And so the gardening begins...

With the last week being unseasonably warm and this weekend playing at being just spring time, I decided to break out my green thumb. We'll see if it proves to be competent at gardening or merely gangrenous.

I haven't done a lot yeah, but I have started the cleanup of the front yard. There are a few piles of leaves, sticks and other tree debris scattered around now waiting for me to pick them up and bring them to compost out behind the backyard.

The newest additions to the landscape have been planted. I bought six blueberry bushes, a pair of raspberry bushes and a ton of strawberries for the front yard.I know it might be a bit early, as there is still a chance of frost looming, but its been nice enough and the plants seemed to be managing well enough outside at Home Depot (both the strawberries and blueberries were blooming).

My bucket of Heirloom seeds arrived last week and yesterday I bought a few different planters so I could start getting some of those seeds growing. The bucket has a pretty wide variety of plants but for the first go at this garden, I think I am going to play it safe and go with more basic veggies (tomatoes, lettuce, a few squashes). I'm also going to see if Luke and Ava want to pick some seeds to plant as well - give them something to do here other than playing Team Fortress 2 or watching Elmo sing the same songs over and over again.

My last purchase, that I haven't done much of anything with yet, was a package of wildflower seeds. Not quite sure what I want to do with them yet but they seem like a good low-maintenance solution for filling in portions of the property that look empty.

Garden State

Ever since I bought the house, I've been running through my head what I want to do with the property outside of the house. I pretty much decided that, with a few small exceptions, I wouldn't be touching any big landscaping projects for the first couple of years here - focus on the inside. However, there is a lot of opportunity here to do some amount of gardening.

Since it's been getting warmer, I've been looking at the yard and flower beds and thinking about what I could do with them. I'd really like to be able to get rid of the ornamental plants all around the house and find interesting, attractive, provisional plants to replace them with (in addition to having a traditional garden plot in the back corner of the back yard). I just recently bought a "Bucket O Seeds" - which has a ton of different types of heirloom garden seeds.

Front Yard

• There is a bed the runs the length of the retaining wall from the top of the stone steps to the end of the driveway. I am thinking that would be a good spot for a line of blueberry bushes with creeping strawberries to act as a cover fill.
• Around the boulder in the front yard, I am considering some sort of thorn berry. Either Raspberries or Blackberries. I prefer Blackberries, but Raspberries are less vicious with their thorns so that may be the deciding factor.
• The brick steps at the end of the retaining wall either need to be torn up or turned into a planter bed. Not really sure what I'd want to go in there, but a low growing herb that obeys boundaries might be a good idea there.
• The beds directly in front of the house are probably going to remain untouched. There are several big rhododendrons along with some sort of ivy covering the ground. I would like the ground cover there to be something other than the ivy but I am not sure what would be good.
• The "Heart Shaped" bed at the end of the driveway is another mystery. It has a tree at the end but I am not sure why type - we'll see what it flowers with. I wouldn't mind getting a fruit bearing tree in there - would be nice to have apples at the end of the drive. For ground cover, was thinking of some sort of flower mixture but again, if I can get something there that bears fruit, I would prefer it.

Backyard

• The back right corner of the back yard is going to be the "official" garden plot where I'll be planting various veggies. It gets a lot of sun, so I'll have to be careful about not planting some of the more light/heat sensitive stuff back there.
• The back line of the property would also be a decent place to plant some grapes. Get some trellis for them to grow on and get the potential benefit of them acting as a privacy screen at the back of the property.
• My next door neighbor warned me that he's spotted woodchucks in both his and my backyard in the past, so I'll have to keep an eye out for them.

Nothing like a New Chimney

It's been over a month now since the contractors came and repaired my chimney. They did a great job of it and were, happily, very unobtrusive about it. Even when I was here while they were working, noise was minimal and anything that needed clean up was localized.

Now, the chimney is nice and crisp looking and, most importantly, attached to the side of the house! As part of their work, the contractors replaced a handful of roof and siding shingles and then gave the entire exterior wall a wash and a fresh coat of stain/paint. It looks great.

As another plus - they brought a dumpster that they couldn't even begin to fill 1/10th of. This meant I got a free rubble run and was able to get rid of all the carpet and refuse from the bathroom that I had stored in the shed and what I had torn out of the living room up to that point. I got very close to filling the entire thing on my own.

