kitchen painting done

Another rainy day today and after getting home from Goose Creek late last night it was hard to get motivated this AM. I did finally get the kitchen painting done, having put another coat of white on the bottom part of the former water heater corner and then doing a few final touch-ups.

I also taped off almost all the crown moulding in the laundry room, but I ran out of tape. What with the bad weather and all I just didn't feel up to making a Home Depot run just for painter's tape. I still need to get a shelf for the laundry room as well and I think I will get some smaller drywall anchors to try to hang the shelf with.

We still have so much stuff in storage that either needs to come into the house or go to Goodwill. I am hoping that in the next week or so we will finally get a cabinet to use as a pantry in the kitchen, which should help with the "stuff" situation some.

The weather report is calling for more wet weather tomorrow, so there will be no yard work, but I will try to get some more painter's tape and hopefully get the crown moulding painted at least in the laundry room. Maybe I can also work on going through my closets a bit more. So far the double rod closet is working very well. It gives my clothes more space, though even with two rods it is pretty full and I have to wonder how I ever crammed everything onto one rod!

sick... so no work

I had hoped to work some more on organizing my closets after work yesterday and today, but I seem to have the stomach flu, so we have a work stoppage.

We really need some sort of shelving unit to use as a pantry so that we can get the wire cart out of the middle of the kitchen. We also need a medicine cabinet, but that also needs someone to drill and hang it, so it is further back on the priority list.

I would love some sort of small outdoor storage building to store my garden tools in. I also realized that I will have to bump putting real gate up in my yard up in the priority list at least to the spring or I will either by able to have a lawn mower in my front yard or a lawn mower in my back yard. If only I could get away with just a walk gate, as they run about $30, while a full 10' drive gate is about $100. I'll have to talk to Bobbie and see what she thinks. I had thought that maybe I could put a walk gate on the AC side of the house and leave the other fence up on the drive side until I have more money for a drive gate. Who knows...

painting and closets

Yesterday was a big painting day. I was able to finish up painting the kitchen (except for a little in the water heater area) and ended up doing the edging myself after we came home from dinner last night.

In addition to painting the kitchen, I decided that I really needed to finish up a few other painting projects. I had a few touch-ups to do on the brown paint, one area I had totally forgotten to paint down by the carpet and another touch-up where they gouged the woodwork getting our couch in the door. I also wanted to paint the entire woodwork surrounding the dining room closet door and also paint the back side of the door. This was my dark brown paint going over white, so I put on the first coat yesterday and touched it up with pretty much a second coat this morning.

I have been planning to put in a second clothing rod in my main closet since we moved in. I finally asked where the rods were at Home Depot and found what I wanted and as I had gotten up early today, I had enough time to add the 2nd rod (though it was not easy to do) and get my closet more organized.

Then I decided to tackle my second closet that is also the attic entrance. During the home inspection, I am SURE the home inspector moved aside some sort of pop-up to get into the attic. I had thought that the entrance to the attic was open, so I took everything out of the closet and removed the shelf to see for myself. Sure enough the entrance to the attic was wide open. I had some trouble getting my ladder into the closet and finally had to settle for sort of wedging it in and going up the ladder sideways while it was still folded up. This did allow me to get all the way up to the attic and low and behold... there was no pop-up, nothing to close the attic off with at all. I finally managed to get a piece of foamular up there, but it does not really fit in the hole properly so the attic is definitely not closed off, but I'm hoping sort of closed off is better than not closed off at all.

Back in the kitchen, I had a small hole in the wall back where the water heater used to be and also a much larger hole than their needed to be around one of the pipes left over from the water heater. I ended up filling these holes with expandable foam, which worked pretty well, though I did kind of smooth it around with a paper towel to get it to fill in the hole in the wall. I'm sure when I actually have someone really fix that area (add flooring and wainscotting to the wall) the foam might be a touch of a pain, but at least for right now I have plugged up a major source of cold air into my kitchen.

The next few days I probably won't have time to do much, but I am hoping to maybe get the lower part of the water heater area painted white. Then I will be able to move the toaster oven cart back into place and the kitchen will essentially be done for the time being. We shall see...

2 coats of paint & 2 faucets

FINALLY got some work done on the house today. The goal for quite some time has been to finish up painting the trim and wainscotting in the bathroom. Today, I finally was able to get the bathroom ceiling, woodwork and wainscotting painted. It looks pretty good, but when I went to remove the blue tape, especially around the window, a bunch of the wall color came up, and the tape had only been on for a few hours. So, went down to the crawl space to get the mostly empty can of the bathroom wall color and touched up the bathroom wall color and also did a little touch up in the laundry room. I still need to paint the trim in the laundry room, but that will be a bit more difficult with the washer and dryer in there, plus all my garden tools. That may wait until spring or at least until I have somewhere to put the tools.

Then, since I'd been crawling around the bathroom floor, I had a look at the faucet on the sink. And, as we had pretty much the whole day to work on things, decided to finally try to put on the new bathroom faucet. The only problem I really had was that it was quite cramped back there behind the sink and the old faucet was attached with metal nuts. One came right off by hand, but the other was more stuck and it took a bit of working on it with pliers before I got it loose enough to remove. Overall, the installation of the faucet was not that hard, but I did not go ahead and install a new pop-up drain at this point in time because I wasn't 100% sure how to remove the old pop-up drain. I also realized that the old drain had not been connected correctly, so technically this whole time we have not had a drain the just pulls like it is supposed to. Who knows, maybe we will tackle the pop-up drain tomorrow or maybe in a few weeks.

The success with the bathroom sink made us brave, so we decided to tackle the kitchen sink. Of course, one of the washers holding the old sink on came off quite easily and the other took some doing. Mom was able to loosen the stuck washer and actually had it about 1/2 the way off and hadn't even realized she got it to budge. The faucet installation again went basically smoothly. We also installed a new sprayer that came with this faucet set. The biggest problem we have had in the kitchen since we moved in is a lack of cold water pressure. Pretty much the cold water has always come out at barely a trickle, so we have essentially only had hot water in the kitchen. This is fine for washing dishes, but not so great for washing hands. Amazingly, installing the new faucet solved the cold water pressure issue. There must have been some sort of clog in the old faucet. If only we had known that this would solve the water pressure issue, we might have tackled this project a few months ago.

So, now I have a bit more room in the dining room closet and two much more attractive, much more period appropriate faucets on my sinks. Tomorrow I am thinking to trying to track down some clothes rods and trying to work on the main closet in my room. I really want to put in double rods, I can really use the extra closet space!


My original plan for Christmas weekend was to paint the kitchen. I had hoped by this point we would have already done the bathroom trim and also have done the laundry room trim and the crown moulding in my bedroom. Well, the laundry room and my bedroom are both going to require moving quite a lot of stuff, so they have been postponed for awhile. I did decide that there would probably be time tomorrow to paint the kitchen. With that in mind, I began taping the kitchen while we were making dinner. I was able to tape most of the kitchen with the tape I had left and just have a little bit to do tomorrow after a trip to Home Depot.

After dinner I thought I would try to edge the kitchen, as we didn't have a roller to do any of the large wall areas. One thing led to another and I ended up brushing the large wall areas as well on two of the walls and edging at least a bit on all 4 walls. There were several areas that were all taped, but needed to be sanded with a heavy grit sandpaper (which of course I couldn't find) and several other areas that still need some more tape. I have decided to leave edging along the ceiling for my mom to do tomorrow.

The final bit of painting I did tonight was to prime the hole in the kitchen were the water heater used to be. The area is mostly out of side, out of mind due to the toaster oven being in that area, but I decided that while I am painting it would be stupid not to at paint that area as well. And this is DEFINITELY an area that needs primer! This area also needs something to block some of the drafts that are coming in as well. We will try to use some of the foam rope we have and maybe some caulk tomorrow to see if we can reduce some of the drafts coming from a round hole in the wall and a much larger than it needs to be hole in the floor around one of the water pipes. Add to that the gap between the floor and the wall between the kitchen and the bathroom... Who knows, the kitchen might actually be a bit warmer by the time I'm done with this little project. But, the whole area needs professional attention. I think both the floor boards and wall board right around where the water heater was will need to be replaced. That will have to wait until we have more money. A dishwasher is seeming like an ever more distant dream...

weeding again

We had fairly warm weather again today (in the mid to high 60s) so I was back on with weeding. I again had to weed my foundation beds, that stupid little weed just keeps coming up no matter how much mulch I put down. That did not take me too much of the day, a few hours in the morning.

Most of my day was consumed with trying to weed my camellia bed where the Three Toms are planted. I made several mistakes on this bed. First, when I initially planted the bed, I laid down a layer of cyprus mulch, but it was too thin to control weeds, so they grew up through it. Then, when I decided to add the pine bark mulch, instead of weeding the bed first, I just added the mulch over top the weeds, hoping it would kill the weeds (I'll admit to making this same mistake on the foundation beds as well). I am REALLY paying for it now as I believe today was the first time I have ever tried to weed this bed. I worked on it for most of the afternoon, and did weed out some from where the pine bark is, out into the initial cyprus mulch area. With all my work, I only got about 1/2 of the bed weeded. Actually less than half and I still have some weeds growing up between the first two camellias. My plan is to finish weeding out this area, maybe even weed it again and then add probably 2-3 additional bags of the pine bark mulch. I also need to weed the hydrangea again and probably add some more mulch to it as well.

Tomorrow the forecast is rain, so I am hoping to FINALLY get some of the painting left in the house done. I keep saying I'm going to do it and keep getting sidetracked in the yard. But, if it rains all day that will keep me inside and being Christmas day, I won't be able to go shopping instead.

I went down and checked out the other camellia bed, the one I weeded before I mulched and also mulched deeper. It is looking good as far as the weeds are concerned, BUT my Miss Biloxi that is on the far left hand side has now dropped almost all her buds. Add to this the fact the Debutante never seems to have made any buds in the first place and I only have one camellia (the other Miss Biloxi) left in that bed that has any real amount of buds on it. So, now the camellia on each end of the back fence area has suffered from bud drop. I hope it is just the temperature fluctuations doing them in, not any diseases. I am currently wondering if any camellias will actually bloom for me this year. Actually, I am wondering if ANYTHING will bloom... or even survive.

rain, rain, rain

I have the day off from work today and it is cold and raining. I have to take the dogs to the vet this afternoon so haven't even been sufficiently inspired to try to do any of the painting that does need to be done.

Did go out and survey the yard, looking for any puddling areas. The good news is that none of my plants or planned beds are in areas with standing water. The bad news is there is a whole area of standing water down the center of my yard and there is pretty much a lake where my garbage can is. I half expect it to float away at any minute.

I would like to get a different doorknob to put on the closet door in the dining room, then move the knob that is on it now to my mom's room door (it is the same as the knob on my room door). I would like to try to put the porcelain knobs on bathroom door, but I really need some sort of rosettes first. I am going to go down to visit Sue at some point and thought I might try to get all the way down to Charleston to go to Charleston Hardware.

a little more decorating

Not too much work done today, as I just had a few hours before work. Did get the big red bow put on the magnolia wreath Bobbie had made for me.

We are still having dry weather, so I watered all the shrubs and did a touch more weeding. Whatever that little green weed is, it is growing faster than I can weed it out. I had to pull back all the pine needles by the side door and weed it out of that future bed. Hope the irises in there do okay as I haven't watered them since up to now they seem to be doing their own thing without my help, so why fix what isn't broken.

weeding and mulching

Today I wanted to finish up the last of mulching the shrubs. I started out by doing some weeding in the little area around the light pole that I am planning on using to try out some annuals come spring. I don't think I'm going to do the full on digging ammendments into the soil in this area at least for the coming year, but I did pull out as much as I could of the little weed that grows everywhere and put down some pine needles.

Then I moved on the the much bigger task of weeding the remaining 3 camellias, which were pretty much overgrown with the weed. I did get most of it pulled up and then added 3 bags of pine chip mulch, which covers the planting holes of the camellias and a little around them. I also weeded the camellias I had previously mulched but was lazy and did not weed. That area was a bit of a mess and I was able to get up some of the weeds.

I also dug out the large amount of honeysuckle that was back behind the shack. One of my co-workers said she wanted it, so I potted it up for her. I figure it is so invasive that it should root just fine in her yard and she said she wants it for a totally barren area and doesn't care if it spreads all over there. I do still have a bunch of honeysuckle roots in my ground. It was quite a lot of work to get it out of the ground and all the roots still attached are pretty short, but I think it will be okay. Digging the rest of the roots out of the ground will be an even bigger chore and one that I think I will save until I have the shack torn down and know what I am going to do in that area.

