The Castle

The number 2 project in our queue was completed this weekend, due to the efforts of Dad, Mom, Uncle B, and Aunt M. Why the "The Castle?" That's O.'s word for it, and he defends it with enthusiasm.

We began with this: a pile of treated lumber and recycled deck wood, a wily three-year old, obliging parents/grandparents/aunt/uncle, and a dream.
A couple of days before the project began, a rare (we hope) series of earthquakes occurred. Minimal damage in our area, fortunately. The most severe quake in the series kicked around the wood pile a bit, shown below. Must have been the midwestern-raised in me again, but I was impressed.

We lucked out with the weather, but early afternoon showers forced the first steps of the project indoors. Here's J., Dad, and Uncle B. assembling the base.And here's Mom, documenting the process.

The next step was to attach the vertical beams. The horizontal 2x4s acted as temporary support, by the way. Aunt M. is shown below, holding it and us together.We learned that power saws and naptime don't mix. O. came outside to express his displeasure at the racket. O. quickly realized that the result of his noise is to his benefit.
The floor of the deck was installed next.

It was clear the deck is the best place to be. We basically built it around O., with Aunt M. for comfort/safety/entertainment.
A test run of the slide. Uncle B. later mounted about a foot off the ground, which makes it easier to climb into at the top. O. can land on his feet, which gives him a good running start. I think a swimming pool will reside at the end of the slide this summer.
Dad and Uncle B., putting their heads together.
Mom giving her assessment of the progress.
Uncle B. seems satisfied with the climbing wall installation.
As you can see, O. needs a little help to climb into it yet, but he'll learn. Kids need goals.

The finished product, or at least finished for now. Plans for future modifications and improvements were tossed around, including a roof, some seating for the sandbox below, a bucket and pulley, and swing.

The Queue

We seem to be in a phase with projects planned and materials purchased, but not enough time to complete the project. Three projects are coming up soon, but I don't know when they're going to happen due to our spring travel schedule.

1.) This box contains the O.'s headboard for his big boy bed. We need to assemble it, stain it to match the bookshelf, finish, and install.



2.) This is the wood the Mom and Dad brought down several weekend ago, which will become O.'s castle. Fortunately for us, we will have help for this project (Dad and Mom again), but the weather needs to improve so that the help will travel.



3.) I don't have an actual picture of the last project, because it's just a cardboard box next to the garbage in the garage, and I think you can imagine that without a visual aid. Instead, here's a photo of where the box's contents will go. A storm door will be installed here, plus painting the front door white.


Until we have some time to tackle these projects, I'll leave you to ponder these mystery plants: What the heck are these, and why are they there?

These two plant appeared this spring in a hanging basket pot that held a Eucalyptus plant last summer. I left the pot outside all winter next to the house.




And this one? It appeared where the tarragon grew last year, but it's not tarrgon.

Re-upholstery project

I'm thinking about reupholstering the dining room table seats. The fabric has thinned out considerably, it's been stained and cleaned so many times, and one chair is beginning to split. The fabric is 10 years old, and it served us well, but it's time for the fabric to go to the great sewing machine in the sky.

I've decided that I'd like to go with something different than the original fabric. The original fabric was offwhite in an striped pattern. It was chosen because it was neutral and would match almost any apartment. But lately I've noted that all of the neutral things I've chosen over the years for the apartment reason look like cream of wheat together.

I rented four fabric sample for the week, and I haven't decided if any of these are on the right track.

Robert Allen Home, Bristol Stripe in Seafoam, $40/yard. This one looks better up close than it does from a distance. It goes to off-white, and the seafoamy colors look too beachy with the wood in the chairs.



SMC Designs, Sequence 88, Ebbtide in Patina, $45/yard. This is the current front runner. The greens in this match the greens and reds in our house, and it goes with the tones in the wood. I wish the fabric was a little heavier though, it may not wear as well as some.



Platinum, Elsbeth in Juniper, $60/yard. I like the idea of this, but not the execution. I like the idea of of having the single stripe down the middle (we'd have to be careful to buy enough to do this). The colors aren't right with the room or the wood though. The green, I think, is the problem. Too much celery, not enough broccoli.



Waverly, Garden Ottoman, in Sage $45/yard. Another fabric that looks lucious up close, but goes to mush from afar. The green isn't right here either, although I think the fabric is substantial enough to do the job.



Two more photos of the fabrics, taking a couple of steps back.





I don't think we've found the right fabric yet.

Passthrough

Let's chat about the passthrough, shall we? I'm thinking glass mosaic tile in rich colors and a fabulous design, new trim...wait, wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me explain.

