Yard mishaps

The day after we finished the south-side fence, we decided to get serious about laying down the rest of the weed fabric. We have plans for mulch and drip-line sprinklers, but we wanted that barrier layer down first to save us some weeding down the road (we hope). It's not exciting work, so I present only one finished picture:

Then, I wanted to take advantage of the small gap between the finished fence and the retaining wall along our south patio to plant some vines that will eventually grow up over the fence:

In the course of digging the holes for those vines (thank you, Millcreek Gardens Groupon...), Tai got a little overenthusiastic with his post-hole digger and struck the neighbors' sprinkler supply line. We noted that line when we built the house and poured the retaining wall — it's on our property now as a throw-back to the days when their house and our lot was one piece of property — but had just forgotten that it was there. One geyser and a frantic dash for their water shut-off valve later, we had ourselves a lovely mud hole:

Tai is a total pro at sprinkler lines now, though, so the only casualty of that evening was the cancellation of BBQ plans (and our DIY home improvement pride). Instead, we dashed to Home Depot for a few inexpensive PVC elbow joints (we still had 1" line leftover from last spring's installation) and some primer+glue for the pipe. Tai had it fixed within an hour, and cleaned up by the end of the night.

So now we have a finished south fence and a fleet of trumpeter vines growing along its base. Now all we need is some sunshine with which to enjoy all the hard work...

Finished fence

Tai and his dad took a Friday off to finish the south fence, which has now completely walled in our patio and created a really nice private place for us off our dining room.

With the work the previous weekend on the post holes, the finish work went a bit faster, although it still took the better part of a day. First, they prepped the bottom rail:

...then the top:

Then, came the addition of the vertical boards:

By the end of the day, our patio smelled blissfully of fresh cedar, and the sawdust pile in the garage was a happy reminder of the work completed:

Blinded

Here's the post where we test your patience for home improvement minutiae. We finally, finally got window coverings. We've lived in the house for almost 18 months, sharing many of those moments with our neighbors, people driving by, and anyone standing on the sidewalk (or within 50 feet of the house, really). No longer!

We had honeycomb cellular shades in the original slc202 condo and loved them for saving us from the single-pane glass in that place, but our windows are good enough in the house that we don't really need the additional insulation that honeycomb shades offer. Plus they're a little more expensive, so we just went with a basic pleated shade.

We looked at a couple of online and local sources, and found the best combination of price and product online at Smith and Noble with their privacy weave pleated shade. Tai double checked the measurements, dug up a killer coupon online for our order, and about two weeks later we were installing.

Most of the shades nest inside the window frame with an inside mount. (Thrilling "installation" photos to follow...)

Our downstairs shades are bottom up only, since our house is slightly lower than street level (we didn't think we would ever really need a top-down option down there). Upstairs bedroom shades are top-down/bottom-up, and we love them:

Our fish bowl days are over.

The Office

When we moved into the house, we basically just dumped everything that has typically gone in our office in here, closed the door and left it looking like this for about 10 months.

For our previous office set-ups we had a desk top made that we put on top of some filing cabinets. Here it is in our first place:

We really wanted to come up with a custom solution with built-in desks and shelves and make a really beautiful home office for the new house. Until that can happen, we needed a temp solution that still allowed us to function in that room.

In October, I got tired of staring at it (and trying to keep company from opening that door). Kersten went out of town for a couple of days this fall and being finally sick of having no functional home office, I decided to do something about it. Now keep in mind that this is not meant to be a permanent solution, but it does a pretty good job for now and best of all I didn't have to spend a single penny on it.

First, I took the above pictured desk top and ripped it down the middle with my table saw. We thought we might want to use it for something else at some point, but that point was seeming a long ways off and we had need of it now. I made two desks out of it and placed them on opposite walls of the office on top of the filing cabinets we already had.

Then, I used the above fridge cabinet that got scrapped during the fridge debacle last year as a cabinet for our computer printers and scanner and other peripherals.

Once the desks were set up I then spent about 12 hours going through 10 months of clutter and bills that needed filing to get it all cleaned up and functional.

It's been hard to know what to do next. We can't really find designs that we like and fit our style and the space. Any suggestions or inspirational sites?

Emerging from hibernation

I smelled fresh cut grass yesterday on a short walk outside, which must mean that it's time to wake up the blog and all the house/yard projects. I wish I could say that we spent the winter painting or re-arranging or decorating or doing anything besides sitting on our rears, but alas. We needed a nice long break from home improvement.

But, we're back! And after hopping around all winter trying to get boots on and off, we decided to put some time and effort into cabinetry for the mudroom. I think we needed a break from Ikea, too, because going back after a looooong absence wasn't as painful as we were expecting. Their showroom had a nice butler's pantry/mud room set up, using a new dimension of wall cabinetry (18"x30") as base cabinets with a counter on top for a nice bench surface. Given that this is a relatively private room in the house -- we're pretty much the only ones who ever see or use it -- a less expensive, but still totally functional solution appealed to us.


We need to thank our friend Larry for coming over and helping us maneuver heavy flat-pack boxes in and around the yard. (Tai cracked a couple of ribs in a ski accident a few weeks ago, so moving some of the bigger stuff was pretty painful for him.) Nice-ish weather meant an expanded work area.

And, of course, I have no "before" pictures. Just imagine an enormous pile of dirty shoes, framed with a random tall cabinet (reject from the kitchen), our stash of grocery bags, and a ski boot or four. Our dimensions didn't exactly match Ikea's, so Tai hacked together an end piece that fits quite nicely.

 

 Wouldn't be a project without a little pain, or in this case, a drywall gouge on an otherwise mint wall.

 

We are very pleased with the look. We had debated going with a more expensive countertop or door option, but this seems to fit our house just perfectly and actually looks like the much more expensive white doors we passed on.

(And of course those are my shoes still on the floor. Tai hasn't trained me yet.)
And if we can ever get the Flor website to cooperate, we may have some rugs to show you in the next week or so...