I finished up by weeding some more by the front door, this time in front of the drip line. I realized that there is no reason I can't plant on both sides of the drip line and that will enable to bed to really wrap around the corner of the hous.e

All the yard work left me pretty tired. I did buy some more ornaments for the tree at Big Lots, but I may leave those for my mom to hang tomorrow.

foundation planting pt 2

Did some more work on the foundation planting, now that I have the big holly for the corner planted. I also realized that the remaining small holly I got at Thanksgiving was about to die due to the fact that I tend to forget about it and not water it. So, I stuck it in the ground next to the nandina and watered it heavily and we will see how it does.

After doing the planting in the morning, I went to Underwoods to see if I could find any more of the cabbages like the one on my porch, but they didn't have any more. They did have some cute herb gardens and apparently there are more herbs than just rosemary that will make it through our winters. I was also looking for another plant to finish off the side part of my foundation planting. I had been thinking about a camellia, but I think the area actually has too much sun. As I was about to leave, I saw the guy who usually helps me and we discussed my garden plans. He thinks I will probably need to plant either another holly or another nandina in the side foundation area, due to all the hollies already there. Hum... He also did up a really nice sketch of a perennial bed along the back of my house. I will need to dig in clay buster and cow manure and then I will be ready for spring.

I added 5 bags of mulch to the front, to take the mulch bed around the side around the large holly and I also mulched around the small holly and finally got my forsythia mulched as well.

After finishing the mulching, it was off to the back yard to do some weeding in my future bedding areas. I started off weeding the area next to the side steps, planning right now to put some hostas and probably impatiens there. Then it was off to the side and back of the house. I got about 1/2 of the future perennial bed weeded. From there I went over and weeded the shade garden area where I plan to put in blue hostas and painted ferns. Once I was done weeding, I put down pine needles. I now have only 1 bale of pine needles left. I still need to weed the rest of the perennial bed area and also the area around the light pole along the fenceline that I think I may just use as an experimental annual bed.

new holly

Bobbie came by today and brought be an almost 4 foot tall holly to use for my corner planting and also a magnolia leaf wreath for the front of my house. I have the whole weekend off from work and was planning on working on mulching the camellia bed, but now I will start the day by planting the holly, then I will definately have some more mulching to do to extend the foundation mulch area out to where the new holly will be.

Guess I won't be doing any painting this weekend! Also, the weather is supposed to be in the low 70s until something like next Wednesday or Thursday, so I will definately take advantage of the good weather to work some more in my yard. Lots of people are wondering about what January and February will be like, afraid they will be VERY bad, since so far our winter has been so mild.

Looking like Christmas

I just realized that it has been quite some time since I've updated my blog. I have continued to work in the yard on the weekends (its too dark by the time I get home from work), mostly at this point trying to continue to clean up all the debris that was in the yard when I bought the house and work on adding some mulch.

I have made some strides cleaning out what was essentially a jungle behind the shack in the back. When I first started, you could barely walk back there and now I can pretty easily go most of the way around the shack. There are a bunch of tree saplings and privets back there and I am taking a wait and see approach to decide which ones stay and which ones go. I did get some more garbage hauled out of there, as well as a decent number of larger tree limbs. And, I even found some more bricks buried in the ground, which I dug out and used as part of the edging on my foundation planting.

I have continued to add mulch to the holly part of the foundation planting. I added another 2 bags as I found some weeds trying to grow up through the mulch. I need at least one more back to spread along the back.

I also decided that all my shrubs needed to be mulched. Currently I am using a light colored cyprus mulch in the front ($2/bag at Home Depot) but for the shrubs I decided to use the $2.29/bag mini pine bark nuggets. I spread 6 bags of the pine bark on my shrubs on Sunday and I still need probably 4 more to mulch in the rest of my camellias, as I want to basically make a camellia and hydrangea bed back there and mulch in the whole area. I also checked all my plants and I guess they are all doing well. All the evergreens are still green. I continue to have bulb foilage coming up in my pots and my pansies are blooming. I wonder if I need to feed them.

We got an email at work on Tuesday that one of the departments was giving away their old fake Christmas tree. So, we got ourselves a free fake tree. It is quite nice and I've now got it lit and got a few glass balls on it.

My mom put up the icicle lights on the front of the house a week or so ago and we both think they look nice. I'd like to find two wreaths for our two front windows, but so far I haven't been able to find exactly what I'm looking for, at least not at a decent price. I'm hoping to pick up something good at the After Christmas sales.

More yard work

I didn't quite feel up to going out to Bobbie's to get another holly to plant today, so no planting. I started my work in the yard today by installing the 3 pavers in a path from the water spigot. They worked out really well, except I think one might be a little thinner than the others, but I think they look good. After that I watered the shrubs as we are not expecting rain until Thursday. It was nice to be able to walk on the pavers instead of in a mud hole to get to the spigot, as the hose connection leaks pretty badly. I think this summer I may invest in a new hose. I have no idea how much water my shrubs need. I was thinking that the small pieris might not be looking quite as good as it could, don't know. Also, something has eaten a tiny bit at my tea olive. I really don't know how much water any of the shrubs need. The ones without leaves right now are the worst as I REALLY have no idea how they are doing or if they are even still alive.

On at least 1/2 of the plants you can still see the root ball area that was in the container. This is a tad concerning. I am most worried about the small beautyberry, as it has been in the ground for almost 2 months now and its top from the container is still VERY noticeable. The large beautyberry is doing much better in that respect, but it will still be months before I know if that plant is even alive.

I spent some more time in the yard trying to clean up some of the sticks, small branches and dead vines in the woodland garden. In the process, I found a number of additional bricks. I filled 2 large trash bags mainly with sticks and dead vines, as well as a little trash I found. Just as I was finishing up, I found even more bricks along the yard side of the shack. I was wondering if I know have enough bricks from what I dug up today to edge around the one tree in the front yard. Not sure what I want to do there... I will definately go back and get the bricks from the side of the shack. I noticed that my neighbor behind me also had a number of old bricks behind the falling down shack on the back of HIS property.

I am suspecting that some of the vines in the back might be honeysuckle, as there are some that are curled around the fence just like the honeysuckle is curled on field fencing. Terri had said some of the other vines were clemetis, but I haven't seen any of them bloom.

Today was nice and warm, almost 70, so we haven't turned the heat on at all today. Ususally I like the cold weather, but with having to keep my house so cold due to the gas prices, I am enjoying our still warm weather. I wish I was able to insulate the house right now, but unfortunately, I lack the budget for that right now. Currently my hope is that I will be able to insulate the attic before NEXT winter. I also would love to have the shack in the back torn down, but that too costs more money than I have right now, so I will just have to deal with it.

