A Clearer View

I have a confession to make.  We hired out.

The seal in our kitchen window gave out last fall.  Yes, the same kitchen window we had partially replaced in October 2011 shortly after we moved in.  The broken seal wasn't effecting the window's performance too much other than a little fogginess.  And then the seal started decomposing and dripping down between the window panes.  Unfortunately, we were the only ones that knew what those gooey-looking white streaks on our window were.  To every other observer who's been to our house in the last nine months or so, it's looked like our window has been serving as a bathroom for seagulls.  Ew.

So the entire window needed replacing.

Yes, we still enjoy DIY.  Yes, this project would've been perfectly do-able for us.  Yes, hiring out is much more expensive than DIY.  However, we decided it'd be the best choice for us right now.  We remain very busy with other projects (Steve is building his boss a huge work table, our bathroom is still not entirely finished, the nursery needs a little more work), I'm hugely pregnant and wouldn't be able to assist with the window, and we really wanted to have the window replaced before we reached the hottest part of the summer.  The time and effort required on our end at this point was far greater than what professionals would need.  For us, in this case, it was worth forking the cash over to have someone else do the grunt work.

And boy did it pay off (har).  We decided to hire through our local big box store because they guarantee their work (something that the local company we went with in 2011 did not).  Despite taking about six weeks from initial consultation to finished installation, we only had people out at our house for a grand total of about two hours- an hour for initial consultation and quote, 15 minutes for the subcontractor to check the site and double-check measurements, and 45 minutes to cut out the old janky window and replace it with a shiny new window with thicker panes, a screen, and a 10 year warranty.  If we'd have done this job ourselves, we would've needed to buy some tools we didn't already have, custom-order a window, and the removal and installation process would have taken at least a full day's worth of work timed to a weekend when Steve's dad would be around to help.

All fixed!

Now that the new window's in, I can't believe we lived with it the way it was for so long.  It's so much prettier (since it doesn't look like it's been victimized by birds), and we can finally open the window for ventilation while cooking now that there's a screen on it.  I've also noticed that the contents of the sink get less hot when sun is shining in the window- because of better insulation, I'm guessing.  The best part of all is that neither Steve nor I had to take any time away from our other projects to get it done.

What do you consider when deciding to DIY or hire out?

Time for Beds

I managed to get some things planted around this joint during spring break, and due to a recent streak of gorgeous weather, I was able to get outside and get a few more things in the ground.

I added two tiny azaleas to the bed in front of the house.  They should bloom light pink later this spring.

Please ignore the super-patchy lawn and poor lighting.

I feel like this bed is still lacking some balance, so I'm thinking of adding some small mounding decorative grass using the buried pot trick to keep things from getting out of control.

I put in two new beds as well, one in each eastern corner of our lot.  Our thought here was to increase our privacy by planting some evergreen shrubs, and to add some interest to a yard that is very square and about equal parts grass and moss.

Here's a new bed that I made.  Origianally I was going to try a swale as a bed border, but the ground here is very sloped.  I found out quickly that the big maple's root system runs quite shallow in this corner of our yard, so digging more than 6 inches into the soil to plant anything was a no-go.  The landscaping blocks became necessary to make the bed slightly raised so that the new plants wouldn't end up with exposed roots.  With this set, I didn't bother to do the careful measurement and leveling that I did around the big maple in front of our house.  Although it would have looked prettier, I am six months pregnant, y'all, which makes it difficult to do much of anything that requires bending over.  So the edging was eyeballed and the blocks were set to follow the slope of the yard.  I plunked in my pretty evergreen whatever-it-is (I don't know what it is but it was so beautiful that I had to take it home) and my three endless summer hydrangeas.  These photos were taken on an 85 degree day, so some of the hydrangeas look a little worse for wear.

G-Falls landscaping techniques.  See also: neighbor's camper.

They're just having a little late afternoon heat stroke.

Since the swale didn't work on one side of the yard, we just continued the trend with the plunked-down landscaping blocks for the other new bed.  The lone arborvitae has been cruising right along in that spot for who knows how long, and it needed some friends.  The two peonies we inherited from Steve's parents when they moved took front and center, and I flanked them with some pink princess escallonia.  I discovered escallonia when we moved into our first house in Arlington.  It's evergreen, can grow REALLY fast, takes the harshest of prunings like a champ, and gets the cutest little pink blooms on it that hang around forever.  Seemed like exactly the type of plant that would help block our view of the local Napa auto parts and traffic through the next-door preschool's parking area.

Napa?  I don't see one.

Escallonia in the flesh-- er, leaves.

