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!!

A World Map Cork Board

a.k.a. - My Very Belated Wedding Gift to Eric

Traveling has always been something Eric and I love to do together - I guess you could say it is one of our passions. We love to reminisce about our previous adventures and dream about those that await us. Going off of this theme, I got Eric a world map and map pins as a wedding gift. I included a note saying how I wanted to spend the rest of my life making memories with him, and describing how we can use the map to document our past and plan out our future together, and teach our future kiddos about geography, etc. (I know what you're thinking ...   :)  kinda corny, but I guess that's how I roll)!

Anyway, we had yet to actually mount the map (well we really didn't have a place to put it until we finished the basement). If you remember, our basement was looking pretty complete, but there was one naked spot... above the mantle.

The perfect spot for our map! We just needed a way to mount it. We wanted to be able to add new pins for our future travels, so we figured a cork board would be perfect. We found one large enough at Michaels and used a 50% off coupon, so it ended up being less than $15. I had to trim the boarder of the map so that it would fit, but I think this also gave it a nice natural transition onto the bare cork. (Please don't mind my weird outfit - I had just got back from a run and was feeling motivated.)

The next big question was how to adhere the map onto the cork. We thought about using pins in the corners to hold it down, but we wanted something more permanent and wrinkle-free. That brought us into the glue aisle at Michaels. We ended up going with a 3M spray adhesive which claims to work on a wide variety of materials. 

We waited for a nice day so we could do the spraying outside (since we knew the fumes would be pretty bad from this stuff ... plus we didn't want any over-spray adhesive anywhere in the house). We marked on the cork where we wanted the corners of the map to go. We applied the spray with slow even coverage on the back of the map and then stretched it taut and, starting with one edge lined up on the marks, pressed the map onto the cork. That's really all it took. The spray worked great and dried really quickly. 

Then we added pins to show our previous travels (Gizmo helped)!

It turned out to be a quite good fit!! I really like that you can't see the pins until you get really close. 

We didn't even bother mounting it to the brick after we realized that it sit nicely on the mantle. (Oh, and you'll also notice in the photo below the new fireplace tools we found at Goodwill for $3.99 - LOVE!!)

So there ya have it. My wedding present to Eric is finally finished!! At least I got it done before our anniversary (barely)!! I can't believe I've almost been married for almost a year. It feels both like a very long time and no time at all. I guess I need to figure out a 1st anniversary gift pronto - I've only got about 2 weeks!!

My New-Found Love: Painter's Caulk

I'm still sort of a beginner when it comes to painting, but I'm starting to learn some tricks. Just recently I discovered the wonder of painter's caulk. It all started when I decided to repaint the dining room. If you remember, the dining room started out looking like this (Realtor's photo):

I wasn't a big fan of the white-beige color on the bottom part. This was actually the first room I painted, before we even moved in. I had painted the bottom part a creamy white but left the chair rail unpainted. So for the past six months, it looked like this:

Until we finished the basement, this room was set up as an office. But now that we are finally using it for its intended purpose, I wasn't quite satisfied with the paint job. I decided to try a crisp white on the entire bottom half, including the chair rail.

So I started out by sanding the chair rail so that it would have better adhesion with the paint.

Using painter's tape to create a ledge to catch dust is a trick I learned from another blog (forgot which one).

I used an oil-based primer as a first coat on the wooden chair rail. I let that dry for a full 24 hours (oil-based paint takes a lot longer to dry than latex paint). I didn't bother taping if off because I am now convinced that it is easier to create a straight paint edge free hand. After the primer, I applied 2 coats of latex paint. Here's what it looked like after 1 coat of latex paint:

Clearly it needed that extra coat.

At this point it looked pretty good... until you got close.

See the problem? There was actually a gap between the chair rail and the wall. It wasn't as obvious when the chair rail was dark, but the light color just accentuated the gap. This is where the painter's caulk comes in. I got some pretty standard painter's caulk from Home Depot. I cut a really small hole in the top of the bottle and applied a bead of caulk just large enough to fill in the gap. I didn't try to prevent it from getting on the upper beige part of the wall since I figured I would slop up on there anyway.

I didn't end up with the smoothest surface, so I knew I would have to be very careful when I painted over the caulk. I used an artist's brush with fairly stiff bristles so that I could get good control.

It took quite a while, but I ended up with a pretty good finish. See the difference?