There Goes My Bonus

For the past few months, I've been taking care to spend money on only the immediate needs of home improvement. I wanted to see what my finances were going to shake out like, especially after the holiday season. February is the usual review season at work and this year I was treated to a bonus. So, with bonus in the bank, I figure - why not spend it all on house stuff.

With the living room and bathroom underway, I went out this afternoon to look at the components I needed to buy to finish off those spaces (or at least proceed on them). The bathroom is my big purchase focus while the living room is the easier "little things" buy process.

Today, I bought my first toilet (I will eventually need to buy one or two more). I also spent some time looking for acoustic insulation for between the living room and the rest of the house. Unfortunately, Home Depot did not have what I wanted in stock for that. I will be checking out Lowes tomorrow to see if they have something other than drywall sheet-sized sound barrier insulation. I also picked up some paint for the bathroom - a grey/green color that should play well off the white fixtures.

I stopped into Bob's Furniture to see what other things I might want to pick up. They had a great looking pub table and 8 chairs for $1000 that I am considering to replace my current dining table (which can barely seat 4). I was also looking at a nice refrigerated wine/liquor cabinet they had as a start on the mini-bar I want to put into the living room. The bars they had weren't great for my needs, however, so that looks like I will either be going with some other store for the bar or making it a post-"Walls are done and painted" do-it-yourself project.

A contractor from Home Depot will be here on Monday to give me some estimates windows. My first-and-foremost interest if finding out how much it will cost me to replace the windows in the bathroom and living room. This house is in a weird situation as far as windows go. They are original-to-the-house single pane. They casings let cold air in like nobodies business (especially in windy weather). I'd like to get windows replaced with more energy efficient options but I am not sure Anderson (which is Home Depot's primary brand) will offer windows and casings that can color match my exterior without breaking my bank account. But we'll see what they have to say on Monday.

Tomorrow, I will be spending more time out on the road looking at what Lowes has to offer. I am hoping they have the brand of acoustic insulation I am looking, otherwise I will have to order online. I want to get more of the wall in the living room taken care of (which, even just insulating 1.25 walls has improved the heat retention in that room) and maybe even replace a few of the outlets with something more modern (modern cables do not seem to grip the plugs in the walls very well).

A Modest Case of Motivation

For a while, I've been a bit stalled on getting projects done here at the house. I attribute some of that procrastination to the sense of overwhelming that each room presents. The bathroom has things in it that I have never done. The living room, while simple, doesn't feel like something I should work on until other things are done (because it is easy). Getting past the style/color block I had with the bathroom and deciding on some colors has helped move that along. Next I need to get some estimates on windows for that room and the house in general.

Happily, the contractors have started work on the chimney (well... nearly finished by the time of this writing) and that has helped motivate me to start in on some other projects. I am really happy with the work that has been done to the chimney and that side of the house - its coming along nicely and the contractors have been amazingly quiet and out of the way.

They recycled as many bricks as possible which means the chimney isn't going to be a two-tone column of bricks. It also means that the dumpster they brought was nice and empty. I was able to move all of the demolition refuse I had from the office, bathroom, living room and carpet into it - nearly filling it all.

I mention the living room - and that's because I've started the renovation on that room at Jay's suggestion (basically, do one night a week of house tinkering). Since the living room has no drywall in it, it's a nice and easy project to start in. It also is pretty good as a piecemeal project - I can pick a single wall and do just that over the course of the night.

Continuing the handyman trend I've noticed from the previous owners - one of the paneled (uninsulated interior) walls was torn down and a surprise was discovered. A piece of drywall with the words "Insolate this wall" - spelled just like that.

Work is moving along in the living room. Today, I finished pulling out the paneling on the fireplace wall, plucked the remaining nails, pulled up the last stubborn bits of the baseboard and hung insulation along the entire wall. I still have a bit more to do on that wall - mostly just getting some more spray foam and filling in anywhere that I feel cold air coming in through.

Ruminations on Bathroom Design

The bathroom has, for a couple of months now, lingered as a project that I was worried about going further on. A lot of that has to do with the rabbit hole that is the overall design of it. I suffered similar concerns when I was repainting the dinging room a brick red - I don't know what it is going to look like and the thought of developing a color scheme for the room was both daunting and terrifying. Perhaps this is just showing how far away from art I have gone in my career - there was a time where I don't think something as simple as picking a color would have stopped me dead in my tracks. Maybe it has to do with the semi-permanence of a decision like that of redesigning an entire room. But, as the "winter" continues on, I find myself becoming more and more motivated to actually finish the job.

This afternoon, I spent some quality time with Home Depot, looking at possible toilets and vanities (with a salesman attempting to derail me towards a kitchen renovation). In general, I know what work remains in the room, I just need to get the ducks in a row and make some decisions on what I want the space to look like.

One of the biggest tasks for the bathroom is the window. All the windows in this house need to be replaced eventually and this bathroom is probably going to be the first. Because of that, I need education on windows. Unfortunately, because the windows (and casings/frames) are so old, I will need to do a full replacement as I don't see a world where I will be able to just drop new double hung windows into the existing casings. I was hoping to find someone knowledgeable in regards to windows at Home Depot but I had arrived during the window of time where the window expert was out to lunch. So... with that stalled, I gathered up what literature was there and went off to ponder the remaining fixtures.

Next up on the list, and probably the easiest for me to decide on, was the toilet. My parents have nothing but good recommendations for Kohler's toilets so I spent my time looking at those. I marveled at how one specific color of toilet somehow managed to be $30.00 more than what looked to be the same specifics but in white/cream. Either way, I've decided on a chair height, elongated bowl Kohler. Sometime around the next paycheck, I will probably be dinging my bank account for one and storing it in the basement or "demo room" until I am ready to install it.

I did spend some time looking at various vanities. The vanity/counter-top/sink combos were appealing but most were just a little shy of what I was looking for exactly (either I didn't like the color, or the design or the dimensions). I looked through some of the custom order catalog available to see what was there. After a while, I decided that I really needed to sit down and think about color scheme before making a decision on the vanity. A lot of them offered white or pink-granite-wanna-be counter tops but I didn't want to really go forward on those unless I knew what color I wanted to paint the walls.

After the trip to Home Depot, armed with some ideas and fresh memories of what was available, I sat down with my dear friend Photoshop to do some photo-tweaking to see what I could come up with that would work well.

As a baseline, the tub/shower unit was white to begin with. With that in mind, I made the decision to make the remaining fixtures (vanity counter-top, toilet) and trim follow suit. Next up was finding a color that works with white fixtures. Searching Google specifically for "GOOD COLORS FOR BATHROOMS" yielded a number of garish options that I don't think I will ever be brave enough to paint a wall with... ever. But a few suggestions pointed towards subtle blues, greys and greens.

One of the constantly repeated mottos of bathroom design that a number of articles and blogs recited was "light, bright and airy" (though there were a few more bold suggestions in the mix as well). With the "light, bright and airy" theme in mind, I worked up a few different color ideas that I might like to try. Of course, there was always the fall-back of "creme/eggshell" but, while safe, I feel like I should be at least trying something that is a bit more interesting, if not more bold.

Personally, because each of these colors are more muted, my comfort level with them is much higher than the color I chose for the living room.

On the left, the blue-grey is probably the darkest of the three ideas I played with. I am a fan of blue but I am not sure how I would feel about the entire room being like this. A number of the vanities I looked at had a nice rich wood-brown color to them that I like and with the walls being darker and the vanity being dark, I don't know how well they would work together.

In the middle is a neutral slate color. It is dark enough to make it and the trim stand out against each other. It should work well enough with a wood-colored vanity but, like blue, it feels dark.

The last one is a sea-foam/sage green. It is the brightest of the ideas I played with and I think it will make both white trim/fixtures and dark wood-work (like the vanity and perhaps mirror frame) stand out well against each other. While bright, it is low contrast (like blue and grey), which gives me a bit more piece of mind.

There is one more piece of the puzzle that I haven't really thought too much about - and that is the floor and ceiling. Giving the floor a bright, stark linoleum or tile might make the walls pop more. The ceiling is probably going to remain white regardless. For the floor, I have been considering a nice patterned tile look - something more towards the standard beige/creme color that was my ultimate safe zone.

