all posts relevant to ‘house’

i can't stop the world

the goo goo dolls, on the ipod, who i’m seeing perform with the counting crows tonight at white river amphitheatre in auburn, wa. looking forward to it – these two bands have been guilty pleasures of mine for a while. so what’s been going on?

well, the work on the back of the house is in full swing. i have to say that i haven’t been the leading proponent; carrie has been kicking ass working on the deck. we’ve shortened it and are working now to replace the boards that need replacing. also carrie’s been cleaning the entire thing (not a small feat) and painting. we’ve decided to go with painting the square lattice under the handrails white, and staining everything else with a whitewash stain. it should look great with the new slate blue/blue/white scheme for the house.

also we’ve had a setback in the tree stump category. we thought we had 2 smaller stumps to remove between the deck and the fence in the back. we removed what we thought was the larger, and i recently got started on what we believed to be the smaller. well, turns out this may be the largest stump we’ve had to remove to date. one of the fenceposts is actually set [em]into[/em] the stump.

so, we’ll probably be talking to our neighbor about taking down 2 sections of fence and that post, so we can remove the stump and then reinstall the fence when we’re done. my advice to anyone who is having trees felled – get a price on removing the stump, too please. please. for the good of the future. please. thank you.

otherwise, just working on the house where we can. raising foster kittens. enjoying some good beer. the usual.

backwards weekend

so, a typical memorial day weekend might be spent drinking beer, then going to work at the end.

when have you known me to be typical? well okay, you got me there. but we spent the weekend, in addition to doing household chores & work, doing work on our kegging setup, and didn’t get it done until late monday night.

front yard flowers, emerge!

this weekend we put some time into the front yard again. a few months back, carrie planted several (dozen? hundred?) bulbs, and the tulips are just about at their peak.

the other plants are waking up to summer, too. the euphorbia are big and beautiful, the dafs are out (they preceeded the tulips by a week or two) and most all the rest are coming along nicely.

stumped, again

yes, i know that most people might think i have an unhealthy obsession with an axe. it’s a handy tool, for sure.

combined with our recently acquired rotary tool (used here for sharpening), the axe provides a level of damage unmatched by most other manual tools. i put said damage to good use this weekend to work on removing another stump – this time in the backyard, nestled snugly between the deck and fence.

what's in an outlet?

picture of the wall where the outlet will be mounted
so, i had a conversation with someone, trying to explain what i had to do with the outlets in the office (and formerly, in the bedroom).

here’s a story, in pictures. i didn’t get the BEFORE shot, but imagine the outlet box screwed to the tongue&groove boards inside that hole. (forgive the lack of focus on the first shot — i can’t go back and re-create it now!)

office project begins

picture of the office

it begins again. it seems every late january/early february, we’re hanging drywall.

last year it was our bedroom project which went quite well. only too slowly, as we chose to strip off the horrible old felt paper & wallpaper before applying drywall to the plank walls.

this time, we’re leaving said wall coverings in place and drywalling over them. weird, yes. but – we’ve already got 4 sheets up, and we should be ready to mud by the end of the weekend.

the bedroom, we didn’t finish until st patricks day or so. this one, we’re aiming to be complete on presidents day.

the wood (superficial wainscoting applied over the wallpaper layer) looks nice in the picture, but it’s actually very rough, and it… smells. like that old house smell times ten. when we tore it down, it actually got better because then we were smelling the nice, unfinished wood on the back.

more info and pictures as the project progresses. the plan:

finish drywall
tape & mud
crown moulding
prime & paint
floating floor – laminate
new thermostat & baseboard heater

the stump

so, guess who won the battle between me & the stump?

updated with progressive photos of the stump’s removal. the first picture represents our efforts after having burned/hacked/sawed 1/3 of the stump away. (once we got one root off, the rest got easier).

in total the stump represented at least 1200 pounds that we hauled to the dump.

picture of the stump, 1/3 gone

front yard project

stone’s done. i just have to get some fine gravel to lock them in.

and then someday — grass!

bonus points — out by the curb is moosie, our red F-150. and across the street is his buddy, a much nicer blue F-150 belonging to our neighbor. he’s a pretty boy, however. our moosie is tougher!

the bedroom is done.

in case anyone is wondering why i haven’t updated the website in a while … i’ve been busy.

here’s what we started out with, isn’t it lovely? the wainscoting was finished in-place, the berber carpet was … crusty, and that archaic fire alarm panel completes the look.

it begins…

we decide to take down the wainscoting. it was far too … ‘knotty’ for our tastes. unfortunately whomever installed it used several nails across the face of each board (instead of letting the tongue & groove do part of the work) so it was tough going, and destroyed the wood as we removed it.

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