Before:

After:

After taking this photo, I realized it needed 1 more coat to fully cover the caulk. Now it looks really awesome. (Sorry I don't have a final photo yet, but I promise I'll show you soon along with what the rest of the room looks like now that it has actual dining room furniture in it.  :)

So, anyway I'm a convert! From now on, I'm gonna use painter's caulk any time there is a crack or crevice that I want to disguise!! (And I'm going to use it BEFORE painting.. to save myself a lot of work)!

Let's Talk Money

Those that have been following my blog know that we recently finished doing a two-room basement remodel (and when I say remodel, I mean totally gutting everything and starting over). If you missed out, you can read how we ripped everything down (and had an encounter with mouse skeletons and a live raccoon), added stud walls, lights, insulation and drywall, then taped the drywall and added texture to the ceiling, put some color on the walls, added finishing touches, and finally got carpet and blinds installed. Whew, it makes me tired just thinking about all that work.

Some of you may be wondering how much all that stuff set us back. So, here's the breakdown. Remember we didn't hire any of this out (and we borrowed almost all the needed tools), so materials were our only costs.

First was insulation. We added beadboard (kinda like Styrofoam) in a layer around the basement foundation. We also added layers of rolled R13 bats to the center walls in the bedroom to give it some sound-proofing (so the next door washing machine, dryer, and furnace wouldn't be so bothersome). The grand total for insulation $209.38.

Next we have the stud walls and sheetrock supplies and taping materials. This was really the big bulk of materials we brought in for the project. The total for wall-making materials was $581.39.

Lighting, electric, and ductwork are obviously very important parts of a room though you may not think much about them. The ductwork we were mostly able to re-use, but the lights and electric we entirely replaced. To make the room tall-person-friendly, we wanted to make the lighting as high as possible, which meant recessed lights. In total, the 'guts' of the renovation cost $357.55.

Fun fact - it takes a LOT of fasteners (nails, bolts, screws, wire staples, etc.) to refinish a basement. A grand total of $63.26.

Paint and supplies (this includes primer, wall, and ceiling paint and many supplies that can be reused) cost a total of $368.04.

For interior and closet doors (& hinges and a door knob), we opted for 6 panel doors because we think they give a lot more style than a standard flush door. This splurge set us back $156.24.

Finishing touches (baseboard, door casing and window shades) set us back $221.34.

Carpet was a bit of a splurge for us. We ended up with a very soft, high pile carpet that I just love walking around barefoot on. Total cost for carpet was $1,200.34.

In summary:

As you can see, our 2-room basement renovation cost just $3,157.55! I honestly have no idea how much we would have spent hiring someone to do this for us, but I am certain it would have been at least double. So I can definitely say that I am really glad we chose to DIY. We put in a lot of time and sweat, but in the end we have an awesome basement to show for it!!

Bookcase Bonanza - Awesome Ikea Sale

A couple weeks ago, we went to Ikea during one of their free food sales. Basically if you spend over $100 on home furnishings, your food purchase is deducted from the bill. So.... we treated Eric's whole family to lunch and spent $84 on food. (The Swedish Meatballs are excellent if you were wondering.) We planned to get two expedit bookcases (normally $70 each), which put us at $140, but... subtracting out the food, we spent just $56!! For anyone in the Twin Cities, I think the Ikea here has two more free food weekends coming up this month.

Anyway, on to the bookcases.... First, remember what it looked like when we bought the house?

And after adding the bookcases, an Ikea poang chair (we found it in a garbage pile while we lived in Chicago), 2 storage ottomans (wedding gifts off our Target registry) and a sofa (hand me down from Eric's family), a new fire screen ($7 at Goodwill... the old one was too brassy and beat up) and some books and accessories, here's what we've got: 

Not bad, huh? As you can see, the area near the fireplace is set up with a little seating area. We're planning to put up a big world map above the mantle with pins to show the places we've been. We also want to get a slip cover for the sofa (still deciding what color would be best) and some fun accent pillows (okay, maybe that is just me... Eric's not so in to accent pillows). 

The other side of the room is our office area. Eventually we want to get a big wrap around desk to share or two matching desks. But for now, it is working out pretty well. My desk is the one facing the center of the room, and I really enjoy being able to look out the window while I'm working during the day. 

Gizmo likes the new arrangement too! (I think he would sleep on my lap in this chair all day if I let him.)

The really exciting thing about finally moving furniture down into the basement is that our dining room can now actually be a dining room (rather than the office it has been for the past 6 months). I'm just now finishing up painting that room and am on the lookout for a Craigslist hutch for some extra storage. We haven't figure out what artwork to hang there yet, but I'll show you the progress soon!