My major issue right now is to figure out some way to get the trash people to haul away all that plastic sheeting that I dragged up there last week and they left. We need to call the trash folks tomorrow and see if they will pick it up if we tell them about it.

I also have found some more scrap metal around the shack, but without a gate into my yard it is hard for anyone to get back there to pick stuff up. I have been collecting what I've found and when I get some more I'll call the scrap guys and see if they can come haul it away.

I have decided that it is a REALLY good thing I have my backyard all fenced in as my neighbor kids were telling me how they used to play in the "blue house" (the shack in the back) and how they were fixing it up. I can see how it would seem like the ideal place to play to little kids (and would probably have wanted to play in it myself as a child) but as an adult homeowner, it worries me as the shack is NOT SAFE! I did tell them the shack wasn't safe and they said that their dad had said the same thing. Again, glad there is now a fence between them and the shack. I would hate for anyone to get hurt on my property.

This coming week I work all week, then I'm out of town on the weekend, so I doubt much will get done around the house. We did go to our storage space today and bring a few things back with us. We really need to finish up the painting, move the paint out of the kitchen and get a wooden cabinet to use as a pantry. Then maybe we can put everything away and start really going through and getting rid of things.

Foundation planting, pt 1

Today I decided to work on my foundation planting, since I had the hollies and I haven't gotten any painting done. I got an early start today, before 9 AM. I got the three bigger hollies planted on one side of the walk, measuring to make sure that the trunk of each holly was the same distance from the porch (32 1/2 inches- not quite 1 yard but oh well...).


I planted one of the small hollies on the tree side of the walk. It is closer to the porch, but pretty much lines up with the hellabore on the other side of the tree.


I used all the mulch I had and it did not even come close to being enough to go around just the three hollies. So, it was back to Home Depot for 4 more bags of mulch. I also bought a bag of 45 crocus bulbs since they were all 1/2 off (the crocuses were the only ones that still looked decent) to put around the tree over on the line between my and Curtis's properties. After seeing Bobbie's pansies at her house yesterday I decided I had not purchased enough pansies and that my containers looked pretty sad, so I got 6 white and purple pansies to add to the pots. Then, while I was heading toward the bulbs I walked along the shade aisle and a rhododendron called out to me. It is an English Roseum and should bloom pink in May if it survives.

Back home with the mulch, I finished up mulching the three hollies and I think they look pretty good. Then I ran out of mulch trying to mulch on the tree side.

I had purchased the rhodie thinking it would be great to go along the area I just cleared in the back of the house, but when I got there the spot I was thinking of was in full afternoon sun, which will not work for a rhodie. So, instead I decided to plant it on the very edge of my woodland garden. I planted it as directed in several books, I scraped back the soil a little bit, set the plant on top and threw dirt over top and around it in a little sort of volcano. The plant's hang tag said to use basically pure peat moss, but a bag of that would have been more than the plant (rhodie- $6.97, peat moss- $9.95 on sale) so being the cheapskate that I am sometimes I decided to forgo the peat moss. Instead I used leftover soil I had from planting the hollies (which should be acidic) and added some Miracle Grow soil and a bunch of mushroom compost. I'm hoping the soil will be well drained enough but still acidic enough. We shall see...

I also planted the 45 crocus bulbs under the tree on the property line. Most of the bulbs seemed in pretty good shape to me so we will see if I get any flowers. They should be purple, yellow and white. I also added the 6 pansies, splitting them between several pots and added more soil to the one pot that I seemed to have really shorted on soil.

This evening I decided to go back out to Home Depot as I needed ONE MORE bag of mulch and I also wanted to go to a nursery to look for more of the large cabbages, as I thought they might look nice to put between the hollies temporarily to give it a more filled in look. My original plan was to go to Country Boys, as I thought they might be most likely to have the cabbages, but we somehow managed to overshoot them on the way up there. So, we went to Twin Bridge, where they did not have any big cabbages (or is it kale, who knows...). We did manage to find Country Boys on the way back home and they didn't have the cabbages either. So ended up at Home Depot getting the last bag of mulch and also 3 big pavers to make a little path to the water spicket. The hose leaks badly and is making a mess, and I am planning on adding some plants in the area, so figured I'd get the pavers now while the ground is freshly dug and the pavers are on sale. They each weigh 20 lbs and they are currently in the back of my car. I'm actually going to have to carry each one through the house to the back yard. YIKES!!

Tomorrow I have to work all day so I won't really have time to do anything in the yard or the house. My plan for Sunday is to finish up the mulch in the front of the house, set the pavers and try to get to Underwoods for 2 more cabbage.

Thanksgiving

So far during my days off for Thanksgiving I have not accoplished any of my painting goals. Yesterday I went over to Bobbie's house to help her leash break her puppies and then she gave me 5 hollies (some with berries) to start working on the foundation planting on the front of my house. So, I FINALLY got everything planted and now I have things to plant once again. I currently have the 3 large hollies set out front where I will plant them. We both think I need one more BIG holly to use as a corner plant. I would then like to put some firehouse nandinas in front of the hollies and maybe edge the whole thing with mondo grass.

This afternoon I went to Thanksgiving dinner at Bobbie's and when I got home I had initially thought I might try to get started planting the hollies, but instead decided to work some more on pulling crab grass. I had started pulling crab grass yesterday. My yard is over run with some sort of I'm guessing it is a weed that almost looks like a very green, slightly larger leafed version of the ajuga I have out front. I have assumed they were weeds and have been pulling them up. I do have some ENORMOUS crabgrasses on the side of the house that I keep meaning to attack, but have not gotten to yet.

After working on the weeds for a while I decided that instead of digging in the hollies, I would try to dig out the roots of the catalpa saplings I had hacked down along the back of the house. There were TONS of roots and some more sapling stumps I found as I was digging out roots. I got most of the surface stubs gone except for a few under some bags and two really big ones on the edge of the house that are near the water heater. I certainly didn't get all the roots, but in most of the area now there is at least nothing above the surface and probably nothing for at least 3 inches down. I need to go get some pine needles before the area becomes overrun with weeds. I think pine needles will be on my shopping list at Home Depot tomorrow.

With the arrival of the hollies, I have pretty much given up painting this weekend. I think tomorrow I will try to work on planting the hollies and try to get some pine needles spread.

Tomorrow is the delayed trash pick up, so this afternoon and evening I had to tackle the task of getting the 40+ bags of leaves in the back and side yards up to the trash collection area. Finally got them all moved, with mom helping me get them over the fences into the back yard. I can't wait for the trash to come tomorrow so I can have my back yard back, leaf and trash bag free!

