Archive for the ‘DIY’ Category

Fence

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

The boy and our neighbor began to fix the ghetto franken-fence with that cheap and ungodly orange hued wood.

It’s better than this raggedy mess of awfulness, but is still is a hot mess of a salmon colored fence…

Why all of a sudden should we start this you ask? Well…

The city finally sent notice to the neighbor that he was required to get the 15 cars off his front lawn in 24 hours or get fined. The solution? Rip down our properties dividing fence and store some of those broken down cars in their backyard. White trash style!

As a compromise we are splitting the cost of redoing the final ghetto run of fence since it was even more janky after hauling cars through it.

Oh, and look at that poor tree! The city shaved it naked. This is a constant battle against ugliness and we are losing horribly.

The boy rebuilt and cemented in some new posts to finish the final run of fence.

Shazaam! Fence.

Maybe now it’s time to consider landscaping that foot and a half of weed grass. Maybe some sort of tall drought resistant plant that camouflages this new fence…

Slow Patio Progress

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

Still more slow progress on the patio pavers

The Boy finished straightening up the first hundred or so pavers and the weather keeps ruining all our plans to finish up the last sixty. Stop raining. Stop.

I just looked to see when we started this whole patio project – December 30, 2009. Two months! It didn’t feel that long ago that we started and we still have so much further to go. Something even more depressing – when did we fisrt start working on painting the exterior? August 29th, 2008. It’s been YEARS!

Looks like 2011 may be the year of the exterior as well…possibly 2012.

Patio Progress

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Last weekend we finally started working on the cement paver grid that surrounds the fire pit. We ended up going with the cheapo 12 x12″ gray cement pavers from our local building supply. Already 100 pavers down and it looks like we are going to need about 60 more to finish.

Yeah, some rows are still way wonky. We didn’t get as far along as I thought due to a rain delay (I was super hoping to be done this weekend). But you can kind of see how it’s beginning to shape up. Once all the pavers are straight and square and the gravel is filled in and we paint the house and finish the “bar” or “planter” area to the left and fix the fence and fix the fire pit and redo the roof and put in the hot rolled steel edging and make a vertical garden and finish the planter bed and landscape the other half the yard and replace the ugly front fence…then we will be done! Oh and the lights. Gotta figure out some exterior lights.

Totally doable? Right? RIGHT?!

Oh, I just got so depressed.

We did grow an accidental lawn with all the recent rain. Oops. As soon as it gets hot it will all die off, but for now it’s a nice bit of green against the dreary exterior.

Oh yeah, that’s a nice paint job on the chimney…guess who doesn’t have a ladder!

One more thing, that patched together fence? Put it out of your mind homies, it’s on notice. Looking to be replaced with something a little less ghetto, a little more solid and a little more cement based. Eventually.