So - for the few of you that check this, what are you thoughts? Blue? Grey? Green? Does going with something more "traditional" for floor color make sense?

A few weeks ago, I bought a refurbished snowblower from one of Jay's co-workers. The rig itself is not entirely elegant looking and, considering how little (aka - NO) snow we had gotten for the season to date, it has been sitting in the shed by itself - untested.

This past week, New England has finally decided to allow it to be winter. It wasn't the grand dumping of snow that we got last year, but it was enough to make me have to consider snow removal. The first snow storm was handled for my by some phantom plow guy who rolled through at 5:30 in the morning (which, nice of it was of him to do that, I had barely gotten much sleep and a 5:30 rumble from the driveway wasn't entirely welcome).

Today saw more snow and like the last storm, it was light, fluffy and dry snow yielding about 4 or 5 inches. Again, not much and it would definitely get out of the way of a car but better to deal with it now than before it melts a bit and turns to an ice surface. Once the bulk of the snow appeared to have stopped, I went out to try to make sense of the snow blower and clean up the driveway.

Originally, because the snow was light, I was planning on just shoveling it all. But that idea went right out the window by the time I had finished clearing around the garage door. After a few false starts and an unnecessary use of the electric starter, the snowblower was happily growling along - flinging snow off the driveway. The driveway itself is not in the greatest of shapes, so there were a few parts where the blower bucked a bit and made a pain of itself but otherwise the effort was a success.

I do not need find a better storage solution for the snow blower. At present, I am keeping it in the shed but there isn't enough room for it and all the renovation waste - which makes closing the door to the shed unviable. Come spring, I think I'll store it under the pool shed and see if I can get the old shed torn down and something new built in its place.

While I originally had all these plans for how productive I was going to be during my 2-week break, sadly, I did not meet anywhere close to what I had originally hoped to accomplish - due in no small part to my laziness and desire to catch up on video games I had neglected instead of work on the house.

That isn't to say, however, that things were not accomplished around the house. With New Year's Eve weekend bearing down on me, I have considerable doubts that I will get anything else done. With that in mind, I did amount to a bit of productivity over the last week.

• Sheet rock in the bathroom closet is not hung, with open spaces to support access to bath shut-off valves
• Sheet rock in the hallway linen closet about 2/3 complete. I ran out of substantially sized pieces of sheetrock and will need to get more in order to complete that portion of the closet
• Firewood with carpenter ants chilling out in it have been exposed to the elements and hosed down with a ton of ant killer. I will likely give those pieces of wood another glazing before I am willing to add them to the stack

Beyond those three things, I do have one thing that I need to undo. I did not do the greatest job in applying the sealant around the edge of the tub. Additionally, in my wisdom, I primed after adding the sealant, which makes the sealant look like even more garbage. Next week, I will be taking a knife to the sealant to get it removed, properly painted and then reapply.

I have also been thinking about the next steps for finishing off the bathroom. One of the nice things about this house is the abundance of bathrooms, so having portions of any one bath out of commission is not a deal breaker. I think I will, over the course of the next month or so, do the following (in order):

• Remove old toilet, vanity and mirror. Wasn't planning on reusing any of those and they are just making having multiple people in that room difficult.
• Proceed with the demolition of the bathroom walls. Get the remainder of the exterior-facing wall re-insulated/vapor barriered. Hang new drywall where needed - leaving the sink-wall untouched so that wires can be run for new outlets.
• With old fixtures removed, tear up the tile/concrete mess that is the floor and replace it with plywood and some finished flooring treatment (large tiles, perhaps). 
• Once the flooring is done, I can install the new toilet - this way the bathroom is at least a bit more functional.
• Install electrical outlets and get a vent fan set up in the ceiling. The bathroom currently has two lights that run off one switch (ceiling and vanity) - may break the ceiling off on to its own switch and keep the vanity fixture where it is (but replace it with new hardware - not a huge fan of the tulip lights...)
• Once electrical is done, finish hanging sheetrock, paint and install sink/vanity.

Ever since moving in, I have been pretty slow to complete the various projects I have going around the house. I keep three excuses for my procrastination handy - either I have other things to do outside of work/house, other more important house-related issues pop up or I am just too tired/lazy after getting home from work.