Trying to adjust to the cold

This AM I was able to keep the heat at 65 while getting ready for work, but mom said she had been cold all night. I think she did okay as far as keeping the heat at 70 while she was home all day, but she did say she was cold. I think it will take some getting used to, as we have in the past probably kept our apartment at 73-74 in the winter and both of us like warm houses. But... neither of us wants a $400 gas bill so...

Hopefully everything will work out and we will be able to insulate the attic before too much longer. I really hope that will help keep the house warmer.

Today it sleated just a little bit and was cold all day. We are going to have more cold, wet weather tomorrow. YUCK.

Burr...

The forcasted snow did not arrive but the gas bill did. I've been worried about how much the gas would be as the estimate they had given me had been around $200/month. YIKES! The bill today was $99 and that was only through November 8th. That was really only about 2 weeks of us living in the apartment full time and there were some 70+ days in there. Now it is starting to get cold. To top it all off, I came home and found the thermostat set at 74. I had already decreed that we should never have it above 72 except in emergencies. Now I am going to change my plan, 65 when we are not home or sleeping and a MAX of 70 the rest of the time. I'm going to look into electric lap blankets and we can drink more hot cocoa and tea.

It is currently 70 in the house and the gas is not on. I turned in down to 65 while I was at the gym and the heat came on for a few minutes to get it back up to 70 once I upped it when I got home. Hopefully this plan will prevent the dreaded $400 gas bill. I'm afraid I might be stuck with a $200 one a few months as we just can't live in a house that is 65, we are both too cold natured. We could barely swing it but we sure won't be doing much around the house with those kind of gas bills, that will have to wait until it is warmer.

It is supposed to get down to 32 tonight. I am hoping that maybe this winter I will be able to scrape together enough money to get the attic insulated. I would HOPE that insulation would keep the house warmer and cut down on the gas bill, and maybe cut down on the electric bill for the AC in the summer too.

Garden is ready for winter

The forcast for tomorrow is calling for SNOW! So, I got an early start on the yard, out bagging leaves at 9 AM. Ansell did come a few minutes after 9 and we were able to get all the rest of the leaves bagged up and even get the plastic sheeting that had been over by the water heater dragged up to the trash area as well. I've currently got a bumper crop of plastic bags in my yard!

After Ansell left, I went to Home Depot to try to do something about the containers and my bulbs. I got 5 more plastic pots (shouldn't crack in the cold), 1 rosemary, 1 kale, 2 6-packs of pansys and a little periwinkle. I also got another ajuga for under the tree. I bought 3 more bags up bulbs as well: hyacinth, iris and scilla. I potted up the containers with the bulbs about 4 inches down and the bedding plants on top. The white container has the almost black tulips underneath, then has rosemary, kale and 2 pansys on top. The one smaller pot by it has the pink tulips in it and the other has some some paperwhites. Both have pansys on top. The three pots on the porch are all the terra cotta color. The one big one with the cabbage in it does not have any bulbs, the other big one has pink hyacinths and the smaller one has some more paperwhites (I think!)

Then I planted out the rest of the bulbs. I planted the rest of the paperwhites under flowering pear (which is currently making me happy by having some fall color). The irises were planted right up by the drainage ditch on either side of the walkway into the house. I planted the scilla over by the side door where the flag irises (or whatever) are starting to come up. I'd pulled some roots out of this area earlier so the dirt was nice and loose and it was easy to just slip the bulbs right into the ground. I also planted some hyacinth bulbs I had purchased a while ago. These bulbs looked pretty worse for the wear. I planted them along the fenceline with Norman, right near my side fence. If any of them do bloom, the should come up roughly behind where I planted the puschkinias a few day ago. I'm not sure I got all the bulbs deep enough and the one set of hyacinth bulbs really looked pretty bad, so we will see if I get ANY blooms from ANY bulbs! The ones I bought at Home Depot today were 50% off and to me anyhow the bulbs all seemed in good shape. Only time will tell.

When we were raking the leaves, I had warned Ansell not to try to get the leaves right up against the shack as there has been poison ivy there earlier in the year (it died back before I could work up the courage to try to get rid of it...oops...). As that area is kind of scrubby anyway, I just decided to leave the leaf litter there as mulch for a natural foresty look (sounds good huh). I also happen to have a bricks and pieces of brick scattered around my yard. I picked up a bunch of these while we were raking (and there were also some stacked along one side of the shack). Don't know what these bricks were from, but some have morter on them so they were obviously part of some structure. I dedided to take these bricks and make little edge on the side of my "naturalistic garden" to give it a better look and make it look more like that was what I wanted. I got a decent amout of the border finished with just bricks collected from the yard (dug two out of the ground) and finished it off with some of the bricks stacked behind the shack. I thought the results were pretty nice looking.

After finishing off the brick border, I went back to a project I started on closing day... digging the brick patio by the side door out from under a bunch of weeds. I finally got the whole brick area exposed and then finish off by using my new crab grass puller to get rid of as much of the crab grass as I could in the area. There is A LOT of crab grass in my yard unfortunately. I think I am essentially done in the yard for the winter. My only other project I would really like to do is to get one of those oak barrel planters to put over the other place that used to have a clothesline holder (I tried digging this one out of the ground too but no luck!). I guess for winter I could plant it with pansys and kale or something. That project will have to wait at least for a paycheck or so though.

Now that I basically have the yard done, my goal for my three day Thanksgiving vacation is to get as much of the painting we have left finished as is possible.

leaves, leaves, leaves

Yesterday mom was off and was able to get the top half of the bathroom entirely painted. All that remains there is doing the woodwork and wainscotting.

Today I was off and decided it was another garden day. I still had 4 shrubs to get in the ground.

Started out working trying to clean up around the ajuga in the front and made some progress. Also after reading my shade gardening book, I decided to stick some chionodoxa bulbs under the one catalpa tree. They were only $2.99 at Big Lots, so I'll see if I get anything. Now that I have pulled out most of the clover, I need to buy another ajuga. I had planned to go to the Farmer's Market today, but will have to hit Home Depot instead.

