Garden fever!

I officially have garden fever.

I've checked out pretty much every book on gardening in the library where I work.  At night I pile into my bed with my books and my sketches and plot.  This is exactly what I needed to jolt me out of my homeowner ennui.

Last weekend I planted four more peonies and put a columbine in the shade garden.

I planted an Ocean Spray in the back right corner.  Ocean Spray is a native plant which means it's low-maintenance.  No mulching, no pruning, no soil amendments, just plant them somewhere they can go nuts.  Ocean Spray can get to be 15 feet tall and wide, so it should screen out the neighbors behind me as well. 

God, is my yard a mess or what?  In addition to screening out the neighbors (a new fence should help, too), I want to put in raised vegetable beds.  I have a completely annoying brick heap in my yard, presumably left over from a bricked barbecue.

I started grabbing bricks and laying out where I want to put the bed.  But I kept wanting to change the shape and that got really tiring, moving bricks over and over, so I finally got smart and pulled out the hose.

Once I had a shape I liked I moved the bricks.  I ended up with a modified bone shape.  My sister said it looks more like a shark or a boot.

I was encouraged by my friend T to do sheet mulching.  Some people call it "lasagna mulching."  You lay down newspaper or cardboard to choke out the grass, then pile on mulch and organic material.  You kill off the grass but maintain all the bugs and bacteria and established naturey goodness in the soil.  And you keep piling and piling until you have nice soil to plant your veggies in.  I asked one of coworkers to save the newspapers the next time she cleared out the library periodicals room.  That very same day I had two huge boxes of newspapers!

I did this on a rainy day, which worked to my advantage (wet newspaper doesn't fly away).  You just spread out a thick layer of newspaper (between 5-20 pages said one website) and grab some bricks so they don't fly away . . .

Then I grabbed some of the soil from the various pots I had all over the patio and spread it on top.

The next time I mow the lawn I'll use the bag (I usually don't) and spread the collected clippings on top.  I'll start collecting compostable materials like kitchen scraps and throw those on too.  Then hopefully I'll figure out what material I want to use to raise the beds and I can start getting my veggies going before we get too long into spring.

I also planted ranunculus bulbs and sowed sweet alyssum beneath the rose bushes out front.  The maples in the front are leafing out and the color is gorgeous.

I'm planning on planting creeping thyme beneath them.  It should provide a nice ground cover that has the bonus of releasing a wonderful smell when it's stepped on.  So as my roommate gets in and out of her car she should be greeted with a lovely scent.

This is the carrot I had on the stick last summer when I was working so hard on my house.  "Get all this interior stuff done and you can play all next summer in the yard," I kept telling myself.  Hopefully my house will behave and I really can spend my summer toiling in the backyard.  Fingers crossed!

Homeowner fatigue

I've been suffering from a bit of Homeowner Fatigue lately.  Now that the basement flooring is in (and subsequently off my mind) other things in the house are clamoring for attention. It's never ending. 

The kitchen counters desperately need regrouting.  My roommate has a bad habit of leaving dishes to dry, not in the dishrack, but on the countertop.  Where the grout has cracked water gets down and has begun to rot it.  Regrouting the tile would take all weekend, if not more. It's something I've always thought I'd do when I was in between roommates, since it renders the kitchen kind of unusable. 

Then last Thursday my dryer broke.  It just wouldn't start.  It came with the house, it's very old, and the whole front lifts off the front of the machine.  I'm shocked it lasted as long as it did, and yet it felt like a betrayal when it finally died.  I could have called a repairman but I really suspect I'm better off with a new one.  I think, because the front was no longer connected to the front of the machine, a lot of extra hot air was escaping the dryer and heating the laundry room.  That's a whole lot of waste.

So the money I had saved for building a new fence, a fence I desperately need, was spent on a new dryer.  My beautiful friend T came over to talk about backyard landscaping and I got so overwhelmed by the magnitude of what she was planning that I had to interrupt her and tell her that all I can handle right now is her telling me, "Plant your daphne bush here." 

Blueberry bushes are finally in the ground after being in pots for three years!

The problem here is not so much the house (which I still love) but my brain and the fact that I have a hard time not trying to give myself projects.  Before I started grad school I gave myself the task of reading as much as possible, since I knew I wouldn't have time once I was school.  That was a great project, particularly since you can do it in bed.  I think everyone seeks projects in degrees but a house will *always* give you something to do. And I think it would still be the case, though less so, if I had bought a new house.

So I need to develop some sort of blinder for home repair once the fence is in so I don't feel bad when I just putter in the yard all summer.  Oh wait . . . that's a project.  I'm terrible at this.

Decorating the basement

I was doing some spring cleaning and I decided to finally move the armchair down into the basement.  I had to take the legs (and the basement door) off and I *might* have dinged the paint a bit coming down.

I think the room needs a pop of color, don't you?  I decided to move my red tables into the basement.  They were from my reveal:

And then they got moved to the laundry room.  Even laundry rooms need color.  And a lot of junk, apparently.