I also finally got around to planting the window boxes on the north side of the house.  I used some dead nettle, hardy fuschia, coleus, and a couple of tiny plantain lily hostas.  These little guys will get zero direct sunlight and hang too far under our eaves to get any precipitation, so this being the first time I've planted small containers in these conditions, I am crossing my fingers that all survive to see autumn.  It sure is fun having some green visible from our office and Mr. Baby's room though!

Hardy fuschia, dead nettle, and a tiny plantain lily hiding.

Coleus is always so dramatic.

Here's what gives me hope for those little window boxes.  The planters Steve made that live on that same side of the house are going gangbusters!  Just check out the difference two weeks have made!

Shade plants goin' crazy.

Boxes and planters and weedy walkways.

I still have more plans as far as gardening goes.  I decided to just bite the bullet and do some container gardening of fruits and veggies this year since there's no way we'll get the south side of our house fit for the raised beds we wanted.  I noticed that most of the plants I put in around the big maple didn't make it through the winter (I think some salal and a couple of ferns are the only survivors), and since I also want to get some rhododendrons planted as screen shrubs, I'm thinking it might be time to add some more soil under that tree and see how some rhodies do there.  I'd also love to get some bulbs planted this fall to give a happy little shock of color first thing in the spring.  Plus the urns are still empty and the clematis that used to grow on our arbor has bit the dust (might've had something to do with driving on the freeway with it flapping in the wind last fall?).

For now though, every plant I bought has found a home, every bag of soil has been used, and I've got more functional and pretty plantings than this property has likely ever seen.  Color me happy.

I Wet My Plants

Let's kick this post off right, folks.

That's right, plants.  I got 'em, I planted 'em, I wet 'em.

Remember wayyyyy back here when Steve made me some planter boxes for the pass through on the north side of our house?

So boxy.

Well, now that we're out of the frost zone and our landscaping budget has refilled, it was time to get some plants in those babies.  For the last year or so, we've been collecting our used large plastic and glass jars and depositing them in the big planters so that when the time came for soil, we wouldn't have to spend as much cash while still leaving some wiggle room for roots to grow deeply.  Tell you what, those planters looked pretty nasty full of a bunch of old (but clean!) milk jugs, peanut butter jars, and wine bottles (just keepin' it real).  But 18 cubic feet of soil later and you'd never know there's anything lurking beneath.

Since these boxes are on the north side of our house and get little to no sunlight each day, it was really important to choose plant varieties that would do well in full shade.  I have always loved hosta, fern, and coral bells, and the combination of the three is lovely.  So I ended up getting two varieties of hosta- a large blue/green and a green/yellow variegated; two varieties of coral bells- the more common deep red and a "painted" variety; and two varieties of fern- a small deep green fern with "thorny" fronds (can't remember the variety name) and an autumn fern which has really pretty yellow and red tinges. I found some healthy-looking bleeding hearts and brought a few of those home as well.  Check it out!

Purty.

I didn't completely fill the planters up because A) whoa expensive, B) hostas, coral bells, and ferns all tend to take up a larger footprint as they grow (not sure about the bleeding hearts), and C) I'm not even sure everything will like their new home and I don't want to kill off more plants per year than absolutely necessary!  And for now, at least they're lending more color and softness to that pass through than it's seen in years.

I see green things.

The thought is that eventually these raised beds will look much fuller and help make things feel a little less stark in the north (ooh, unintentional Game of Thrones reference!).  Even without the window boxes up, our giant air conditioning unit is already partially obscured by pretty things.  The next step for this space will be to get the window boxes planted, which will be fun not just for the planting, but also because Mr. Baby will be able to see the plants in one of those window boxes from his new room.  Other needs for this area- our gravel hasn't had contact with any weed and moss killer since last summer, and is in need of another pass.  Also, even though it's hard to tell, much of the gravel has been ground into the soil, so a load of gravel in that area would really help make things look cleaner and make moving our yard waste cart through that area much easier.  Down the line we'll likely need to replace the gate and eventually the fence as well, but for now we're making do and making nice with our neighbors.  :)

As long as I was in the planting mood, I decided to do something about the scraggly flowerbed in front of our dining room window as well.  Here's how the bed looked when we moved in.

You ain't got no alibi, you ugly.

And a more recent picture, from last summer right after we finished painting.

Better in green, but not by much.

The bed looked better in summertime, but was still as scraggly as all get-out.  A massive clump of gladiolus roots lay on the soil's surface.  A long-ignored azalea had grown leggy and rarely flowered in its secluded corner.  The two pieris japonica (Japanese Andromeda plant) flanking the window, which normally I love, had been pruned harshly at odd angles and planted much too close to the foundation, so they were leaning 5-foot-tall monstrosities.  Think Frankenstein in a pretty dress.  I wish I had another place to relocate the pieris to, but there just wasn't a good spot for them.  It all had to go.