As I usually do around Christmas time, I've taken an extended vacation to get my PTO balance down. The goal of these two weeks is to get little projects handled and prepare the house for the winter that has not yet happened.

Thanks to the distraction of Christmas shopping, I haven't really gotten around to many of the little projects yet. I have, however, accomplished a couple of small feats around the house and hope to wrap up a couple more before I go north for a few days for Christmas.

• The new bathroom closet and enlarged linen closet have been framed. Between my own inexperience doing such things and a couple of the 2x4's being warped, I can't claim it to be the best job of framing ever but it doesn't look completely horrible. Also, as a side effect of framing the closets, the hole in the wall in the soon-to-be office is also framed.
• The corner beading by the tub and sheetrock about the bathroom closet have been hit with two coats of joint compound. They are now ready to be sanded, cleaned and primed/painted.
• The wall in the soon-to-be office is now filled with a panel of sheetrock. The aforementioned warped 2x4s mean that things don't like up exactly in the middle (but top and bottom is good). I am going to need to tear out the base boards in order to be able to really finish the sheetrock. I was not pleased to discover that the floors appear to have been installed after the base boards and which resulted in me accidentally destroying a good portion of one wall's worth. Guess I'll just have to redo the base boards when it comes time to renovate that room.
• And lastly, I finally got around to finishing off the wood pile. Everything that I could split with an axe is now cut and stacked (since it was a nice 60 degrees outside, I opted to do this over handing more sheet rock or painting). I have two small piles of wood that remain - one that is split but had carpenter ants in it (which I will be bug bombing and leaving to exposure tomorrow) and one that I may have to rent a splitter for (they are all either awkward shapes or have massive knots in them that my axe won't split through). When all the wood is handled, I will have about a cord's worth that will sit and dry for next fall.

So, yeah. Not the busiest I could be on the house but I've been getting small projects out of the way. My primary goal for tomorrow is to get the sheetrock in the bathroom sanded, cleaned up and hit with a coat of primer at least. If I get going early enough, I may be able to do a second coat of primer. At that point, the bathroom will be a top coat away and seal pass away from being usable as a shower (that is, until the rest of the bathroom goes under the scalpel).

I've been slacking the past couple of weeks, ever since Thanksgiving weekend - so here are a few updates!

Inside the house, I am slowly working on the bathroom. It only took me a couple of weeks but I have finally gotten around to getting the beading in place and finishing up putting the joint compound around the shower. It's not the greatest job joint compound job ever but it is at a point now where I can sand it up and start priming right around the shower/tub. I also need to get things in the closet spaces framed in - depending on how far along I get with the fire wood (and how tired I am after the fire wood) I will try to get at least the measurements done today.

Outside of the house has also seen little progress. The weather here after Thanksgiving and up until this past weekend has been oddly unseasonal. This meant that it was plenty warm enough out to get all the leaves taken care of. After piling up a dozen bags at the curb, I decided I would rather just rake them all onto a tarp and drag them out to the back of the property and begin a mulch pile. This made dealing with the leaves much easier.

The wood pile is still there and slowly getting split and stacked. In fact, after I finish writing this, I will be spending my afternoon outside working on that pile. Once the pile is done, I can then finish taking care of the rest of the leaves beside the driveway and in the lower half of the backyard.

It only took about a month, but I was finally able to get a pair of estimates from two different contractors for the repairs needed on the chimney that was hit by the tree. I was also able to get the ball rolling with the insurance company (which was a pain in the ass...). As it stands now, I am waiting for the Adjuster to have his chimney contractor contact me to schedule a time to come and evaluate the chimney (because of how much both places estimated). My worry is that by the time insurance is able to confirm and pay out, the winter weather will have set in and I won't be able to get it fixed until spring. With their estimates being as high as they were, I can't float the fix on my own and really would like the insurance company to pick up the pace.

I did end up having one of the contractors I contacted for estimates come out and fix up the other chimney. Their work was good but more expensive that I think it should have been. They were also considerably pushy about getting started on the other chimney. As this is the first time I've ever had to deal with the contractors or the insurance company, I didn't need them laying on the pressure - so I will not be using those contractors again for the repairs on the other chimney.