Backyard Hardscape Finished

The backyard is finished, for now. We still plan to put in a chicken coop, but that will wait until fall/winter when our contractor friends have a slow period.

Here is the overhead view (from my sewing room). The mass of plants on the lower right is the rain garden we put in about four years ago. The few plants we originally put in have really thrived (the thimbleberry too much so).

And from the back stairs.

Honestly, had we planned in advance better, the brick path would have extended all the way to the patio and the urbanite path would have come off the side, but we were pretty much winging it for most of this process. Oh well. Maybe next year we'll change it, but Jeff has had enough of this project for now. We'll hang onto the spare bricks.

I spent the day sifting the last of the tile to get it out of the house. I'm trying to guess which pieces are worth selling, and I'll put them up on craigslist for the rest of the summer. The rest, I'm just going to put a free ad up on craigslist. I think whatever is left by this winter, I'll just give that away too.

Another Path Done

I'm not going to show all the steps this time; you guys have seen them all many times. Jeff and Aaron spent about 3 days shifting dirt and then installing this path from the back door to the patio. When they were digging the area for the gravel, they actually found an earlier path buried in about 3" of dirt. That path was just laid out on the dirt without gravel so it had obviously sunk. Anyway, they reused some of those bricks too. Here is how it turned out.

They copied the design we used for the front yard path.

The long term goal is to be able to walk to the chicken coop during the winter without getting covered in mud. We are nearly there. Once the coop is in, they'll finish the short piece of path that is still needed and we should be good to go.

We finally finished nailing the new stained boards in place in our living room. We had to replace several boards AGAIN that Mia had chewed on. She has been evicted from the living room for a while. And I also painted the plaster repair.

When I first repainted the patch with a new can of the Sherwin Williams Ruskin Room Green paint the color was so different, I was a little panicked the color would not match and then I would have to repaint the whole room. Fortunately, once it dried, it matched. I was so relieved. I didn't want to paint the whole room again.

I Should Be Sewing

I really wanted to finish recovering my couches by now, but every time I walk up to my sewing room and sit down to sew, I just don't feel like doing it. I've been on a bit of a Netflix binge, but I am trying to come up with another productive activity I feel like doing. I've been thinking about working on a cross stitch project I started a very long time ago (more than 15 years).

It's called "The Storyteller" and was designed by Teresa Wentzler. Teresa's projects are extremely complex and you cannot be watching TV at the same time. Most of the colors are actually one strand of two different colors and many "squares" on the fabric are actually made up of two half-squares. I think I'll give this a shot and see if I can get into it. This is a beautiful project, I'd love to finally finish it. Here is where I'm at:

This is what the finished project looks like (stolen from this website):

We're also working on cleaning house -- really cleaning house -- because Jeff has invited a group of friends to visit in a week and we want the house to look nice. It's gotten to be a mess during our ongoing remodel projects.

Wheelbarrow Path Finished

This past weekend Jeff and Aaron worked hard to finish the wheelbarrow path and a swale in the backyard. Excuse the photos, they didn't turn out very well because of the shadows from the pergola. And they covered up the path with plastic again, so I can't take more yet.

Jeff also added a swale at the bottom of the yard, next to this path. The swale is there to collect excessive rain water during the winter, when we need it. Since we disconnected our downspouts a few years ago, we need to manage all of our rainfall on site.

Here are more photos, for those who are interested.

Bathroom Progress

Barrett finally came out last Friday and finished grouting the bathroom tile. I should have taken photos, but I didn't have my camera with me. I think there are a couple more tiles I'd like to have him adjust, but for the most part, he's done. FINALLY. It has been a long haul on this project.

This week Jeff and Eric installed the lights on either side of the medicine cabinet, the brackets for the shelves in the medicine cabinet and they hung the door.

They installed brackets in the medicine cabinet to install shelves

The door is installed!

Tile Class

After playing with tile some, we thought it would be fun to look into making some tiles from scratch. It would be nice to do something for the upstairs bathroom, over the fireplace, or as a backsplash over the oven.

The first day was working the clay before the first firing: greenware.  We rolled out slabs, cut out tiles, imprinted patterns, and learned other techniques that could be used before firing the first firing.

The second day was about decorating once-fired clay: bisque. We worked with two classes of techniques. The first was color on color where you first cover the whole tile with two coats of glaze, then apply pigments on tope of that base layer. 

The second worked directly on the bisque tile by laying down lines with a mix of was and pigmented glaze. Then the remaining areas can be glazed. Since the glaze won't adhere to the wax, the glaze will sort of mound up and create a three dimensional effect.

The class included firing both the greenware we played with, and the bisque work. So in a week or so, we'll be able to see how they turned out.


Update: We never heard from Georgie's that the practice tiles were finished, so about 8 weeks later, when we were driving by, we dropped in and asked for them. We were informed they threw them away. Apparently, they only keep them for 4 weeks. I was pretty disappointed. It would have been nice if they had called before tossing them out.

Porch Masonry Project

This is how the bricks looked when we moved into this house in 2006.

I believe there used to be a set of brick steps here that were removed, but I could find nothing in any pictures I've been able to find. This also would have been a good spot to step into a wagon, though this neighborhood was built just as cars were coming into use (1910s). So, we don't really know what the original design looked like. With the width of modern cars, however, the stairs really don't fit so we didn't restore them.

Shortly after moving in, we hired A Better Chimney to repoint the bricks and also repair this bad patch. This is how it looked when they finished.

Much better, but we still had a step that dropped about 2 feet to the driveway. It was unsafe. So, last summer, when we wanted to install a charging station for Jeff's plug-in hybrid, we decided to get it fixed. We hired A Better Chimney again, but this time it didn't go so well.

Pedro came out and tore it all apart, but then he disappeared for weeks and weeks. I had to constantly pester him to come out and make progress. It turns out he was diagnosed with cancer and wasn't really able to work on this project, but we had a large hole into our basement all winter.

Finally, sometime this spring—after much prodding— he finished installing all the bricks. 

A couple months ago I got in a fight with Pedro and he hasn't spoken to us since or come out to finish the project, so we have realized he decided to abandon the job.

The black plastic package at the base of the wall is supposedly the cement cap for the top. I guess we'll try to figure out if we can finish this. I don't particularly care for the color of the new bricks as they really don't match, but we could not easily find a better match. I am going to explore brick dye and see if we can improve the color. (I've already bought samples to test.)