Which, of course, was easier said than done.  Let's just say we may have been living in Granite Falls for too long now, as our neighbors got to enjoy the sight of a pregnant woman wrestling shrubs as tall as she is out of that flowerbed.  My main issue ended up not being the removal of the plants themselves.  The gladiolus came up willingly, since their roots were simply laying on the surface of the soil anyway.  The azalea wasn't much more work.  The pieris required some muscle, but nothing using a shovel as a lever couldn't safely handle.  And surprise, most of the roots were running right up against the foundation of the house.  No, the difficult part wasn't the plants, it was attempting to turn and loosen the soil to prepare it for receiving new plants.  See Exhibit A:

Rude.

Yes, that is my very large shovel with the entire handle broken off.  You may be able to see part of the offending item which murdered my shovel, but in case you can't, let me point the finger.

Nasty fellow.

For scale, that is what's left of my shovel handle in the bottom right.  That sucker was probably 15 inches from stem to stern and weighed around 45 pounds.  Our neighbors really enjoyed watching me manhandle it out of the bed.  The best thing is that this rock is that I unearthed three more of his cousins before I was done (at least they only weighed about 25 pounds).  So when my brand new shovel clanged against something hard, I was expecting to find another of Big Bertha's cousins.  What I found was much more insidious.

What is that stark line running from the vent to almost the edge of the bed?

If you guessed "sloppy concrete overage when pouring the foundation," give yourself all the points.  I figured it wouldn't be coming out without a jackhammer, so I did what any reasonable person would do and pitched a small fit.  Once I recovered and placed some phone calls to master gardeners (my mom and my mother-in-law), I decided to just cross my fingers that the concrete was deep enough under the surface of the soil that my plants would still be able to root properly.

The plants for this area were ones that I've had languishing in containers (and happily overwintering well) in this vicinity for a year or better:  two little peiris japonica and three wild roses.  I added some gold euonymus for the front because I know it grows like crazy, has pretty foliage all year, and takes pruning well.  Again, the scale for everything is a little small, but the bed is pretty small itself, and this will give the plants room to grow.

Less overgrown fo sho.

Now that I've got these plants in, I'm thinking I'd like to add two or three more small evergreen shrubs near the front of the beds.  Azaleas are on the table and so are boxwoods.  Also, great news- these were planted during spring break (read: over a week prior to publishing this post) and everything seems to be adapting to this space really well.  All of the roses have crazy new growth even though they're resting on a shelf of concrete, and nothing is showing signs of distress.  Hurrah!  And just for fun, since the "far away" picture doesn't really do them justice, here's some gratuitous close ups.

Love the contrast in gold euonymus.

No wonder they call it Andromeda.

So this little bed has gotten some love.  I may doctor it up a little more, but my next planting projects in the front yard include creating some new flower beds.  I've already got almost all of my plants, now I just need a dry day off to tackle it!

Revolving Door

Spring Break is here and I am all-in with the projects!  First on my list: repainting the back door.  Last summer I decided to try to paint that bad boy an inviting yellow.  My patch job on the door turned out pretty well, but my painting technique left something to be desired (hello, visible brush strokes) and my color choices were somewhat... let's just be honest, they were bad.  The soft yellow put off too much of a "bathroom" vibe and the bright yellow gave neons a run for their money.

Too creamy.

We forgot to install a dimmer switch!

Believe it or not, I've had our "fix it" new door color picked out since last fall.  I just had to wait for the weather to be agreeable and the time to do it.  We went with a moody blue that looked somewhere between navy and peacock from Behr called Twilight Chimes.  We went with this blue for a few reasons.  It looked nice with our house color (Martha Stewart's Flagstone) and white trim.  I found a very similar color scheme on someone else's house and loved the way it looked.  It seemed to work well in both full sun and full shade, and it seemed like it wouldn't clash with our oddly reddish roofing.

I got a quart mixed, sanded the whole door down to hide the old brush strokes and give the paint something to hold on to.  I decided that this time around, I'd give the foam roller another go.  Wouldn't you know, it was just as I suspected last time I painted that door.  Those brush strokes were all user error-induced.  I still used my trim brush to do the inset panels and around the window, but this time I made such thin coats with the brush that it was really more like using a dry-brushing technique than real painting.  I made very thin coats with the foam roller as well.  It took five coats, but the end result was worth it.  The brush strokes are hardly noticeable, and the door color looks nice and even.

So much less jarring!  And less junk on the patio!

