Ding Dong. The Red Is Gone.

(almost)

The weekend after our new windows were installed, the exterior of our house got a mini-makeover that we are so excited about! It had occurred to me that though it seemed like the outside of our house had a ton of red, it was actually only on the shutters (just 6 of them), the front door, and the trim around the garage. That's so manageable.

I keep using this old picture from last year and feeling like a fraud, but in this case, it's the one that shows the red looking the "reddest"

The window guys had to take down our old shutters to put in the windows anyway, so I ordered some new ones and pinned some fun repurposed shutter-craft ideas for the surplus that was headed my way. Well, let me tell you, as soon as the first shutter hit the front yard in a mangled twisted mess of rotten wood and cobwebs I knew I would not be needing those pins. Pity...I had the spots for a shutter-mail-holder and a shutter-console-table all picked out. The window guys also wouldn't put up our new shutters because they weren't exactly the same size, so we couldn't reuse the existing holes. Lame. Even though the dirt left from under the old shutters was so thick it almost looked like they were still up, we really couldn't leave the house looking like that, so there was only one thing doing.

Oh, but look at those pretty windows...

Husband had to go up on the roof. Actually, I suppose I could have done it, but come on. It was not easy going-up there (not as bad as The Worst Ever, but close). The plastic nail-like fasteners bent and broke off if they got snagged on the siding and weren't reusable.  Husband was so frustrated with the things, and I was showing my support by passing him supplies through the window and endlessly nagging things like "Are you sliding?" "Why aren't you holding on?" "Don't get cocky!" or, the one I'm most proud of: "No whistling on the roof!!" Don't judge, I know what happens when you fall off a roof, I was really nervous.
It all turned out mostly well in the end.  The new shutters went up. They are very slightly bowed, and didn't quite cover the holes in the siding from the old ones, but I don't think either of those things would be noticeable if you didn't already know.
The house looked totally confused until the next afternoon when Husband switched out the downstairs shutters to match.  I wasn't around, but it apparently went much more smoothly.  I'm not saying those two things are related, but I'm not saying they're not. I can't get over how good they look against the brick! And how the brick looks prettier with the brown to play off of!

So next, we turned our attention to the trim around the garage. Husband took one of the shutter fasteners to the store and matched it to a couple of paint samples, and once we tried them up on the trim there was an obvious winner. I scrubbed down the trim, siding, and garage doors (man, was that satisfying!)...

and then we filled and sanded as many of the imperfections as possible and slapped up two coats of Behr's French Roast in Exterior Satin (that name!), and we LOVE it.

The dark brown is so crisp, and I can't get over how much more I like the color of the brick now than when it was next to the burgundy.

Unfortunately, those rusty gold light fixtures have become even more painfully, painful.

I'm also taking suggestions on what color to paint the front door, the last remaining spot of red - I'm thinking green or yellow.

Rest In Pieces, Magnolia

Well, we're going to lose our beloved magnolia tree on Saturday. The crack has worsened significantly over the last few days since I noticed it, there's already lots of decay inside, and the carpenter ants are having a field day with it all.

It's ironic really because there are 8 trees on our little square of property, and they all either drop something irritating (maple helicopters, rotting cherries) or are kind of ugly...except this one. I loved this one. It gives us shade on the patio and back of the house, and it's the first thing to bloom in the spring.

I didn't even know what kind of tree it was until this year when it bloomed in April (I think?) and surprised me. Magnolias will always remind me of springtime in college when, after suffering through the worst frigid days all winter long, those pink blooms were a beautiful sign of beautiful days on the horizon. I was so happy to have one of our own in the yard to let me be nostalgic for those times again every year.

The tree guy asked how attached to it I was, and actually gave me the option of thinning it out, putting a huge bolt through the trunk and basically wiring it back together (at a higher cost than cutting it down - by the way), but that obviously doesn't make any sense. It's not going to get any better; it's not going to repair itself. It would just be delaying the inevitable day we'd still have to cut it down (or it falls down and causes more damage). It's a no brainer.

Thanks for all the shady times, Mags - we'll miss you!

Sod Tales

Topping the list of changes we wanted to make outside was reworking the giant bed running along the back of the yard.  It's hard to tell unless you're actually standing within it, but it's absolutely huge.  Unnecessarily huge.

