I Built a Garden Fence!!

I must have been feeling really motivated because of my ginormous list, because I was super productive on Sunday. I built a garden fence. By myself.

If you remember, Eric and I had been doing a bunch of digging. We measured out the garden and cut out the sod pieces to fill another spot in the lawn (details on that can be found in this post). The transplanted sods seem to be doing pretty well - remember what the yard looked like before we removed the bird feeder, stump, and white rocks?

And here are those spots now (so much easier to mow... and yes, I plan to transplant that hosta from the middle of the lawn eventually):

Okay back to the garden. After cutting out all the sod, we were left with an 'L' shaped area that was free of grass. Since we know we get a lot of wildlife in our yard (remember the raccoon that found its way into our basement - see that post here ... and we saw a turkey hanging out back there a while back). But most especially, we are worried about these guys:

Okay, maybe the ones in our yard are not *quite* that big, but I swear they are larger than normal. Anyway, though they may be cute to look at, feeding the bunnies is not the reason I am starting a garden. I know I could just plant my seeds and see if I even have rabbit trouble, but I'd rather prepare for that from the get-go.  I read a couple garden books and they pretty much all recommended installing chicken wire in a 6" by 6" trench on the outside edge of the garden to prevent animals from digging under the fence.... which required more digging. Thankfully I was getting the hang of really putting my weight into the shovel, so I was able to do this while Eric was at work on Sunday. I dug my trench and laid half of the 12" width chicken wire down in the bottom and the remaining 6" sticking up (so that it made an 'L' shape facing away from the garden. After I threw a bit of dirt to cover the chicken wire in the bottom of the trench, it looked something like this:

I got some 3 foot metal fence posts (the green ones) from Home Depot and spaced them out so that there was one at every corner and the remaining ones were 3 to 5 feet apart. I was able to push most of them down pretty easily by stepping on the little metal flange that sticks out from the main post. I pounded a couple in further by placing a 2x4 on the top of the post and using a hammer to push them in.

Here is a little bit better picture that shows the layout of the chicken wire in the trench and the fence post installed on the 'garden side' of the trench. The chicken wire laying flat would soon be covered with dirt. That way, if a bunny decides to dig his way into my garden, he'll end up basically sitting on chicken wire (which he is hopefully not smart enough to dig under). 

For the actual fence, I got some wire fencing coated in green plastic (so it blends in better) from Home Depot. It has graduated spacing between links, so toward the bottom the spaces are really tight (so bunnies can't squeeze through), and toward the top it gets larger. I laid the fence in the angled part of the 'L' of the chicken wire. 

On the back side of the garden, there was already a row of bricks and more of those white rocks. Since I figured the bunnies couldn't dig through rocks and bricks very well, I didn't dig a trench on this side, but instead laid the chicken wire facing into the garden a bit (you know, just in case). You can sort of see in this pic how I tied the 2 fence parts together with wire:

So, after about 7 hours of hard work on Sunday, I was left with this:

See how that green fence blends in? Nice huh? When Eric got home at about 8:30 that night, he sure was surprised to see how much progress I had made (did I mention that I somehow found time to mow the lawn too?). I'm actually starting to think I'll be able to plant this thing soon!! Really all that is remaining is to finish wiring the top of the chicken wire to the green fence and add some top soil...

...well that and figure out how to make a gate for my fence that will keep out the rabbits. Anyone have any ideas on that? 

PS. Last night Eric and I had the first night of ultimate frisbee league. It was really great to play and chat with friends that we haven't seen since last fall! Also thanks to those who mentioned they enjoy reading this blog. It is nice to know that I have some readers out there  :)  BTW, everyone should feel free to leave comments here or on facebook with suggestions, etc. It is nice to get feedback!

(Bunny photo courtesy of the Washington Post.)

The Master List

I'm a list girl. I really enjoy making lists, well maybe not the actual making of lists part, but the crossing off of list items part. Wait, did that make any sense? Anyway, I get some serious satisfactions from crossing things off my to-do lists. (Kinda like I have a weird fascination with finishing off cosmetic or condiment bottles. You know, like when you finally squeeze the last drop out of those little lotion bottles. Like you have done your duty, gotten your money's worth... Okay you're right, I'm kinda weird.) Now that my crazy tangent is out of the way.... I present to you, the master list of stuff I want to do to our house. (Please nobody tell Eric just how long this list is. I think he would have a fit  ;)

Oh, and I highlighted stuff that I want to tackle soon. The stuff in red with a line through it is finished! (and I guess I should mention that we have begun referring the 2nd and 3rd bedrooms on the main floor as the library and weight room.)

Housing To Do List

• Remove vertical blinds from master, library, weight room, living, and dining rooms and replace with bamboo shades
• Add bamboo roman shades in basement family room and bedroom
• Add closet storage system in basement bedroom
• Spray paint curtain rods and install curtains
• Replace cabinets, possibly knock down kitchen wall
• Add recessed lighting, over the sink light fixture, and pendant lights in the kitchen
• Replace breakfast nook light fixture
• Build and install bench seating for breakfast nook/bay window area
• Remove chair rail from breakfast nook (or paint white)
• Spray paint dining room chandelier
• Re-route cable cord from dining room in through shed
• Add mantle to beef up living room fire place
• Paint all baseboard and door trim white
• Paint dining room chair rail white
• Paint window frames white
• Replace exterior door into garage
• Replace front door
• Replace sliding door
• Replace exterior door onto deck
• Replace south facing windows
• Install pet door in basement laundry room door (so Gizmo has access to his litter box even when the door is closed)
• Demolish and rebuild deck
• Install patio
• Build garden in back corner of yard
• Update landscaping in front yard
• Remove evergreen tree and shrubs in front yard that are too close to the house
• Remove stumps in front yard and back yard (1 in front, 1 removed in back, 2 remaining in back)
• Remove white rock circles in back yard
• Add back splash in kitchen
• Install all new energy efficient appliances in kitchen
• Replace electric outlets and covers with white ones in dining room, kitchen, living room, master, library, and weight room
• Repaint or replace railing on stairs
• Replace entry way light fixture
• Replace gothic doorbell with standard model
• Replace bedroom ceiling fans with different light fixtures
• Repaint outdoor railing black
• Knock down divider wall and remove pocket door in main bathroom
• Replace tile floor in main bathroom
• Replace vanity and toilet in main bathroom
• Re-grout bathtub surround in main bathroom
• Replace shower fixtures in main bathroom
• Paint hallway and bathroom linen closets white
• Replace hallway and bathroom linen closet hardware with brushed nickel
• Create pantry with wire shelving in hallway closet
• Paint (stencil?) sliding closet doors with silver trim and white (?) doors
• Add crown moulding in living room, dining room, kitchen, and master bedroom
• Tear down wood paneling and suspended ceiling in basement
• Install dry wall and recessed lighting in basement
• Paint basement walls
• Add baseboard and casing in basement
• Get carpet installed in basement
• Fill nail holes and touch up paint on trim in basement
• Replace or paint all interior doors white with brushed nickel hardware
• Knock down wall in ¾ bath and build new wall flush with garage and remove door into laundry room
• Install new shower insert or tub in ¾ bath
• Install new sink and toilet in ¾ bath
• Install electrical outlet in ¾ bath!
• Replace light fixture in ¾ bath
• Remove carpet from garage entryway and replace with wood (stairs) & wood laminate
• Replace laundry room sink
• Paint laundry room
• Add storage hooks in garage
• Replace garage door opener with super quiet belt drive model
• Replace garage door (pretty please?)

In the 6 months we have been here, we've already finished a big project with the basement family room and bedroom remodel. But as you can see, we have a long way to go. Progress is touch and go; some weeks are like an explosion of stuff getting done and others we don't do any work. It will probably slow down even more when I get a full time job later this summer (fingers crossed!). I'm sure we'll never finish everything. But maybe, just maybe, we'll get close to finishing off this list someday. Here's to hoping that typing this list out motivates me to cross more of this stuff off. In the mean time, I'm sure I'll keep dreaming up new projects :)

Anyone else have a long list of house-related projects they want to tackle? What are the things at the top of your list?

Backyard Work Begins!

Hi folks! The weather is finally getting nice here in Minneapolis, so lately we have been tackling some outdoor projects.

Originally, our back yard started out looking like this (view from the breakfast nook windows):

The ready-to-fall-apart-any-minute-deck is to the right:

The deck replacement project is in the planning stages currently. Hopefully we'll start on that in a couple weeks or so. Anyway, back to the other side of the yard:

As you can see, there are a couple circles of white rocks breaking up the lawn. One surrounded a very rotten stump and the other surrounded a bird feeder. Since we don't plan on using the bird feeder and .. well... a stump isn't much use to us either, we decided to totally remove those and integrate them with the rest of the lawn. Eric got first duty for rock removal.

Those 4 rocks in his shovel must be quite heavy... no, Eric isn't dramatic at all...

We're also planning to put a vegetable garden in the back right corner of the property (in the area you can see between the deck and tree in the previous photos). So, we figured that we could use the sod we remove from the garden to fill in the holes left from removing the rocks.

The first step was to sketch out the garden (I wish I had a scanner so I could show you my super cool overly-detailed plan). Anyway, the basic shape of the garden will be an 'L' shape, with about 14 feet on each of the long sides. After we had the dimensions all figured out, we laid out some sticks and twine to mark the boundaries.

Next came the digging and sod removal.

Hmm.... it turns out I don't really have enough mass to push the shovel down very far... so Eric took over that part and I started removing rocks from back in the corner. Pretty soon we had a good mess!

As you can see, we have a lot of work ahead of us. Hopefully we'll be planting our vegetable garden before mid-June  :)

In totally unrelated news, my neighborhood is hosting a festival of garage sales this weekend. Eric and I went to a couple of them today and we've already got some spoils - like this corner shelf we scored for just $5. My family will be vising tomorrow to do some more garage sale-ing. I love a good treasure hunt - can't wait!!