First up was the hydrangea, which I finally planted down with the camellias. The soil down there is really nice, so it was pretty quick and easy. On the way back up to the front, I ran into the mostly cut down metal clothesline and noticed that the ground around the concrete it was set it was very moist. So, I grabbed my shovel and decided to see if I could dig it out. Imagine my surprise when I was able to move the concrete with my shovel. I was able to actually get the concrete with the metal ends set in it flipped up and out of its hole surprisingly easily. Then I rolled the concrete piece across the yard. This left me with a hole. A hole in my yard I did not dig seems like a sort of gift from the gardening gods, especially as this is in an area with no visible tree roots and also no direct overhead shade. So, I may have to buy at least one more plant, something for that hole!!

Next up was the forsythia. I bought it to go in front of my fence on the air conditioner side of the house. When I was getting started planting, I noticed I could still see the gas line markings and due to the gas line, was not able to center the hole in the middle of the available space. Making sure I was well clear of the gas line meant going a lot closer to a little stand of the dreaded catalpa trees. This meant tree roots, LOTS OF TREE ROOTS, in my planting hole. Due to all the roots, I ended up digging most of the planting hole with a trowel, stopping to cut roots regularly. This was VERY time consuming and exhausting.

I had some dirt left over from planting the forsythia and as I was on the front yard side of the fence, thought I could use that dirt to fill in the hole in my front yard. I had the hole about 1/2 way filled in when I looked over and saw the abelia. Abelia that needs a home... hole in the front yard that is in the sun at least part of the time... I ended up digging the dirt back OUT of the hole. The hole did have grass growing in it, so I tried to remove it as sod and placed it over by the forsythia in an area with no grass. As it turns out, the abelia had one of the shallowest rootballs I' ve seen so I basically could have just thrown the dirt in the hole and planted it right over the grass probably. I basically had to fill the hole almost full then set in the abelia and fill a bit more. I didn't even make a soil ring around it as the natural hole kind of made a soil ring for me.

After all this work, I took a short break for lunch. After that is was on to my final shrub, the hellebore. I finally decided to plant it by the front porch and it wasn't until I was digging the hole that I realized it was going in right next to the ajuga that I don't think is doing too well. I only needed a small hole, so I ended up digging it all with the hand trowel and emptied my mushroom compost into the dirt, so it was nice and ammended. The I got the hellebore planted and we will hope for the best.

Just as I was finishing up with this, a guy came over from my neighbors. Turned out he lived in the neighborhood and had been laid off and was looking to rake leaves to earn some money. He agreed to rake and bag my leaves for $10. I had planned to go out to the farmer's market to get another ajuga and see if they had anything else good for my containers, but ended up spending the whole afternoon in the backyard working on the leaves. I didn't want to leave him at my house by himself and I just did a little pruning while he was raking, then helped him bag the leaves. As of a little after 5 PM today, all the leaves in my backyard were raked into piles and I think we bagged (I helped with this part) over 20 bags of leaves. I ran out of bags before we ran out of leaves. Since it was such a task, I paid him $15 and told him if he wanted to come back tomorrow and finish bagging the backyard and do the front yard I'd pay him another $10 (I seriously don't think he realized HOW much there was to do in my yard when he said $10 but he also said he needed the money and I did note that he smelled vaguely of pot). So, hopefully he will show back up tomorrow. If not, all the bagging will be a lot of work for me but I should be able to get it all done and then work on the front yard next week. If he does show back up, then we should be able to get all the leaves taken care of in the AM and I should be able to work on the containers in the afternoon and maybe even have enough time and energy to work on some painting (yeah right!).

Not much work getting done

Yesterday it rained all day, so I did not have a chance to do any gardening before work. Today we were again having a little rain and a lot of wind. I did get a chance to bag up a few leaves (few of the MANY leaves there are) while the dogs were out in the yard.

Tomorrrow mom is off work and plans to try to finish painting the bathroom. Then I have the whole weekend off and will try to finish getting the last few plants in the ground. I still have to make a decision on where to plant the abelia and I found out that hellabores are poisonous so I need to put in the front or side yard, not the back yard. I am just going to have to finally dump the hydrangea in the ground back by the camellias I guess. At least I know where the forsythia goes. The other decent note is that the abelia is the one one in a really big pot and it isn't as bad as some of the others, so it should be a doable task. I do still want to get another ajuja for the front yard now that I have pulled out all the clover and I also need to get to planting bulbs!

I brought home a book on shade gardening today to try to get some ideas for the far end of the back yard.

I do still want to add one more shrub along the fence line with Norman, after the dogs fence fighting. And, since I want to block that access, it needs to be something pretty good sized. I may try to run over the JFS on Saturday or else maybe in the next few weeks. Or else, it will probably be best to wait until spring I guess??

I have 3 days off for Thanksgiving, so I am thinking if we can get the bathroom painted this weekend and get some of the boxes moved out to storage, we *might* be able to work on painting the kitchen over the Thanksgiving holiday. Hum... need to see where we this coming Monday.

tried to paint the bathroom

I decided pretty late this evening that I wanted to try to paint the bathroom today. I had bought another one of these little painting edger pads that had worked well when we used them in other rooms. I thought it would be just the thing and that I could get the bathroom done in a very short amount of time.

Well, the little painting pad kept coming apart when I tried to use it, and also seemed to be pulling the paint off the wall where I had just painted. Add to that, getting paint on the bathtub, and I soon decieded hte edging pad was not going to cut it. Ended up finishing out the rest of the paint that I had poured out with a 2" brush. With the shape of the tub surround area and also the cabinet that is hanging on the wall, getting to all the parts of the wall proved to be more difficult that I had initially expected. I got some parts of several walls painted, but there is still plenty more work to do. Then I definately do want to paint the ceiling and also all the woodwork and the wainscotting, as the trim in some areas is looking pretty dirty.

Of course, maybe someday I will get the rest of the touchups done in my bedroom and as soon as we get some of the empty boxes moved out of the laundry room maybe I can FINALLY work on painting the woodwork there. I am VERY glad we chose not to start painting the kitchen yet, as it is nice to have a few rooms that aren't full of additional painting that needs to be done. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that we spent around 3 weeks painting before we ever moved in and we still seem to have so much more to do. I don't even want to think about the one outside window I stripped. Currently the mullions on one front window are white (not stripped) and the other black (stripped). I need to just prime both and paint them both green.

Then there is the window in the laundry room, which I think really needs some additional glazing put on it. I should just buy some of the Dab stuff or whatever and shove in the the empty looking spaces for right now. Not ideal, but hopefully it will keep the glass from falling out.

I did talk to Frankie at work today and Derek can come install my light and blinds anytime, which would be great, except now I have to wait until I can come up with some money to pay Derek...

