Cleaning Up

We've had a relatively unproductive week this week, but we did get started on cleaning up the driveway for our garage emptying project.

As we've said so many times before—Craigslist rocks!! We managed to get rid of a very large pile of cardboard and a large mound of broken up concrete. We didn't have to pay to dispose any of it because somebody came and picked it all up! This large pile of rubble turned into this small pile of rocks. Unfortunately the last guy who came by couldn't quite fit the whole pile in his truck, so we still need to deal with this last bit of stones. Hopefully, we can reuse some of this pile in the rain gardens.

We also had an unusually large pile of cardboard. At some point during our remodel last year we told our contractor we wanted to keep cardboard to lay out on the lawns before covering with mulch so we could kill off the grass. It turns out the re-siding project did the trick to kill the lawn, so we found ourselves with a whole lot of cardboard stored in the garage that hadn't gotten thrown into the dumpster before the end of the job. Luckily, through craigslist, we found someone who actually cuts up cardboard to build planter boxes that can be "planted" in the ground at the end of the season.

On the garage front, despite Sharon's earlier rant, she continues to pursue our rebuild plan. We've slowly started to empty the garage and once we get most everything out, we will really inspect the condition of the cement pad and the wood structure. If all is well with the existing structure, then we'll probably go ahead and patch it up and live with it. But if the structure is as bad as it looks, we'll have to pull a permit anyway to do dry rot repair, so we may as well go ahead and rebuild. We think we found a contractor who will help us build for an amount close to our budget.

This weekend is mostly going to be spent working with plants. On Saturday, we'll both be working at the Multnomah County Master Gardeners Incredible Edibles Plant Sale. Then, on Sunday, we'll no doubt be planting quite a few vegetable starts.

Spring is Here!

Look who is awake! Judging by the number of unopened flowers, it's going to be a beautiful year.

More Quilted Ball Ornaments

Sharon is really enjoying making these "quilted" ball ornaments in the evenings. She obviously purchased more styrofoam balls and she had to buy lots more pins too. She's made a dent in her quilting fabric scrap bin. Such fun!

Pondering Garage Solution

OK, Sharon is still pretty disappointed by the city's permitting rules. They seem to favor contractors and folks who don't care about the rules, but she is still considering our options for how we can proceed with our garage project.

Sharon's first idea is to rotate the roof 90° so the gable faces east-west. Like this.

It isn't nearly as striking as our earlier plan and looks funny in the SketchUp picture because the roof is off center, but it seems the best way to deal with the city's rule that we can't extend out the west eave. Though it will probably bug Sharon every time she sees it for quite a while, it is actually quite difficult to get a good front view of the garage because it is partially blocked by the the house and plants.

FAIL!

Jeff went to the City of Portland today to ask about building the new garage. The City's rules, in our opinion, are pretty irrational. Because the current garage is built one foot away from the property line, we have to request a variance to rebuild it in the same spot. But if we get that variance, it is to build a garage which is solely for parking cars. You can't tell them you're going to use it as a workshop, or the rules are different. It doesn't matter that every other person in Portland uses their garage for lots of purposes besides parking cars, those are the rules...period.

Also, according to the City, we have to pour a new slab or cut down the edges of the current slab and pour footings. And they won't let the eave extend out on the west side of the building. So, this is what it would look like.

Yuck! It looks really stupid with the roof detail chopped off. So, really not a good day.

Wimping Out

Last month we had a grand plan to rebuild our garage ourselves with some skilled hired help. We checked out all kinds of books on framing to peruse while we designed the building in Google SketchUp so we could submit our plan to the City of Portland.

Mostly final garage plan done in SketchUp

While the design process was fun, it also helped us realize how much we're not up to the task. Even though we were hoping to do this project on the cheap, we also want the garage to be framed and finished correctly. And the carpenter we were talking with also seems to have disappeared; perhaps he's just too busy to pick up his voice mail messages...

So now, with our design in hand, we're looking at Plan B. We've asked a number of contractors to give us estimates for making the project happen. Luckily, we got a pretty good tax refund this month so we were able to bring the budget to a not-entirely-unrealistic number.

New Rabbit Child

Because one dog, one parrot and three chickens obviously aren't enough trouble, we brought home a new family member today. It feels almost irresponsible, but the baby bunnies were so cute (especially at 4 weeks!), and we've wanted one for over a year. Today was obviously the day.