My coworker has a Murphy bed she no longer needs. I'm going to put it on the wall where the yellow table currently resides.  Then when I have house guests they can fold down the bed and have their own suite down here.

I was so excited about starting to get this going that I dragged my roommate down to see it.  And I saw another centipede.  And I screamed.  And I squeezed the car keys in my hands and set off my car alarm.  And then the dog went nuts.

We're VERY excited about the basement over here.

First buds of spring

I really thought the dried out ferns I planted last fall weren't going to make it, but look!  Tiny fiddleheads, waiting to unfurl.

 

Daffodils popped up in the front yard, too.  Once those wither the tulip bulbs I planted should take their place.

 

The weeds are thriving, of course.  Luckily I love weeding, especially when the ground is soft and the sun is shining.  I like to throw them over my shoulder onto the sidewalk so they can cook in the sun.  You know, teach them a lesson.

My bloodgood maples have small buds on them and I'm really excited to see what kind of foliage they'll produce.  I think I'm also going to order some Rosalie tulip bulbs.  Rosalie is my Grandma's name (Hi, Grandma! I love you!) and she raised prize-winning African violets for as long as I can remember.  I'm bad at house plants but I can do bulbs.

Aren't they so lovely?

Hall and Oates

We're in stereo!

Crawly things

The night after we completed the basement laminate install Bill picked me up for dinner and I dragged him down to look at the finished product.  We were oohing and ahhing over the floor until I started screaming because there was a CENTIPEDE on the fireplace.

Have you ever seen one in real life?  They are disgusting and they move FAST.  Bill rolled his eyes and killed it for me.  [Someone later asked me if we took it outside and I was like, "Why would I let something from the 7th level of hell live?  Huh?"]

Afterward I had a tender moment because Bill's been rescuing me from bugs for eight years!  Thank the heavens for him!  The funny thing is that, in the last nine months, I have been in just about every crevice in my house with the exception of the crawl spaces.  I was actually at the point where I was feeling like maybe I was brave enough to don one of those white suits and go in there.  But now?  Now that I know there are centipedes?  Nuh uh.  No way.

Should the spiders of the world decide to work on their PR, I think a good slogan would be: "Spiders: we're not centipedes!"  I like them better already.

My kingdom for a yardboy!

I've been scouting hardware store sales and craigslist for a lawnmower all winter.  Even used lawnmowers are expensive and how do you tell if a mower is "good" or not?  Can you even kick those tiny tires?

 Image source: Stories of Wisdom

Somewhere along the way I arbitrarily decided I didn't want to pay more than $40 for a used one.  It costs $30 to have a landscaper cut the lawn so if I ended up with a lemon at least it wouldn't be that much more than hiring someone to cut the lawn.

It made sense in my head.

I found a listing for a mower for $40 that was magically still available, so I headed out to Wilsonville yesterday to look at it.  When I got there the man explained how he started it up that morning and the starter cord snapped off.  Because I'd have to pay someone to install another cord, he wanted to give me the mower for free.  I was pretty sure I could fix it myself so I tried to get him to accept my money.  We bickered back and forth and he finally agreed to take $10, but "I had to give it to his son" who was standing right there.

Okeydoke. 

They loaded the mower into the trunk of my Honda and even gave me an extra bungee cord to keep it in there.  These guys were so genuinely nice.

I bought a replacement cord at Home Depot for $3.98, bringing the total cost of the mower to $13.98.  I started to unscrew things that didn't need to be unscrewed.  Then I realized that and put them back together.

I almost gave up.  I couldn't see a way to get the housing off the top and fiddling with spring-loaded parts that can remove fingers makes me nervous.  Then I found this video and it seemed more manageable.

I actually didn't have to remove the housing at all.  I'm assuming I did it correctly because it works!  GO ME.

To reward myself for my thriftiness I mowed the lawn, cleaned my gutters, and did some weeding.  Seriously though, the surface of the moon has fewer craters than my back lawn.  In addition to replacing the fence I really need to rototill the backyard and even it out.  And then I think I'd like to get a yard boy.  Someone nice to look at who takes care of this stuff for me.  I'll make lemonade! 

I'm sort of overwhelmed by my yard right now, but I'm still floating from the knowledge that for every jerk on craigslist who wants to rip you off, there's a nice guy who cuts a broke girl a deal.  Thanks, Terry in Wilsonville.  You rock.

Hallelujah!

I have no words.  I never knew I could be so in love with a fake wood product.

 

  

Do you remember what my basement used to look like?

Skanky carpeting over mildewed foam over glued-down foam over vinyl tile.  I chose something called an "insulayment" which combines padding with a vapor barrier to go under the laminate flooring.  It's pretty easy to roll out and tape together.

But that's upside down, dumbass.  This is better:

Doesn't it look like a swimming pool?

I bribed Scott and Keith, they of the gigantic muscles, with breakfast and pizza to help me install the laminate.  They wouldn't even drink the beer I bought them because, apparently, it's unsafe to operate electric saws while drinking.  

