Day Three-eighty-two: deck the deck...

Today we picked up right where we left off on Wednesday. After about a month of distributing our two cubic yards of rocks all around the house the once formidable pile had dwindled considerably. With no other projects just now we moved this remainder out of the driveway.

Elsewhere we capitalized on a clear, sunny (if cool) day to get some more boards down on the deck. This is the easy part now--one measurement, one cut, and about ten screws for each board. There was a little fancy footwork to get the boards around the banister but nothing too challenging. The hardest part was maneuvering the mostly straight (meaning slightly bent) boards into place. Some 1/8-inch spacers and brute force generally did the trick.

Once the floor is in we'll cut an end piece with mitered corners and notches for the posts. Then we can turn to the railings and replacing the old stair treads. This deck is going to look like a million bucks.

Day Three-eighty: humble beginnings

It's taken a little more than a month but this weekend we finally made some headway rebuilding the deck we took down before Thanksgiving. What is it about holidays that turns our minds to decking? Not sure, but the last of the supporting boards went in as did the first two cypress floor boards.

Day Three-seventy-eight: Tis the season

With the weather continuing to cooperate we redoubled our efforts to complete all the outside tidying and finished just in the Saint Nick of time. Much digging, clearing, pruning, bagging, mulching, and spreading later and we've achieved a nearly Japanese style yard (completely unintentionally). One thing we have learned is that two cubic yards of rocks goes a LONG way.

Here's what the back of the house now looks like. Far better than when we last left it.

And here's the side of the house that continues the work we did to the front. We don't have good before photos but the dozen or so bushes that we cut down were about 6 feet high, 4-6 feet wide, and 3-4 feet deep each. Now they're all about a foot high and will be easy to keep pruned once per year. After everything came down we had a "there's a house hidden in here" moment. Another advantage is allowing sunlight into the basement window.

Here's the final product. As with the front, we put down new cedar mulch. If this were a scratch-n-sniff you'd know how nice this smells now.

So regular readers will recall that about six months ago we cleared a good deal of junk from behind the garage. This is what we started with, about a decade's worth of firewood (much of it rotten from being in a pile for so long) and a decrepit old metal shed.

We got it to this state in June...

And here's where we are today. All the old wood boards and pallets that we beneath the firewood (and very rotten) are gone, the grade away from the garage has been improved, various and sundry other pieces of trash are also absent now.

For good measure, we cleaned out the ivy and other junk on the side of the garage, regraded it, and put down some more of our endless supply of rocks.

Finally, some may wonder what has become of all of the trash that we've removed? We've taken away numerous bags but the picture below is the most dramatic. It includes all the cut branches from the bushes we took away from the side of the house.

Day Three-seventy: the great outdoors

Well nature lovers we spent an overcast but mild weekend whipping the grounds into shape. With the help of a local garden center we're pretty pleased with where things stand now.

The previous owners may not have had green thumbs but they certainly liked to plant things. In out opinion too many things that grew unwieldy. On the left side of the front of the house this is what we had to start with (ignore the new walkway that was done months ago):

A few plants, shrubs, and fragrant cedar mulch and presto!

As the shampoo bottle says, lather, rinse, repeat (on the right side).

This is a work in progress in the front yard, which has too many obstacles to avoid when cutting the grass.

With extra yard maintenance items (rocks, mulch, etc.) on hand and our tools already warmed up we decided to clear out the overgrowth at the back of the house. Our goals with all of this yard work are to make things a little neater and to get the plants and old mulch (as deep as 8 inches in places) away from the foundation.

All yard work and no play makes Jack a dull boy (or something like that), so we continued to make some progress on the deck, adding new lumber to give the cypress decking a more secure base. At the end are a couple photos of an extension we put on the laundry exhaust vent.

Day Three-sixty-eight: Happy Anniversary

Yesterday marked one year since we've owned this little fixer upper. You know how we've been focusing on our landscaping, right? Well we decided to do something to mark the season. (Note: Objects in picture are larger than they appear.)

Naturally, we used this as our inspiration.

Day Three-fifty-nine: more of the great outdoors

A few days ago we mentioned that we were taking advantage of the unseasonably mild weather to tackle some outdoor projects. Well, the string of warm temps continued into the week so we kept at it. There's a picture of a small tree in the front of the house in the last post that gave us a devil of a time when we tried to get it out. Fortunately, with a spade, pick mattock, axe, and a lot of elbow grease we finally got up this stump:

Which produced this hole:

For those of you who remember the movie, it was a bit like when the cowboy and rancher tackle the stump in "Shane." When it was all said and done, we filled about 30 trash bags with yard waste--stumps, ivy, mulch, etc.--taken from the front of the house.

What will we use to fill in the gaps and gouges we created? Why soil from a local distributor, of course. We'll grade the area right to maintain drainage before covering the couple feet against the house with what remains of our 2 cubic yards of rocks.

Meanwhile down in the basement...we mentioned back in November that we had all the parts for the new sink in our laundry room. Or as our favorite plumber calls it our "fancy sink". This is a nice galvanized steel job, commercial grade and makes a great addition. Every part of it, including the spray hose, cries out "ready for work". With two drains and new water hookups added the sink's running like a champ.

Day Three-fifty-six: closing on a year

With some slightly milder weather we decided to make some progress outdoors. This doesn't means we're done with the inside, but we're trying to strike while the iron is hot, so to speak.

But first let's recap the latest indoor projects. One thing we have learned in nearly a year of renovations is that every job has its proper tool. A psychological hurdle is to accept this instead of fighting it because it makes your life much easier when you're not force-fitting a square peg tool into a round hole. For example, to stain all the grout in nearly 600 square feet of floor...

You need an applicator with a small head. If it comes in a fun package that reminds of the stories of our childhood then that's a bonus. Somehow we doubt that this meets ADA recommendations.

To cut all the baseboard and trim in the same area...

You need a miter saw. Of course there are manual ones (we've been making do with one for years), but with so much precision cutting to do and more to come we invested in a power version. With a nice 80-tooth blade the cuts are incredibly smooth and splinter free.

Upstairs, the curtains in the studio are hemmed and looking great. We moved the brackets for the curtain rod further out to give more space to the curtains and allow us to appreciate them more fully. Martha Stewart and Ethan Allen have nothing on these.

As for the outside one job has begot several more. We continued to improve the drainage beneath the deck by digging out a channel and putting in a tube to collect water (which will be funneled toward it) and send it out past the house. Once we have a new channel dug in the concrete patio the water's path will be well clear of the house and foundation.

The channel will follow this tape line.

After tamping the ground beneath the deck back into place, we took part of our 2 cubic yards of river wash rock to make the area look nice.

With a few rocks left over we started to clear almost a foot of mulch away from the front of the house. Once we get some fill dirt and repair the grading we'll cover the area with the same stones.