I unfortunately seem to have reached the stage where I still have lots to do, just no money to do it with. And of course, I still have more stuff to plant, including bulbs, which I tend to forget about and soon it will be too late to plant the spring flowering ones.

fireplace area is finished

Last night I painted the fireplace surround the wall color in the living room and today I looked at it an decided that it does not need a second coat of paint. So, the blue tape is gone and I got the TV stand repositioned in front of the bricked in fireplace. Had a little snag trying to get the DVD player set up, but we now have a working DVD and TV.

I also got another poster I ordered off ebay in the mail today. I just need to have some extra money to buy some frames and then I will be able to get some more artwork on the walls. We do need to go through some of the framed prints and try to decide what we will put on what walls. One of the main problems we are haivng is that a lot of our artwork is small and with some decent sized expanses of blank wall, it will look better with slightly larger artwork. I do have several prints I want framed, but they are a non-standard size, so I will also have to have mats, which adds to the costs.

My original plan for this evening had been doing some touchup painting, so I stopped at Lowes on the way home to buy 2 more small paint trays. I also tried to find where they had closet orginization things so I could buy another clothes rod for my closet, but got tired before I could find what I was looking for. On the way to the checkout, I happened to go past all the heating register covers. Since I have baseboard registers, up to now all I've seen really is a few yucky looking white register covers and expensive oak covers that Home Depot only carries in 18" size. Lowes has some baseboard covers that were in a pattern they called wicker, which was very geometric. Not only did it come in white, but also in an antique bronze color, which was about $20 for a 15" size. I think I will have to buy one of these for the dining room when I have some extra money, as that vent is very visable and the bronze will look a lot better than the slightly bent white cover that is there now.

My goal for tomorrow night now is to do the rest of the touchup painting in my rooms (except for the crown moulding, maybe I'll do that this weekend).

In the garden again

I was out of town for part of the weekend, but got home early enough to try to finish up some of the planting. With the weather getting colder and more frosts, I'm really getting to the do or die point with getting things in the ground.

Stopped at Home Depot on my way home to buy a pair of loppers to take care of some of the catalpa saplings I want GONE from my yard. Of course, had to look at what else they had and ended up buying a 1 gallon Pink Ruffles azalea for $1.97 and a little pot of vinca minor for $1.75.

When I got home I got the tea olive planted in the shrub border then worked on getting the three hostas in the ground. The stilletto hosta is over near the fence line nandina, one that starts with a C in by the AC and the other one (??- lost it's tag) is by the water heater.

I did get a bit of a surprise when I was working with the loppers trying to make a place for the azalea and get rid of some of the saplings. I did a little trimming on my back neighbor's tree that is hanging into my yard and discovered what sure looks like a camellia along the back fenceline. It doesn't have any buds yet, so I'm not totally sure what it is. Also found several other suspected camellias over by the shack. Nice to see that possibly not everything in the yard is junk. I also decided that I would not try to do too much work behind the shack until it is torn down. The area is pretty overgrown, but there are some vines and a few other things back there that might be worth saving. Also there has been poison ivy in the area, so I really want to be careful. And, having found some vines that might be worth saving, as well as several shrubs that might be good, I will need to watch that area and see what does what over the spring and summer so I can decide what stays and what goes.

All the catalpa saplings I can lop DO GO though! I want that crap out of my yard! And will some of them gone, you can see that good stuff in my yard much better. I may try a little more "tree work" on my back neighbor's tree later this year... it is getting in my hair when I try to work with the 3 Tom camellias.

While I was gone this weekend, mom did some more rearranging in the kitchen and also hung some artwork in both her room and the dining room. She also got started on the long delayed project of painting the bathroom. Some day we will finish...

I ended up putting what will at least be the first coat of Torchlight paint on the fireplace surround. It now really blends into the wall and once the TV is back in place, you will hardly be able to see the bricked in part of the fireplace.

Still more planting

I seem to be having trouble keeping this consistantly updated, but on days when little happens and I'm home late, I don't think to write.

Today I am working nights so this AM I went out and decided to try to do some more work in the yard, as we had had a lot of rain yesterday.

I still had leftover unammended dirt from planting the Rose of Sharon, so I used that to fill in the two ankle breaker holes in the back yard. Then I decided to put in the big 5 gallon Mountain Fire Pieris that I had bought at Home Depot. Again it was a lot of digging and I ran out of bins to put dirt in, but at least the digging was fairly easy going as the ground was pretty soft from all the rain yesterday. Did have a bit of trouble getting the Pieris out of its pot and of course again had the whole the hole is too deep, now its too shallow problem that seems to plague me whenever I try to plant anything.




















The Mountain Fire Pieris before and after planting.

I also planted 15 puschkinia bulbs. I have no idea what they are, but they seem to be some sort of white flower with blue stripes. Who knows if they will bloom but they were only $2.99 at Big Lots. After all that, it was time to get ready for work.

This weekned I will either go to Greensboro for a dog show, or stay home and plant more of the plants. Still have a 1 hellabore, 1 hydrangea, 1 abelia, 1 forsythia, 1 tea olive and 3 hostas left to plant. YIKES!!!!!!!!!

So far I have planted 6 camellias, 2 beautyberries, 2 Pierises and 1 Rose of Sharon

Back to the Garden

I had the day off today so the plan was to run a few errands in the morning, then spend the afternoon painting. I also wanted to get some more topsoil to add a moat back to the small beautyberry.

Well, plans got a tad derailed when I was at Home Depot getting the topsoil. I ended up walking down one of the shurb aisles, even though I had already decided I couldn't get any more plants until I plant the ones already at my house. What did I see but a Tom Knudsen camellia. Tom Knudsen is my great-grandfather, and I knew that there had been a camellia named after him and his wife Valley, but figured that they probably didn't exist anymore. So, it was quite a surprise to find Tom at my local Home Depot. They had 3 Toms and I couldn't decide which one I liked the best so I figured at $6 each it was best to buy them all.

The Three Toms

Once I had the 3 Toms, the plan for the rest of the day pretty much fell into place. Obviously I wanted to plant the Toms and I have been REALLY needing to get to Underwoods and get my plants there, one of which was a camellia. And that made 4 camellias, which really meant I was going to be having a camellia garden. So, home to drop of the Toms and soil, then off to Underwoods to pick up my plants and get a few more camellias and maybe something to add a little color to the yard, as it is getting kind of bleak now that the leaves are all falling and the birds have eaten almost all the berries off the beautyberrys. I was SO worried as I had left my plants there for so long, but felt better when they said they didn't mind, especially since I had already paid for them!