I figured as long as I was painting, I'd do some touch-up caulking and painting around the door too.  And, at Steve's suggestion, I painted the window frame white.

Looks nice under gray skies and full sun!

Hubba, hubba.  I am so in love with how this turned out, I'm thinking of painting the inside of the door and then our front door.  I think the rest of that back area needs some more love, too- string trim the tall grass near the house, pressure wash the patio, maybe get a little side table to set between the chairs and definitely make some flowering containers for back here once we make it out of the frost zone!

Post Part Two

Welp, I know it's been a month since I last posted about our post in internet land.  But really it only took two weeks of wait time, two tubes of caulk, a few cuts of cedar, and two coats of primer- we have a chunkier post!

Cedar cuts waiting for caulk and primer.

I think the balance of the post itself with the rest of the house is much better.  One problem though.  I think the head trim is too low.  It makes the post look shorter than it should, don't you think?

Lopsided?

Eventually we'd like to plank the overhang.  Remember the seepy mess that was there before we repainted last year?  Surprise, it's re-seeping through the new paint job.  And since there's so much gray going on out there, we'd like to brighten things up by painting it white, along with the trim around the ceiling.  I'm trying to decide if I should take that head trim off the post and re-caulk the top to seal it or if I should just leave it as is until we're ready to plank the overhang.

Off with the head?

What do you think?  Does it stay (for now) or does it go??

A Post About a Post

When I spilled the details about our long-term plans for the exterior of the house here, I mentioned that we were planning on bulking up the post that supports our front porch overhang.  Hence this post about our post.

Pre Post.

We just thought the proportion looked funny.  We had this cute octagon window happening on one side of our little porch along with the expanse of the rest of the east-facing part of our house and this puny, ugly support post on the other.  Things had gotten a little better since we painted last year, but we still longed for a way to balance the proportion and dress things up a little.

The top of the post (plus Steve measuring).

The bottom of the post.  Someone needs to mow those dandelions!

Steve used cedar because we knew it would withstand the abuse it'd get outside and because we wanted it to match the texture of the trim on other parts of the house- since eventually the post will be painted white like the rest of our exterior trim.  He opted to do mitered corners for a nice polished look.

Checking the fit.

Once Steve had all four pieces cut to size, he nailed them in.

Any excuse to use a nail gun.

At this point you can see how much better the proportion of the overhang looks with the post bulked up.

Steve's on a roll with the nail gun.

Once Steve was done with the hard parts, he turned things over to me to do the easy and tedious parts (being a linear-sequential person has its benefits).  My first job was to sand all sides of the post to make sure the corners met tightly and knock all of the splinters down so things were nice and smooth.  Since it's hard to use a palm sander and photograph the process at the same time, you get this photo instead.  I'm sorry.  But obviously not that sorry.

Super dork.  Yes that is sawdust in my hair.

After that I filled the nail holes and corners where the sides joined.  Note to all- mitered corners are super pretty and a total pain in the you-know-what to seal with caulk.  Seriously, it took me about four times as long to seal this post as it took Steve to bulk it up.  Our plan is to make the post look a little more finished by adding a foot and maybe a crown (similar to this), but I decided to go ahead and prime the post as is.  I figured it'd save me a little work after the fact and the high contrast would allow me to see if I needed to re-caulk any areas.

Primed.

Nevermind the still-naked planters down the north side of the house.  Don't you think the proportion looks better?  It added some much-needed balance.

Ohm.

Our next step will be finishing off the post.  Crossing our fingers we'll get it done before I go back to work full time!

Spotted

Wayyyyyy back last July when we painted the exterior of our house, we had used a cleaning product called 30 Seconds Outdoor Cleaner to de-mildew our siding.  It did such a fabulous job of removing gunk from everything it touched.  In fact, maybe it did a little too fabulous of a job?  Check out what our front door deadbolt and handle looked like after experiencing a shower of 30 Seconds.

Spots everywhere!

When it first noticed what had happened, I thought the handle was just dusty.  Once I discovered wiping the spots didn't help, I tried a variety of soaps, wash cloths and sponges to no avail.  I admitted defeat and started planning on saving up for a new deadbolt and knob.

Fast forward 13 months.  I was watering the plants and scowling at the spots and decided to give cleaning those dang spots off the oil-rubbed bronze one last-ditch effort.  I decided to try a cleaning product that'd have some abrasive muscle behind it.  What did I have to lose?

Canned air, baking soda, and an old sock.

I got our sock- er, rag- damp on the toe, poured a little baking soda onto it, and then started scrubbing away at those spots.  I scrubbed for a good five minutes or so and then blew all the excess baking soda off with some canned air (nobody said it was just for dusting electronics!!).  Prepare to be amazed.