We started in the alcove. The alcove I still need to paint.  Pick carefully when you start laying down flooring!  It guides the rest of the installation and EVERYTHING will have to originate from that side of the room henceforth.

 

You'll want to gather as many tape measures as you can.  You'll spend the rest of the day fetching them from the yard because Keith accidentally takes the measuring tape upstairs every time he measures, even though there's one right next to the chop saw, but that's okay.

They call these "special cuts."  Keith is masterfully accurate on a chop saw.

Once we got past the weird areas it was just glorious feet and feet of installing whole boards.  It went super fast.  Bill showed up to help and we were so in a groove that he was relegated to documenting our progress.

 

I'm totally tempted to buy a mirror and barre and turn this into a dance studio.  Couldn't you just pirouette for hours? It took us five hours, start to finish, which I think is pretty damn impressive.  I'm so pleased I want to start asking strangers off the street to come down to my basement.  But that might be weird.

It's always something.

I'm prepping the basement for laminate flooring, which means Dryloking any cracks in the basement floor and moving everything out of that space.  It also means a little bit more scraping in the alcove, where there was no vinyl tile laid down; there was just padding glued down on the cement slab. 

Good enough.  I whipped up a container of Drylok (please please remember that Drano melts this stuff) and worked incredibly fast, filling the holes that were created by the carpet tack strips being nailed into the concrete.  

 

I missed a hole, can you tell where?  I don't know how I did that.  But a funny thing happened while I was trying to loosen little bits of vinyl tile from under the perimeter where the drywall made it difficult to scrape: I found crumbled bits of wood.  Sort of like you'd see with termites.  

I think.  

It's just in one spot and it could be dry rot.  Or it could be termites.  Termites in Oregon are subterranean, so it's totally plausible that they'd be in the basement.  The wood gives when you poke it with a screwdriver.  While I had my cheek pressed to the floor, peering into the half-inch clearance between the Drywall and the floor, I noticed that there was wood paneling underneath the drywall.  Awesome. Why remove that when you can just add more layers on top?

So I called my trusty exterminator dude and he's going to come out tomorrow to tell me what he thinks.  I'm just hoping he doesn't tell me that we need to remove the drywall from that area.  

He's probably going to tell me we need to remove the drywall from that area.  So it goes.

Super awesome update: No sign of termites but the guy did a quick spray for me, behind the drywall, just in case any termites think about coming in for a snack.  EcoTech NW is highly recommended, if you're local.

Painting the fireplace, for reals this time

I scraped up all the vinyl tiles from the basement floor and it looked like there was nothing else left for me to remove from the space, so I could finally paint the fireplace.

There's no unpainting a fireplace, so you have to be really really sure you want to do it.  I was sure.  But first I had to remove Hall and Oates. I was terrified there would be dead animals or something sinister (like SPIDERS!) in the grate.  I removed the screws and got my prybar and popped Hall off.  Then I scurried back super fast.

There wasn't anything terrible in there.  There was something pretty good, actually: one of the missing bricks from the right side of the fireplace!  Sweet.

 

I vacuumed the bricks really thoroughly to get any loose grit or mortar out.  I used a little TSP to clean the front bricks that were looking charred, though it didn't seem to do much.  Then I just grabbed plain old white latex paint and started painting from the top down.

I used a regular brush instead of a roller because the fireplace is made of clinker bricks and what looks like pumice stone.  The surface is very porous and uneven.  According to classicbungalows.com, "Clinker bricks were the result of wet bricks being placed to close to the fire in the kiln, resulting in bricks that were darker-coloured and in either ‘melted’ or ‘exploded’ shapes. The surface texture of the bricks could range from glassy to pock-marked from the uneven heat. Richer, darker colours of the ‘clinker’ bricks were another welcome result from the extra heat."

The funny thing is that I was absolutely sure I wanted to paint the fireplace.  When I posted the pictures on Facebook a friend told me they were clinker bricks, something I didn't know previously.  All of the sudden I felt despair over what I had done.  They were historical! Used in the Arts and Crafts movement! Now the only thing that could restore them was a sandblaster.

Drat.

But I think it's going to be okay.  Next weekend we are installing the laminate and hopefully it will start to feel less like a basement and more like another room in the house.  I want to do something like this over the fireplace to warm up the space.  

 

Source: Young House Love

And of course I'll hang Hall and Oates.  And the disco ball.  Too much?

Happy dance!

It came! The CanvasPop likeness I ordered of Hall and Oates came!

I still think the shipping rates are egregious, but it looks *really* good.  Highly recommended.

Unearthing the basement floor

Removing old vinyl tile from a basement floor is fun stuff.  Oh no, wait, what's the opposite of that?  It's the opposite of fun stuff.

 

It feels good to get this old mildewy stuff out of the basement, but I wish getting it out didn't make my wrists so sore and my hands so blistered.

 

People actually pay a lot of money to make their concrete floors look like this.

I would gladly give it for free if someone would remove the rest of the tile for me.