At it's narrowest point, it's probably 16 feet deep. That's a lot of clearing, weeding, and mulching for no good reason. Plus, it's not really attractive with those shrubs semi-evenly spaced with several feet of empty dirt between them. So, our plan was to move or remove (since 2 are dying anyway) some of the shrubs from the center, and then extend the grass back toward the fence - basically creating a bed in each corner rather than the whole way along the back.  Obviously, we can't do anything about the placement of the trees, so the portion of bed on the left side will be bigger than the one on the right.

After talking and talking and talking about all this, we chose the weekend of record-high temps in mid-May to take action (ha! we're WISHING for those temps these days!). Husband dug up the 3 bushes from the front row (Xs below), and replanted them in some open space on the left side (Os below). Deciding that it was impractical to move the four plants in the back, we figured we'd just leave a strip as-is along the fence. The white line is my feeble attempt at showing the new layout. We Husband also dug up and got rid of the two dying evergreens.

Two weeks later, on a much more temperate afternoon, we filled the back of the car with sod. And dirt - lots of dirt. I will not be surprised if weeds start growing between the seats.

The first load of sod took care of some other areas we needed to patch, 

and about half of the back bed.

We watered the heck out of it that evening, and the next morning went back to the store and filled the car up again with another load.

It turned out to be exactly the right amount to finish the other side of the bed, and a little strip around the trees to the left.

In total, we used 40 rolls of 2' X 5' sod (without an inch to spare!). We watered daily (sometimes twice daily) until we actually had mushrooms start sprouting in the back area, and had to cut back. The big area in the back survived really well because it is in the shade all day long, but pretty much everything else died.

Cute, right?

It's been almost 100 degrees for weeks on end without any rain, and I just can't justify using that much water everyday to fight a losing battle. The rest of the lawn is dead and yellow too, so it's not even worth stressing about. Luckily the biggest area survived, and the others shouldn't be too terrible to seed (whenever it's appropriate weather to do so - who knows...?).

Oh, the life & death of sod. So thrilling. 

Rain Dance

Sometimes I hear myself say things, and I'm suddenly terrified that I've been freaky-fridayed with someone else. With like, an actual grown-up. For example:

"It's supposed to rain.  Thank goodness.  We need the rain."

"WE NEED THE RAIN?" When did I start saying ridiculous, responsible things like that?!
When I made the connection that plants are expensive and so is the water necessary to keep them alive - that's when. I never thought I'd see rain in the forecast and say "SCORE. Free water.", but what can I tell you. As you might have predicted, this rambling internal monologue leads us to...

**side note: I wrote this post a month ago, before I knew how seriously badly we would need the rain, before my lawn turned completely brown, before it became impossible to spend any time outside, and before I stopped making jokes about the water bill. Today I say, simply: "There is not enough water. Save it."

MAKING A RAIN BARREL

Step 1: Acquire a barrel. Bonus points if it's free.

Step 2: Paint the barrel (unless you want it to look like you're storing hazardous substances in the yard).

Step 3: Figure out which downspout you want to use to install your barrel.

Step 4: Grab a few bricks or cinder blocks to set the barrel on top of.  If you don't raise it, the spigot either won't be high enough to fit a watering can under or, if it is, will never empty the barrel fully and you'll have to install a drain at the bottom and waste all that water. We bought 4 for 98 cents apiece. As cinder blocks go, I find them very cute.

Step 5: You can buy all the fittings and supplies separately, or you can buy a convenient all-inclusive kit that includes every single thing you'll need for this project (except the barrel) for about $30. The kit was pretty fab.  I recommend it.

Step 6: Follow the directions in the kit. You'll start by drilling a hole at the base of the barrel for the spigot.

Then, drilling a hole in the downspout, and another in the barrel. Husband read the directions wrong on this step, and made the intake hole in the barrel almost level with the hole in the drainpipe, which didn't provide enough slope in the hose for the water to drain effectively.

But after some head-scratching, we just made another hole right below and plugged the first hole with the drain included in the kit.  We'll lose a few inches of water depth capacity, but it was a simple fix and honestly kind of looks like it's meant to be that way.

The piece that screws into the downspout diverts most of the rain water into the hose to the barrel, while still allowing it to bypass it in the event of a huge gush, or if the barrel is already full to this level.

Step 7: Wait for it to rain (which it already was in our case - nothing like the last minute, eh?)

Step 8: Fill up a watering can from the spigot. Water plants. Repeat. Sure it's a little tedious to keep making trips back to the barrel, but hi. it's free.

We're so excited about how simple and valuable this project is, and already planning on making another for the other side of the house.

Free water!!

Hard Work If You Can Dig It

...which, by the way, I can't.
I would have never imagined that "ability to dig a hole" would be a talent that I would admire so much and lack so severely, but here we are. My upper body strength is pathetic.

Anyway, the brush collectors are coming.  Can you tell?

Husband and I tend to talk things to death and take for.ev.er to actually do any of them. Then when we do, it still feels scary and spontaneous. We're still pretty chicken with this whole home-ownership business, I guess.

With brings me to the shrubs.  I'm sorry, The Shrubs. I hated those shrubs. Husband hated the shrubs. No one else on the street has weird shrubs at the end of their driveway. We didn't understand them, we didn't want to mow around them or shovel snow on top of them, we wanted them GONE.

Fall 2011

But, it seemed like a really big job. We didn't want to pay for a pro to remove them, and we also didn't want to get into a situation where instead of weird shrubs, we had ugly mangled tree stumps in the middle of the lawn. So naturally, we did nothing but talk about how "we need to get rid of them" for months and months. Then we realized that our window to dispose of the bushes and branches cheaply and easily would close as soon as the street brush collection came by. We may be procrastinators, but we're even bigger opportunists, so one Saturday Husband just went for it. The first, smaller tree seemed to come out really quickly (I wouldn't know since I was keeping busy in the back yard trying to stay as far away from this job as possible), but the second one was a monster. Like, a massive horizontal root every 2 inches deep and all around the trunk, monster. At one point, he couldn't even fit a small hand shovel between all the roots and had to clear dirt from around them by hand, then chop through them one at a time (side note: roots really freak me out.) It took hours. HOURS. And I was zero help.

Before you go thinking I'm completely useless in this project, I had already chopped down the big bush by the house that was crowding up the front door and window a few days prior. I definitely didn't dig out the stump, but I did plant something next to it that will eventually grow out and cover it. To each his own, ya know?

The depressing thing about all this work is that it seems like everything we do in the yard initially feels like a big giant step backwards. Even though we're really happy that those ugly bushes are gone, I'm not convinced that our curb appeal is actually looking any better.  I'm sure it will, in time, maybe, but honestly it looks pretty bare and beaten up right now.

Oh well, we're new at this.

Spray Paint Diaries

Sometimes our front porch really bums me out. Obviously, it's the first part of our home that anyone sees, and I feel like they're seeing the entrance to someone else's house. It's just wrong. It says "someone else used to live here" to me every time I look at it, and I really don't care to be reminded of that fact. I wish it would just shut up, and I want to change everything about it. We'll replace the whole door sometime in the next few years, but it's seriously not in the budget right now. I could paint the door, but it seems pointless to change the color when we're thinking about having the house painted next year anyway.

So, it's bad, but the biggest offender is actually even worse up close.

Whoa, that is one ugly mailbox.  I did some brief searching for a new one, but quickly determined that there is actually no such thing as an attractive mailbox, and there's pretty much nothing better in the world for a cheap fix than spray paint. I had it off the brick, scrubbed, primed, painted, and rehung in the 24 hour gap between mail deliveries.

Oh good lord, it's so much better - and since I already had everything leftover from other projects, it was gloriously FREE. Oil-Rubbed Bronze for the win. Yet again.

I plopped some planters full of annuals on that side, too (HomeGoods apparently has the cheapest planters ever).

Next, unable to look at that awful red chair for one more second, I went on the hunt for a replacement to match my fabulously updated mailbox. I pretty much hated them all except one at World Market which was on sale (plus coupon!). Turns out it disappears into the brick pattern a little, but it doesn't bother me.  The still-too-small-welcome-mat does, though.

So - success! Now all you see are the horrible ugly light fixtures! This was not my intended outcome, but of course it must be now addressed. Fortunately, I've discovered that I find all outdoor light fixtures to be ugly and overpriced, so it's clearly going to be an enjoyable-stress-free project...

Also, I'm undecided about the gold hardware and footplate on the storm door. They're going to look totally out of place once we replace the lights, but I'm kind of nervous about giving them the old ORB treatment (even though YHL did it, and I believe pretty much anything they tell me). Oh well, I'm not going to mess with that for now.

Finally, I know you're on the edge of your seat wondering what happened to the weird old milk can, but I'll bet you can guess. Obviously, it got it's own spray paint makeover, and now lives (slightly less weirdly) on the patio.