Second life.

No more spots!  To be fair, the oil-rubbed bronze wasn't a gorgeous lustrous finish like it was when we first bought it, but it's now over 5 years old (we brought it with us from our first house), so gorgeous lustrous finish is no longer required.  And it's going to save us from having to buy a new deadbolt/latch/knob combo, which will save us about $125.  Not to shabby for some baking soda and an old sock, eh?

Laying Down Roots

People.  I have got PLANTS!

So I gotta tell you that my sister-in-law Tabi is the best.  She and I have organized a little work-swap this summer.  A few weeks ago I came over to her place and helped her with a project, and this week she came over and helped me with a project- getting the area behind the retaining wall prepped and planted!  This has been such a genius idea inspired by Erica at Northwest Edible Life.  We both get twice as much work done as if we had tackled these projects alone, and we get to hang out and chat while we work.  What a blessing!

The night before Tabi came over I made sure to weed the area between the tree and the wall as best I could.  Once that was done I put in about 15 cubic feet of low-quality (read:cheap!) potting soil.

Blank canvas.

We kicked off our day together with a trip to McAuliffe's, the local nursery that had been so incredibly helpful to me in creating some of our long-range landscaping plans via email early this year.  Sure there were closer nurseries to my house, but I wanted to spend some money at McAuliffe's as a thank you for their (free) help.  It was really easy to find, and everything was easy access and displayed beautifully.  One of their employees helped point me in the right direction for shade plants that would be able to survive under our giant maple without spreading like crazy.  We had a great time poking through the plants and arranging them in a red wagon as we made decisions.

You get iphone photos when I forget my camera at home.

About $100 later (aw yeah, stayed within budget!) we grabbed 6 cubic feet of high quality potting soil and headed home.

The haul.  McAuliffe's provided some burlap to protect the plants on the ride home.

When we got ready to plant that day, we raked up the last of the weeds, dead leaves, and anything else laying around the base of the tree.  We amended the soil with the good potting soil and got things mixed together pretty well and raked smooth.

Then came the fun part- deciding on an arrangement!  I was so glad to have Tabi with me, since she's such a creative person and has a really good eye for making everyday things look artful.  When we were happy with our arrangement from a variety of angles, we got out the trowels and went to work!

View from the front.

From the side.

The other side.

Caesar was better with supervisory duties than he was with a trowel.

We lucked out with it being the most overcast day we've had in a while, so the plants seemed to do just fine through the travel and planting process.  And then I got even luckier because we had two days of rain right in a row to keep everything nice and moist.

Let's meet the plants, shall we??

These viney fellas are called Persian Chocolate Moneywort.  They're spreaders, but not to the point where they'll choke out other plants.  I'm so happy to have something that will do a little spilling over the edge of the retaining wall.  They're semi-evergreen, so the deep green and red of the leaves will show most of the year and the bright flowers will make an appearance in late spring.  There's a whole lotta green going on in this bed, so I'm really excited about the contrast of these little guys.

Bling.

Super excited about the Wild Ginger (or English Ginger), which also have a tendency to spread, though I've read they're difficult to establish.  I only got three of them because they were so dang expensive.  They're not edible, but they can smell gingery.

Shiny and cute as buttons.

Salal is a native Northwest plant.  It's deer resistant, will grow to between 3 and 5 feet tall if left unattended, and spreads (as anyone who has walked through the woods in Western Washington can attest).  I planted these toward the back of the retaining wall bed, closer to our fence line.  I figured I'd have an easier time controlling them if they had somewhere "acceptable" to spread and the three feet between where they're planted and our fence line seems like a good buffer zone.  Bonus: it's evergreen (hello privacy!) and it takes pruning well (which is great because I tend to get carried away with shears).

Native, evergreen, and pretty.  Win.

And I planted several varieties of fern.  I don't remember all of the varieties, but I think one was called leatherleaf, and one was called curly or frilly...?  In any case, they're quite pretty (and definitely not to scale in my sad photoshop rendering).

Fern party.

Here's my favorite one, the Japanese Painted Fern.

Pretty colors.

And here's how things are looking after a few nice days of rain.

Planted!

Yeah, it's a little sparse in the bed, but they'll start to fill in as time passes (fingers crossed!).  Oh, and check out that cute arbor on our front gate!  We inherited it from Steve's parents when they moved.  There's already a clematis growing on it, and I can now say with assurance that although it suffered some damage on the ride from their old house to ours, it's alive and well.

Anyone else organize a work trade with a friend and have a story to share?  How about some gardening advice for me?  I've never grown any of the plants we put down in this bed before!