Passthrough, as seen from the kitchen.

Below is a photo of the passthrough from the kitchen to the erstwhile dining room. The erstwhile dining room is now our office. We use part of the erstwhile living room as the dining room, which has been renamed the pretentious great room.

Passthrough, as seen from the office.

The office, because it was intended to be a dining room circa 1970, is open to the great room. Which is great for a dining room, but not for an office. We'd like the office to be a space that could be private when needed, to be used as a guest room or just a place to get away. So, someday, we'd like to wall off the office, and install French doors. The French doors, in theory, would enable the space to be used as a dining room again if needed, and provide the privacy when we need while not closing it off completely.

The great room, as seen from the office. Imagine French doors in this space.

Now, back to the passthrough. In order to achieve the noise reduction that we'd like in the office, we need to wall off the passthrough. But as you can see, the passthrough is handy as paperback book storage. Plus, we don't want to do anything permanent, just in case the next person who buys this house thinks that a passthrough to a dining room is the cat's meow.

My idea: mount a board from the office side of the passthrough. This board will fill in the space, created a flat surface that is visible from the kitchen. It could be removed in the future without major renovation. On the office side, add a shelf to the board and paint, voila--built-in book shelf. Nothing like enabling the reading addiction, eh?

But what to do with the kitchen side of the board? Here's the current plan: We can remove existing trim and replace with new trim pieces on the sides plus trim pieces on the top and bottom of the shelf to match. I think that this will create the appearance of a frame space. Inside the frame space, I'd like to create something interesting out of glass mosiac tiles, but this is where I'm fresh out of ideas.

Passthrough as seen from the kitchen

What do I put here? The wallpaper is going to be removed in a few weeks, and we're going to paint it the color...still to be determined. So what do I want here? Something recognizable, like a pineapple? Or a butterfly? Or something geometric and symmetric? Or a random pattern in colors similar to the counter and cabinet? Or just a single color? And which color is that?

Annuals

I planted annuals in the rosebed (the former rose-rockbed) today. I pulled back the plastic under the mulch and found a surprise.


The orange cable. It must be the cable/internet/phone line that our cable provider could not find when we moved here. Also, there's that a white plastic pipe with a square top, which reminds me of a gas release for a sewer. What is that?



The cable extends almost to the fireplace, and then I lost it again. I shoved the cable back under the tarp, so it now sits at the edge of the fold of the tarp (about 14" away from the cement). Mental note: don't dig there.

On with the annuals. I add some potting soil to the clay to increase the odds of survival. Then, I planted one six-pack of coleus (back row) and two six packs of impatients (pink and white mix in the front). I left them high relative to the ground surface, to account for the mulch.



The next step was a little tricky. I cut the "Ts" and "Hs" into the tarp so that the plants would poke through. Then, I pull the tarp back and rake the mulch back into place. (In retrospect, I should have cut the tarp first, then planted the annuals.)



Wow, they look so tiny there.

We will rock you

All of the flower/shrub beds outside of our house are covered in black plastic with rocks on top. When we bought the house, J and I didn't love the rocks, but they promised to be a low maintenance form of weed control, so we called it good enough.

Rocks are not as low maintenance as we'd hoped. They collect leaves and twigs. We've tried rakes and leaf blowers but there is no efficient way to keep the rocks from looking junky. And we were constantly picking rocks out the grass. Plus the grass and chives grow through rocks regardless.

J and I hatched a plan to spiff up the shrub beds, and mulch is the answer. With this, we'd be at least maintaining a bedding material that we like to look at. We also learned that mulch is not advisable next to our house, due to termite issues. And since we wanted to put in beds for shrubs on the southeast and southwest sides of the house (underneath the bedroom windows), we decided to save to rock for those areas. J was jazzed to start this project, and we decided we'd start on the area closest to the patio first.

Please note that the record shows that J's comment prior to the de-rocking project was "Oh, it'll only take a couple or hours, and it'll be fun!"

Ha. Well, fun is relative term. And it took the better part of Sunday. But we have completed this much.



Hmm. This project definitely has a high tedious and sweaty work to landscaping impact ratio.



Here's where we stopped. I buried the cable/internet/phone line (apparently Medicom does not bore through rocks) and put in the stepstones, with the hope that this will remind me not to dig there.



But we have a long way to go. The rocks go to the fenceline.

One last photo.


This is where one of the new flower/shrub beds will be. I put in a snowball viburnum, which is supposed to grow 10 ft x 10 ft and cover the brick between the two windows. We plan to put in an edge border with some artistic swoop to accent the viburnum.

Oh, and it was 80 oF and sunny here this weekend.

