08/8/11

Changes to the den

I haven’t been writing here much. Mostly, it’s because we really haven’t done anything to the house! I keep saying I’m going to have a small project every week that I write about, as sort of a way to force myself to actually do it. It works in theory, but I have been so busy lately that just keeping the house clean has become a challenge.

We did do one thing this weekend. One of the reasons for my busyness is that I have taken on some freelance work. I have really been enjoying it, but I do find myself spending long hours on the computer, working on a design or trying to get emails out. I was sitting on the couch to do all this, but I realized that it was killing my back. I needed some sort of table to work, preferably in a room where I can keep an eye on my daughter playing. I didn’t want anything fancy because I didn’t want the temptation for clutter, but I wanted something big enough for my laptop and a notebook to jot down notes.

We looked at Office Depot where I got my computer desk 6 years ago, but apparently they don’t sell inexpensive, simple computer desks anymore. So we went to the next logical thing – Ikea! Of course they had the exact thing I was looking for, and only $20. We headed down there to check it out. Unfortunately, my timing was all wrong as it’s back-to-school time here in Georgia, and they were completely out of the $20 desk. I decided to pop into the As-Is section to check it out before giving up. I did find a desk – or rather, a table? I am not sure what it was originally supposed to be, but it was perfect. The best part? It was already put together!

It didn’t take long to find a spot for it, and I am really happy. I can easily see the entire room, and I am next to a 3-prong plug with a grounded outlet (which isn’t always a given in our house). I may switch out this new desk for the table I’m using for my sewing machine in the guest room, since this desk is prettier, but for now it’s working out pretty well.

06/26/11

our new pantry!

I’ve talked before about our pantry (or rather, lack thereof). We have been using a baker’s rack as a pantry, which would have worked great if we didn’t have a toddler. I would find pantry items scattered throughout the house, and once I discovered several cans missing labels (sounds like she’s living up to her middle name!).

We looked for another pantry for a while. Our biggest problem was that the only space to put a pantry also had the HVAC vent for the kitchen, so whatever we got had to be at least 6-8 inches off the ground. We also needed something that was able to be baby proofed. Last Saturday, we finally bit the bullet and bought the one we’d found at Ikea.

We spent 6 1/2 hours that night putting it together. It was so complicated! We only stopped because it was 2am and we really needed to get to bed. We didn’t have time all last week until today, when we finally finished it. It looks great! I have most of the pantry stuff put back. I just don’t know what to do with my cookbooks; I’ll have to find somewhere else to put them. (I’m thinking the secretary in the den?)

One thing I love about this cabinet is it’s so versatile; when we redo the kitchen we’ll be able to easily find another use for it in another part of our house.

Here’s how it looked before:

And here is our new pantry:

Sorry the pictures are dark. One of the bulbs is burned out in the ceiling light. You can see this thing is almost as big as the fridge! I’m not used to seeing it yet… I keep catching it out of the corner of my eye and thinking the fridge door is open. It is good to get everything behind doors though. I think ideally I would have preferred something that wasn’t quite so deep, but really it’s perfect. (Technically, it’s made to hold a microwave. So we could move our microwave in the kitchen if we wanted and have a vent-free pantry in the dining room where the microwave currently is, though really we should just save our money for a kitchen reno.)

Anyways I’m still getting used to it, but overall it’s a good thing.

06/23/11

split-level houses

I found an interesting website last night called Split-Level Home Design Guide. It’s a bit wordy, but it has lots of ideas for fixing up split level houses to complement the architecture. I read the kitchen redesign with great interest, because I hope we can do that in the next few years.

I personally really like the split level look, but I do wish we had two full bathrooms and a bigger kitchen. I want to do more research into fixing up a kitchen that is only 10ftx14ft and has three doorways in it. I don’t think we’re going to have the budget to do any wall knocking down or moving doorways. (And to be honest, I think all the doorways are necessary – I can’t imagine cutting off access to the dining room from the kitchen, and it would be impractical to have to walk all the way around through the dining room to get to the den – I’m mostly thinking carrying laundry baskets down from upstairs!)

I’m going to be excited when we get this foundation taken care of so we can start on some of the fun projects!! But more on that later.

