Picket Fence Paint

The long awaited chore of painting the picket fence has finally happened. It's only been about 10 years since it's needed a painting...

Here are some before shots:


And a couple of shots after pressure washing:

And the grand finale:

Front Rock Wall Part Three

The last and easiest part of the rock wall project. Planting. I went to Portland Nursery which I knew was fairly spendy but figured it'd be worth it.

Raspberry Bush

A friend on mine has a raspberry bush that's growing pretty frantically and offered some cuttings of it to me. Since I'm a huge fan of that berry and transplants always seem to work best, I was all over the offer.



I chose this location in my yard since it was readily close to an existing irrigation system and had lots of sun. Unfortunately, I think was a former driveway or something. Note the pick axe to break through the gravel/soil. Not to worry, I left plenty of growth room.

Front Rock Wall Part Two

After getting the rock wall established, the next step is to create a foreground which is mostly as a mowing separation from the grass to the wall. Here is a pile of chips that will be place in a concrete/sand mixture, then mortared in.The first step is to dig out about 7" to 8" deep for a gravel base in front of the rock wall: I poured the gravel in place 4" deep, leaving about 3" to 4" for 2" of concrete/sand mix depth plus thickness of the chips:

Deviating from the concrete instruction to wet first then place the rock, I found it worked much better to place the concrete mix dry then place the chips, then wet it. Since the chips were fairly thin, I felt the concrete would hold them a bit better if they were already somewhat sunk in. Completion! Overall it was actually very easy to do. For some reason, I expect anything with concrete or mortar to be a challenge and everytime I work with it, I'm surprised how easy it is.

Front Rock Wall Part One

There's a house up on the east slope of Mt Tabor (a few blocks from me) that inspired me to take on this summer project of recreating the front landscape. That's the reason for the previous posts of moving the rhodadendrun and butterfly bush, and finishing the front to back separation fence. They told me the crew they hired took most of the summer to build the dry stack landscape wall. Rather than use mortar, the rocks are placed on top of one another and fitted to match the contour of the shape created.

The first step is to create the desired contour using a garden hose:

The hose is flexible enough to bend and such, but also remains at place when it's time to dig out the shape created:

Here is the first layer of rock placed. It was from the original rock wall that I threw together a few years ago. I wish I would have taken before picture because it looked really lame:

Progress so far. There's still a lot to do

The West Fence

Having a somewhat decent garden in front, with a crazy chocolate labrador retriever that likes to tear it up from time to time with Sophie from across the street, I thought this would be a good opportunity to separate the back from the front. I had the east part of the yard taken care of quite a while ago. This is the west side of the yard

Setting of the posts...

Scully giving an expression of concern realizing upon completion that she won't able to utilize the ENTIRE yard....

This type of fence is so easy to build. I think I got this done in 2 hours.

And the final product, all painted to match the house trim.

Butterly Bush Move

So now that I have the Rhodie out of the way, it was time to take on the towering butterfly bush. I forgot to take pictures before the move (duh) but here's where it WAS:

This thing was a bear to move and I had already trimmed it down quite bit. I located it on the west side of the yard, with some future ideas in the works for that area. It looks green here but sorry to say, I think it's a goner. Or maybe it's just sleeping? Anyway, I have hopes it will come back because it usually grows like a weed.

Rhodadendrun Move

In the first week of June, I decided it was time to get back to work on the house. The first project to take on was making the landscape in the front of the house somewhat presentable. But before I could do that, I had to move some pretty large foliage. This Rhodie has never done that great where it's at now, so maybe the move will be a good thing.





Since I am on a corner, I moved the Rhodie to the planting strip to block the incoming headlights to gain a little more privacy. I really wished I would have done this years ago.

Antique Clock

As I mentioned before in an earlier post, I travelled to St. Louis where my family is based. My mom had gotten this clock when I was just a little kid from an auction, and wanted to pass it along to me. She believes it's from 1843 and made of walnut. I think it looks great in the den. What's interesting is that I had been thinking about getting a clock for this room for some time, but never acted upon it. I even remember thinking as a little kid that this was a pretty cool looking clock. Now, I just need to get it to work.

It will go for about a minute or 2 then just loses it momentum. I'm sure I've winded up to it's max point too. Next stop...clock repair shop.

Wood Stackage

This rainy and cold afternoon in Portland was spent outside chopping wood to smaller more usable firewood for the woodstove. After being on the road from St. Louis to Portland for 4 days of driving, it felt great to get out and get some exercise. As I write, it's burning away. Well, sort of. It's a little wet.
Here's the remaining part of the half cord of wood that I split with my neighbor:
And here's Scully with her "cousin" Dooley, just moments before she had to spend the next several days on the road. She did great and was quite the trooper.

Leak From The Sink

On Saturday morning I woke to a fairly large puddle in the downstairs bathroom. Such a drag. Fortunately, I didn't have any solid plans for the day so I was able to tackle the problem quickly. Here is the culprit - the connection point from the galvanized pipe to the copper.

Why they chose to use a 6" galv extension instead of extending the copper, or using longer flex lines to the sink is beyond me. Perhaps they liked the rusty water flavor it provided when not used for several days?

I have little experience with plumbing, so I gathered as much info on my situation on paper and headed for, not Home Depot, but a local plumbing store, George Morlan. They immediately had a much better solution than I had in mind and I was out, back home, hacking off the valve and galv pipe right at the copper line.

All I needed to do was install the valve right at the copper line, using compression fittings so I didn't need to solder. Then I ran the flexible pipe from the valve to the sink and that was it.

After Inspector Scully approved my work, the hideous sink-cabinet was back in place and I was done!

Toilet Fix

Now that I got this blog up and running again, there's no stopping this next post. After all, this is a house blog, and toilets are a part of the house that sometimes need fixing.

New toilet components:

Old toilet components:

Finally, no more annoying leaky toilets. After a good 4 months of the internal dripping getting progressively worse, I took the initiative - the bull by the horns, if you will - and spent about 45 minutes making the repair.

Aren't you glad you looked at this post?

Maybe tomorrow I'll go into a detailed post of how I scrubbed the kitchen floor. Or how I replaced the paper towel rack!

Labor Day Painting

Last year at Labor Day, I used the 3 day weekend to paint part of my house. Since house painted is such a daunting task, I decided to break up the painting into sections. Three day sections. Every year in the beginning of September. And this was the 2nd annual Labor Day paint fest with the area of interest being the upper half of the west side of the house. It's not exactly the most enjoyable since I'm up about 15 feet in the air on a ladder, but it's amazing how quick you get used to it

It's really not too much to show, but here it is:

Before:

After: