed to post much lately.

I love this picture of the boys climbing on the rock.. we got nowhere near the top, there isn’t a real trail up & it was too difficult for the kids.. but we got to explore some of the lower crevasis.

This photo of Black Rock was taken by Chad Duston last year. The landmark was first seen by Brigham Young three days after his entrance into the Great Salt Lake Valley. If I’ve piqued your curiosity, you can read more about Black Rock and it’s history, including a survey conducted by Captain Howard Stansbury (Stansbury Island) in 1850, how he used the water of the Great Salt Lake to cure beef, and about Brigham Young’s ship the ‘Timely Gull’ that was moored at Black Rock for 4 years before being destroyed in a storm, as well as many other recollections and stories.

Black Rock is currently used in free for all activities. Visitors like us go to see and touch it, hike around a bit, and take in the scenery. Many photographers use it as a unique location for scenic shots, Bridal and Groom poses, and dance troupe backdrops, among others. And yet others use it as a large canvas to practice their graffiti skills.

Whatever your purpose, if you are in the vicinity of the south end of the Great Salt Lake, close to the Kennecott smokestack, you may want to drop by for a visit or photo(s)!

Spring has Sprung!

It’s the time of year to show off spring projects and blooms again!

This is a path I laid a couple of weekends ago… we put a dog kennel in last fall, and the path to it quickly became mud. This is my remedy, plus it frames the garden well. The bed to the left is my last remaining bed that needs to be dealt with. I planted onions, chives, and iris’ there many moons ago, but it has basically been on its own since we bought the house…well that is going to change this year! Once done I’ll of course post some pics…

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And the entrance to the path…(the dogs had turned this corner into a mud hole from turning and running on a 90degree angle so much). We used the Texas paver Dude bought last time we were down there (6 years ago?), and gathered random stones from around the yard and behind the garage.. imagine it with grass or ground cover growing around the stones…is going to be way cute!

Oh, and the cement plugs we used were in the yard when we bought the house. We have dug up and re-used them all over the place. These were stacked behind the garage from a previous re-landscaping we did. The bricks were salvaged from a house down the street from us a few years ago. They were left over from a project and stacked on the side of the road with a ‘free’ sign on them. We pulled over, loaded up the back of the Land Rover with as many as it would hold, and have had them stacked behind the garage waiting for a project. Nice to have that storage space back there!

So total cost of the path? My LABOR! Not bad, eh? 

Now for our new flower containers! We bought a few pansies, daisy’s and other plants to brighten up some containers in the yard. I found the basket, macrame holder, and basket liners in the garage, remnants of a similar idea a few years ago. Put it all together and wah lah!

This is a darling copper teakettle I found at Savers for $3. It really isn’t a heavy, high quality item, but I instantly thought “planter!” when I found it. Turned out way cute with purple daisies planted in it!

 

While making one of my shopping excursions to Ikea while working on the basement hallway, I came across these cute aluminum pots. They were about $1.50 each, so I bought half a dozen. Turns out they look great hanging on our little lattice garden fence full of pansies!

The boys each planted of the taller ones, we cant wait until they all start blooming!

Another Texas yard accent… Dude bought this at a garden store in Texarkana for his mom before she died.. when we went down for her funeral, his sister gave it back to him. We’ve been potting various flowers in it ever since.. it’s a cute yard accent!

This cool milk bucket was an award to my store when I was managing West Marine. It was full of cookies when we got it. Once again it has been a cute planter since then! I had it in the house until this year, but I’m loving it on my front porch!

All the pretty flowers from the top!

Now for the stuff in the yard, my flowering Forsythia bush…

Some still blooming Crocus’

Cute miniature Daffodils…

 And this plant (can’t remember the name) with the red upside down flowers that is just waiting to bloom…

HAPPY SPRING EVERYONE!

Downstairs Hallway

Okay, this is going to be a long post with many pictures so bear with me…

I’ve been working on this project for about a month now, and although it’s still not completely finished (some trim work and decorating left to do), it’s time I got this post up!

I repainted the walls, ceiling, doors, floor, stairs and hand rail. I also pulled down some ugly cardboard paneling in the freezer area.

Brace yourself:

 

Here we have the view from the kitchen down the stairs before and after. Notice the bare cement floor? It’s been that way for at least 4 years (probably longer)..very sad and ugly, I know. Now it’s painted with cement/garage floor paint. Much better! Closer picture below…

Now onto the stairs. These things are old, original to the house (1965-ish), and in bad shape. I was going to replace the treads altogether, but after pricing them at $8.00 – $15.00 a piece, I decided to see what alternative I could come up with. I decided on a major ‘distressed’ look (hey, if it looked awful I’d just have to replace them anyway... might as well try!) So Drew and I took a hammer to them and beat out our frustrations (not really, we had some fun hammering the crap out of the stairs!) The flash of the camera shows a glare, they actually look a lot darker than that, but you get the idea. I painted them with a couple of coats of brown, then dry brushed a thinned black over them. I finished them off with 3 coats of polyurethane to protect the finish.. Not bad! I still have a piece of transitional trim to add up at the top, one of the few finishing trim works I have left to do…

The picture on the left show you one of the two major cracks in the stairs. I nailed the sides and front of the stair to the riser below almost a dozen times. You can still tell there’s a crack when you walk on it, but the squeaking has stopped! On the right you see how it nicely blends with the distressed look! Yay!

This is the hallway leading to Dude’s office. Before shows an old cheap bookcase I bought at Office Max when I was about 15. It’s been holding books, catfood, and misc. crap for years now. I cleaned it all off and left the bookcase on the curb. (One nice thing about living in West Valley, you don’t have to haul anything to the dump…just put in on the curb and someone will come along and take it!)

After shows the cool new shoe cabinet I got at Ikea and one of my new rugs. The boys each have 2 bins for their shoes now, freeing up all the shoe clutter that was in a basket in my front room. I still haven’t decided what’s going on the wall above.. a mirror? Art? Photos? I’ll post it when I finish it.

This is across from the shoe bin, under the upper flight of stairs. Our freezer hides out here, and before the remodel, a shelf above (full of junk of course) was as deep as the space and butted up against some UGLY old dark brown cardboard paneling that was nailed at an angle down the back of the stairs. I didn’t think to take a picture of it before ripping it down (this is mostly because I was on the phone with TC when I got the idea.. I went ahead with it before thinking about photos.)

The wall behind the freezer (bottom 1/2 of photo) is actually the door to access under the house. It’s been plain pressed plywood since I installed it a few years ago. It looks much better painted!

The left picture shows the shelves I built under each step of the upper stairway. I used leftover bamboo flooring pieces from our main floor to make the shelves. They are holding the books that used to be on the old cheap bookcase. The layout now really opens up the space and makes the whole hallway feel bigger.

On the right is a picture of the basement bathroom door and the glass blocks I installed above it earlier in the fall. I don’t think I ever posted them, so I’ve included them here.

These shots show the before and after of the floor… slightly different locations, but you can see the difference! The paint system has you etch the surface, then paint two coats, and finally (if you choose to) sprinkle little multi-colored plastic pieces into the paint. The plastic pieces hide any imperfections INCREDIBLY. Both the boys room floor and this floor had some major dings, gouges, etc. You can’t even see them with the sprinkles on the floor. Way cool!

And one last shot showing the wall heading up the stairs. The new coat rack for the kids stuff, with the newly repainted blackboard TC gave me a few years ago. The blackboard is going to move, I’ve made a second coat rack, intending for it to go above the shoe bin, but after making it, I found out that it’s wider than the wall above the bins! (I used the tops of two old West Marine display racks I had in the garage, already mitered and finished edges, just had to paint and add hooks). Oops.. so I’m going to hang it above this one for the extra storage. The blackboard will find a new home somewhere else.

That’s it for now, until I get all the trim work and decorating done!

Taaaa Daaaa! Much better!