06/4/11

before & after: the backyard (phase one)

I know y’all have been waiting anxiously for pictures! This is phase one of the backyard. Phase two will be grading the entire thing and putting down seed, to happen this fall sometime. I also want to paint that shed green to match the house, as well as touching up the paint on the back of the house where that room was. Maybe we’ll do that this summer so we’ll be done with everything by the time we lay seed. :-)

Here is a backyard picture when we moved in:

We took the porch down last summer.

Another angle; I took this picture yesterday. You probably can’t tell, but we also removed part of the chainlink fence.

Our backyard looks kinda trashy, doesn’t it? We didn’t really do any mowing or cleaning, in anticipation of the landscapers working on it.

And…. after!

What a change! Here is a picture of the spot where the water always collected, and the previous owners tried to fix it by putting pieces of cement there.

Now we have a catch basin to take the water in a pipe underground and deposited in the dry creekbed at the back of our property. They also removed the fence posts for us.

I took this picture as they were working, and here you can see the ditches, waiting for pipes. We had underground pipes attached to our two downspouts and to the catch basin, taking water away from our house and hopefully preventing further foundation damage.

A closer picture of the retaining wall. They did a nice job, didn’t they?

Our foundation still needs help – that is the bigger project we’re saving up for – but at least this downspout won’t cause any other damage.

Another nice thing is that the random pieces of cement, cinder block, and bricks have been cleared away (and deposited behind our shed), so that really makes the yard look nicer! Also a lot of the weeds were cleared away as they were digging the ditches, which helps too. :-) Here is another set of before/after pictures – taken in the morning and then late afternoon of the same day:

Can’t wait to see it all with grass! And I’ll have to work on painting that back side, and then we’ll have a lovely little backyard to spend time in. Does anyone know if you have to watch daytime max temperatures for outdoor painting like you do minimum temps?

06/3/11

today’s the day!

The landscapers have been here since around 10 this morning, and they are still working hard on our backyard. I have been taking “in progress” pictures all day, and when they’re done I’ll take some “after” pictures to share here. :-) It’s looking good so far! The retaining wall is up and it’s amazing what a difference it makes. This one is made from landscape timbers, and the one previously was made with cinder block. (See here for a picture.)

Oh, one thing – they aren’t going to grade the yard until the fall, when we can plant grass. (Apparently for fescue grass, you have to wait until it’s cool enough. I think mid-September is the magic date in our area.) I wish we could have gotten it all done at once, but we waited too long to take care of it before summer!

05/15/11

Making it look like someone actually lives here

Our backyard is trashy. Most of the time I don’t notice it, but every once in a while I’ll look at it and realize how bad it actually looks! It’s especially bad right now as our lawn mower is still broken (argh) so we haven’t mowed the weeds at all.

Our next door neighbors moved out and the house is up for sale. As a refresher, our backyard is kinda at a weird angle and our house overlooks their backyard. You can see a layout here. We have a chain-link fence that (mostly) follows our property line, and they have a cinder block wall just a few feet away from our fence. The land between is technically on their property, and was completely overgrown. When the landscapers came to look at our backyard, they said that all that underbrush was contributing to our mosquito problem.

When we found out that the house next door was empty, we realized that here was our chance to clean up the space that was technically on their land. Paul has been working hard this weekend to clean it up!

Can you believe Paul cleared out this much already? It’s worth it, though! It’s really looking good!

Also, if you notice in the first picture, there is black piping that runs from the neighbor’s gutters, goes underground, and comes out here. The water has been diverting straight into our backyard. Yay. Once Paul cleared out the underbrush, he was able to straighten the pipe out and send the water to the creek in the back. He didn’t get the entire area cleaned up, but he got a significant portion – enough to hopefully make a difference in the mosquitoes. If nothing else, it looks better!

Here is what the area looks like now.

As you see, the fence posts are still up but the chain link is down. We’re hoping that the landscapers will be able to remove the fenceposts. If I remember correctly, that was something that they built into the original estimate (all the landscapers are running together – can’t remember which ones said they would do that).

It’s starting to look better, but the difference will be amazing come June. In the meantime, we still need to remove all the non-organic trash (except for the concrete and cinder blocks – the landscapers will remove those). More long range plans include painting the siding, fixing the gutters, and overall just making the backyard a more pleasant place to hang out instead of an abandoned house. :-)

05/4/11

a month from today!

