More Yard

We put in another full weekend of work on the yard. This included two trips to Home Depot and a whole lot of manual labor.

I feel like this is becoming more of a photo blog: high on images, low on commentary. It's probably what folks are more interested in anyway, assuming anyone is interested at all (Hi Laura!).

Unrelated to the yard, another project we worked on this weekend was finalizing our bike theft deterrent system. After two thefts, we wanted to come up with something really solid. We researched the actual bike racks, but they were very pricey. So we bought a $10 fence post instead and then modified it. Here is Seth working on drilling through the post:

It was tough to find the right combination of tools (thank you again to the kind folks at the Tool Lending Library), but we finally got it working and it doesn't look half bad:

Back to the yard. It started with a little late night painting from Ilana, who "rescued" this old trellis from abadonment:

The next day, Seth stacked the stones:

This was the reason for two trips to Home Depot. These are ridiculously heavy, and moving them from the HD shelf to the cart, from the cart to the car, and the car to the yard takes a toll. Not to mention hammering some of them down so they fit on the ends. We then placed a planter box (a modified bench I built for Ilana, which itself was modified wood from an old model train layout) behind the stones and placed Ilana's painted trellis inside (with dirt, of course). Next we planted our new Star Jasmines, which Ilana then tied to the trellis.

The jasmine smells great, and helps us prove to Amanda that you don't need to buy a house just because the yard smells good. While Ilana worked on that, I hung our new cafe lights:

Here's the final product, with Ilana resting in the background:

And just for the comparison shot from earlier photos, here's the view from above:

And for the finale, here's the night shot with the cafe lights on:

Bonus Photo:

(Seymour looking at the lights)

Summer Time, Yard Time

As the East Bay summer rolls in, we decided it was finally time to do something with our yard. We have neglected it ever since we moved in, and to be honest, it wasn't much to start out with. We're pretty sure that in the seller's efforts to "stage" the place, he just poured wood chips over the existing yard and planted a few bushes that have not grown up to be pretty adults. Ilana took charge of the project and did an amazing job of creating a design and then lining up some professional help at a very affordable price. Here's what we started with:

The aerial view makes it look better than it was -- think weed garden and litter box for every stray cat in the neighborhood. The week before we started work on it, I removed the ugliest little bush tree I've ever seen from smack in the middle of it. Our new friend Tony helped us clear the rest and carted off literally a truckload of old dirt:

Then after laying down some fresh soil came the job of arranging our new stones. Tony was amazing and had a vision the whole time, somehow knowing when to flip certain stones or rotate others to make the perfect jigsaw puzzle.

That's Little Tony with the broom. He looks more helpful in the photo than he actually was. But we're pretty pleased with the final product:

Here it is from the ground level, though this shot was taken before we decided to move the table to the corner:

That's a Japanese Maple that we planted and are very excited about. And just in case you didn't think we did any of the work, here I am doing some fine-tuning:

We've also added two miniature succulent gardens and have plans for some more potted adventures.

We're really happy with the outcome and feel that we've added another room to the house with this very manageable, livable outdoor space. Special thanks to Marilyn for encouraging the project. Bring on the summer BBQs!

A Box for a Box (and an Old Friend)

We took on a new small project this weekend: we built a box for a box. Keep reading to find out why.

Here I am putting the final touches on a very simple wood box.





And here Ilana is putting in the parquet flooring (stick 'em squares, really).















And here is the purpose. Look at the bottom of the photo: the box is on the floor. Now that we removed the water heater from the upstairs closet (did we mention that we got a tankless water heater installed?), we decided to use the space for storage and to move Seymour's litter upstairs. The homemade box will help keep excess litter from getting into places it shouldn't. Moving the litter will allow us to lock him upstairs when guests are over, and adds more space to the tiny downstairs bathroom.



We also finally finished the kitchen.

All that means is that we re-installed our old friend the paper towel holder from the original kitchen in its near original location. It's pretty much the only item that survived from what was in the kitchen when we moved in. Ilana repainted it and insisted we put it back as an homage, but it's also pretty functional and officially marks that the kitchen is d-o-n-e.