Ruminations

1.) I'm thinking of painting our office-slash-computer room, shown below (viewed from the living room), green.


One of these greens. Something that would match the pear in the argon or the olive in the oxygen.
Or, a shade lighter than the green shown in the Greg Stones print, below.



I'm letting the idea marinade for awhile because this sounds like one I might regret in six months.

2. J and I would really like to improve the smaller bathroom. The floor is our least favorite part of the the bathroom because it is a color of yellow that defies accurate description. Thus, the floor is very good place to start.

We were browing the Super Menards last weekend, and saw self-adhesive laminate tiles. We calculated that it would take about $50 of tile to cover the bathroom, plus the cost of leveling compound. We're picked out a couple of samples, see below. I think I like the colors in the one on the left better, but I wish it were lighter like the one on the right.


Then, we realized that if were going to install new tile and have to yank the trim anyway, that we might as well sand the trim and repaint it. No problem, I have all that stuff, just need to buy some trim nails ($10, if that.)

Then, we realized that we would probably have to take out and remount the toliet to install the tiles. And since the toliet is white and doesn't match the rest of the bathroom and I'd like a low-flow to save water, we might as well buy a new toliet too ($160+, in "bone" color to match the shower and the sink).


But, if we're replacing the toliet, well, heck, we may as well replace the cabinet under the sink. We can keep the sink since it's of decent and durable material and remount it on a new cabinet and plus install a new faucet. (And this is where I quit estimating the costs.)


But, if were doing all that, we should get a new medicine cabinet that matches the cabinet. Plus we'd like a bigger one, because solving the storage problems in the bathroom would be a major victory.


And of course, if we buy a new medicine cabinet, we'd need new lighting to replace the only source of artificial light in the room. We'd like to replace the fan on the ceiling with a light/fan combo, and then put in nifty curio lights near the medicine cabinet.


As you can see, the $50 "let's replace the floors" project has become a near-complete remodel. I can't decide if we're better off with the above plan, or gutting the whole thing and starting from scratch.

The Master To-Do List*

Bedroom #1
paint done, 7/06
install ceiling fan done, 4/07
fix dead outlet

Bedroom #2
paint done, 7/06, first thing to go. It was dark brown. With inspirational quotes written in metallic paint. Hideous.
install ceiling fan done, 3/07

Bedroom #3
paint done, 7/06
install ceiling fan done, 06/07
fix dead outlet

Bathroom #1
paint done, 01/07 except trim and touchups
install new cabinet, sink, mirror, and light

Bathroom #2
paint done, 01/01 except trim
level floor, install new flooring, paint trim
install new cabinet, sink(?), mirror/light
install new exhaust fan

Entryway and Hallway
paint walls done, 11/06
paint trim and door
fix dead outlet and switch (hmm... coincidence?)
install light
new flooring (ceramic tiles?)
paint outside of door
paint overhead outside light (done)
new house numbers, chosen for size appropriateness

Living Room/Dining Room
remove or otherwise deal with wallpaper-covered paneling (done)
paint (done)
new flooring (hardwood floors vs. laminate?)
improve lighting situation in dining room
fix dead outlets (2: one dining room, one living room)
fix dead switch (dining room)
paint overhead outside light (done 7/2007)

Office
paint (done)
enclose pass through to kitchen with bookshelf
wall off and install French doors
new flooring (hardwood floors vs. laminate)
install ceiling fan?

Kitchen
remove wall paper done 7/2007)
paint done 7/2007)
change cabinet knobs
install under cabinet lighting
enclose pass through to office with mosaic tile idea

Laundry Room
paint walls, trim, and cabinets done, 3/07
change cabinet knobs, done, 3/07
install steel door to garage

Garage
Remove panelling
Install insulation and drywall
Improve shelving/storage/workbench areas and lighting
Replace garage door
Install outdoor lighting, flanking the garage door
Paint existing overhead outdoor light done 05/07
Install deck in attic
Fix dead light switch
Replace door to backyard

Frontyard
Remove two dead shrubs and replace with spiraea? (shrubs removed 8/2007, new shrubs planted 6/2008)
Build beds for shrubs South of front door, plant maple and barberry (done 10/2007)
Lampost: paint? replace? straighten?
Paint shutters
Plant something where the hostas fried near the dryer vent (done 7/2007)
Euthanize sweet gum tree and replace?

Backyard
Herb garden (done 7/2007)
De-rockify the roses and boxwoods (done 7/2007)
Create bed for shrubs South of patio (bed done 8/2007, shrub installation in progress)
Drainage?
Reseed grassless areas in lawn

*List items and prioritization subject to change to suit our whims.