I called the landscaper and scheduled our backyard to be redone on June 3rd. Exciting!!

They’re going to:
1) Remove all the random pieces of cement.
2) Put in a catch basin where the water is pooling to collect it.
3) Put in an underground pipe that will run the water to the back of the property (where there is a stream).
4) Connect the two downspouts from the back of the house to the underground pipe.
5) Remove the cinderblock retaining wall and rebuild it with landscape timbers.
6) Grade the entire backyard and prep it for grass.

We’ll plant the grass in the fall – I think Sept. 15th is the earliest you can plant fescue grass here in Georgia. I hope we don’t see any ill effects of having it “prepped” three months before we actually do it, but we wanted to get it done now to help with the mosquitoes that are bad this time of year. (They’re going to clear out the brush from the yard, which is where the mosquitoes are hiding.)

So in the next month, we need to remove all the non-organic debris from the yard. We also need to make sure the downspouts are secured properly – we have gutter issues (will be fixed when we reroof the house – apparently there aren’t proper places to attach the gutters??? or something like that). I’m excited to get this project done!

I am not sure when we’ll do this, but I also have hopes of painting the back of the house and also the shed to match. It will be nice to have a backyard that doesn’t look so trashy!!

05/3/11

opening up the backyard

The space between the corner of our house and our neighbor’s house is only a few feet. Previous owners made the space seem even tighter by putting up a fence that cut in from the property line. Here’s what it looked like last summer:

It looked better after we removed the sunporch and cut back some of the bushes:

After we had our land surveyed and realized that the fence didn’t represent the true property line, I wanted to tear down the fence and rebuild it in the correct place. But, that was not a financially wise plan of action. However, I really wanted to take down at least the one part of the fence to open up our backyard a little. It’s hard to explain!

Our neighbors moved out last week and their house is now for sale. If there’s a good time to take care of any property line details, it is now. We also want to clean out the ditch between our two properties (technically on their side of the line) because it is a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Yesterday Paul took down the part of the fence that has been bugging me. The posts are still up, but overall the space looks much more open!

Our backyard looks trashy, I know. We really need to hire the landscaper we plan to hire… I think we’re hesitating because it’s such a big sum of money! Anyways, this will help them get into the backyard and make the transition space from the side to the back much easier. I’m hoping they can take out the posts for us, too.

Someday we’ll put up the fence again to completely close in our backyard. I hope to have a dog someday (after we’re done having children!) so having a fenced in yard will be important. But, we’ll see how everything else goes. Putting up a fence along the side yard to keep toddlers in and trespassers out is a bigger priority for me. :-)

04/17/11

nothing new to report, really

I just thought I’d pop in. We decided which company we were going with, and decided to seed instead of sod, but you can’t seed fescue grass after April 15th in Georgia so we just didn’t move fast enough. (If I had realized that, I would have started these estimates sooner.)

So we have two options.
1) Have them lay all the pipes and prepare the yard for seeding now, then seed ourselves in the fall.
2) Have them do everything in the fall.

It would be nice to get it down now, because we have been having a lot of rain recently and I would love to get it taken care of. The longer we let the water sit around our house foundation, the more risks were taking. But, I’m slightly concerned about having just dirt in our backyard for the next 5 months until we can seed it. Also, our backyard is 100% weeds right now, and I’m thinking that if they prep it now, then we’ll still have to deal with weeds that crop up afterward.

I am disappointed that we didn’t get to lay seed now. I was really hoping that we would have a backyard to spend time in this summer! Oh, well. If we go ahead and do the work now, I can still put up a clothesline which is one of the things that I am anxious to do, especially to take advantage of the summer sun.

04/5/11

2 of 6

Well, of the six landscapers I called…

…one was so busy he couldn’t schedule an estimate for 3 weeks at the earliest
…one never bothered showing up to the scheduled appointment
…two came to give an estimate, but never bothered to actually send it to me
…two sent me a written estimate

So we are trying to decide between the two. I’ll update more as we make the decision!

From Hovel to Home

Our journey fixing up our 56 year old house