Sunday, March 28, 2010

Spring Break- Day 1 Recap

Which also may end up being known as “The Only Day of Spring Break that it didn’t Rain”… but, lets hope not.

My first ‘project’ Saturday morning was removing some kitchen cabinet doors. I was suppose to be doing the dishes, but I quickly lost focus from the task at hand and took off cabinet doors instead. I felt pretty Dunphy-esque during the whole escapade. I wanted to include just a clip from this week’s show with Phil being all distracted and whatnot. However, I couldn’t find just a clip… So, here is the whole episode!  And, never mind. Hulu is awesome and you can create your own custom clips!  Of course, the entire show is hilarious and I fully recommend viewing it in its entirety. I’m just assuming that you already know how awesome it is and, therefore, just need the clip that is actually relevant to my topic.

Anyway, here are the kitchen cabinets sans-doors. I think they will look really nice once we paint them and add the corbels. We like the look so much we actually want to take off another two doors, but that would require us to rearrange where things are stored, because no one needs to have a open air view of our mess of tea bags and medicine. Or, we could just get some cute little baskets and throw all that crud in there. That way it would at least look organized.  IMG_4946P.S. Lets pretend that I actually cleaned off the counter and arranged the dishes to look all pretty like. Oh, and, that my camera’s battery wasn’t about to die and that I was able to create some decent lighting. Ah, it looks much better now. Pretending is so much fun.

Anywho, the majority of the day was spent working on our front yard. You remember how it looked at the end of last weekend, right? A little something like this:IMG_4874 Well, after hours of manual labor it now looks a little something like this:IMG_4938 Ooh la la! We finished digging up the gravel and corroded plastic. Then we added Miracle Grow Garden Soil and and covered that with a layer of Tagro that was left over from tree planting. We got the little wooden picket fencing at Lowe’s. So far we have installed 3 sets and we have another 2 to add to the sides to bring it even with the start of the house. That will have to wait until we rip up the rest of the sod (and by ‘sod’ I mean moss with weeds and the occasional clump of grass). We did make a discovery which might just make it that much easier to de-sod the front yard. At least part (if not all?) of the grass is sitting on top of… plastic! That is right, folks, more plastic! This time it is heavy duty thick plastic sheeting. The topsoil and grass is only a few inches thick. Potentially this will make it very easy to rip up the sod in chunks and get rid of the plastic as well. Keep your fingers crossed!

I also planted a bunch of bulbs and seeds into our new garden patches. Hopefully all the rain this week will get those little guys a sowing and we will have bunches of pretty flowers in no time! I put in 2 peonies (which I looooove, but Bill does not), 25 freesias (go, fragrance, go!), and 2 astilbe (which I had never heard of before, but the picture on the package looked pretty). I also tossed in too many seed packs to list. We shall see how many actually make it. I am very lazy with the vast majority of my seeds. I know I should start them first in a little well kept and tended green house and only transplant them outdoors after they are yay high, but I don’t. Hell, I don’t know if what I do even counts as planting. I basically just sprinkle them around and then after all the packs are empty I go through and mix up the soil with my hands. I figure that is pretty damn close to 1/8” or 1/4” worth of soil cover. Good enough. I hope.IMG_4947 It sure will be pretty if even a quarter of these grow and bloom!

I also added some cute, cheery, pink zonal geraniums to the two blue planters that sit on our front steps. I will fill them later with more color from petunias and whatnot that I actually will sow in my little portable greenhouse, but until that day comes they needed at least a little pop of color to stop them from looking so dang sad and dilapidated.IMG_4943 Here is the final look at the fruits of this weekend’s labor. IMG_4940We hope that the fencing will do a better job of defining ‘our’ space. And hopefully people will get the hint to not have their dogs poop in there. Or, at minimum, if they do to freakin’ pick it up!

 

3 comments:

  1. I love the picket fence. Things are really coming together for you. The open cabinets remind me of our first house in Scappoose. We liked the open cabinets so much, we tried to duplicate the look in the current house. Unfortunately with the pressboard cabinets, the look didn't quite work out the way we wanted.

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  2. Nice - coming along quite nicely. Not sure where the remaining two units of white fencing are going. Will they be perpendicular to the sidewalk, approximately to where the house starts?

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  3. Yep. They will be perpendicular to the current fence/sidewalk. In the last photo you can see there is already just a few feet that are going that direction... But it stops with the area we dug up.

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