Debutante in the center, flanked by two Miss Biloxis.

I ended up selecting 2 more camellias, another Miss Biloxi (a pretty double white, which was one of the plants waiting for me) and a Debutante, which is light pink. We decided it would be best to do 2 groups of 3 camellias each, the 3 Toms, then the Miss Biloxis and Debutante in another group. I also selected a Lenten Rose, which will be purple and bloom in the winter and is evergreen, for some winter interest. And, finally a plant I don't think I've ever even heard of before a Valley Rose Pieris, to plant across from the side door where I had originally planned to plant the small beautyberry, but given up due to all the rocks. I said I was looking for something to brighten up my yard, but that due to the rocks being hard to dig in it had to be in a 1 gallon pot! So, Pieris it is.

Got home with the plants and of course the "sunny" spot I had all picked up for the Pieris was in dappled sunlight, which turned to shade as the afternoon wore on, hopefully it will get enough sun. It was slow going digging through the rocks, but once I got under them, the ground was pure red clay and pretty compacted. I ammended it with lots of mushroom compost and some Miracle Grow garden soil, planted the Pieris and am hoping for the best.

After that it was off to work on adding more soil to the small beautyberry and rebuilding its moat. Did that and then watered both of the beautyberries. I figure all I can do with the big one is wait until spring and see what happens.

Next step was to start planting the camellias and I decided to plant the Toms first. I set them out along by the back fence and starting diggging. What a GREAT surprise, the soil back along the fence seems to be a nice loam, not at all sandy and definately not clay either. I almost hated to ammend it, but added Miracle Grow garden soil as that is what it said to do on the tags. I did get all three planted, but it was after 5:30 PM by the time the final one went in the ground. Mom came home and I sent her off to Home Depot for more mulch (to mulch around the camellias), a longer hose because mine wouldn't reach and a sprayer for my hose. Finally got the Toms mulched and watered by about 7:20 PM after getting a bunch more leaves raked while waiting for mom to come home from Home Depot.

Tomorrow I have to work all day, so maybe we can work on hanging some pictures in the evening when I get home.

The plan for Sunday is going to be to try to get all the plants at my house in the ground. The 3 hostas, Rose of Sharon, 3 remaining camellias, the hydrangea and the Lenten Rose. Then I am done planing for a little bit, except that I want to plant something along the fenceline on the air conditioner side to keep the dogs back from the fence...

We'll see how far I get the rest of this weekend.

Moved in

Mari in the dining room with boxes.

We finally moved in last Thursday when 2 Men and a Truck delivered our big furniture. In the final rush to finish all the painting, there just hasn't been time to update the blog, and I have been living in the house with only dial-up for a week now.

We only got mom's room painted the day before the furniture arrived and the trim wasn't painted until after the furniture was delivered. I painted the crown moulding over the bed by standing on the bed!

The dogs are enjoying their backyard, but I do want to get it fenced all the way as soon as possible.

We are finding the house a tad cold and I'm worried about the gas bill so I've been trying to keep the furnace turned on for the shortest amount of time possible. We also worked at weatherstripping around the windows. I have a quote to insulate the attic and hopefully that can get done after my next payday.

The house was looking REALLY good until we got the rest of the stuff from the apartment in here, now it is a real mess with bags everywhere. Hopefully tomorrow we will get the kitchen cabinets lined and get things put away in them and it will start to look better.

I was supposed to be off all day tomorrow, but due to a death in a co-workers' family, I have to go in and work in the evening. Also, the maid service we hired to clean the apartment did not do as good a job as we had hoped, so I'm going to have to go back over to the apartment tomorrow and clean around the stove some more, which is what I had hoped to avoid by hiring the maid service. Then, we turn in our keys and are done with the apartment.

Tomorrow is Halloween and many of the houses in the neighborhood are decorated, but we never got around to buying anything in the way of decorations. Also, talking to George across the street, he said that we will get a lot of trick or treaters, so I don't think our 3 little bags of candy will be enough. We have to buy more candy tomorrow, then mom will be left with the dogs to answer the door while I am at work.

The house looks great in the areas where we have things unpacked and don't have boxes stacked to the ceiling. We did run into some trouble when we tried to hang the blinds. The window casing is real HARD wood, and we could not get the screws in, even with an electric screwdriver. So, I am going to have the husband of a lady I know from work come out and hange the blinds for me (and probably help install some wire shelving, and install the kitchen and bathroom faucets). James never came back to finish the work on the outlets in the kitchen, so the money I had set aside for him will go to Derek to work on the blinds and maybe even do something about fixing the wall where the water heater had been.

I am very happy to have my DSL back as I feel reconnected to the world. I could use a break from the house though! We have the cosmetic paint job mostly finished (still need to do trim in the laundry room and paint the bathroom and kitchen walls) and then it will be on the the not so fun stuff. Still do want to replace some doorknobs though...

Still painting

Have not updated the blog in several days. We have been busy still painting at the house.

Thursday we planted the 2nd smaller beautyberry as it was starting to look somewhat wilty. I was not able to plant it opposite the side door as that area is nothing but rocks, so I moved it down closer to the first beautyberry and it was much easier to dig in that area, though I ran into some large roots. I did not manage to dig the hole quite deep enough for the whole plant, but at that point it was cut out of its tub (no easy feat) and set in the hole and I was exhausted, so I just piled up some additional soil around the root ball part of the plant and actually got a decent moat built around it.

Friday I spent all day at the house. I started by touching up the woodwork in the living room, then primed all the woodwork in the dining room.

Living room all painted except the crown moulding.

Saturday after work I started painting the dining room woodwork and got one window and one wall painted.

The dining room looking into the kitchen, with the woodwork partially painted.

Sunday, I spent 9 hours at the house and got all the woodwork in the dining room painted. I also sanded down the walls in my bedroom and caulked around both windows and a large crack between the closet door and the wall.

Today my goal was to sand down the last wall in my room and prime my entire room. I was able to get all that done and finish up the laundry that I had started on Sunday. Being so far away from the laundry room makes it easy to forget I've got laundry in there...

The house was not nearly as cold today as it has been other days. We had left the thermostat set at 65, which seems to help some. I DEFINATELY need to insulate the attic and try to stop as many drafts as possible. I am probably going to caulk under the living and dining room windows, even though that will require a little paint touch up, I think it will be worth it to remove more drafts.

I noticed on Sunday when I was painting the baseboards that there is a definate draft coming in under the baseboard, probably coming up from the crawlspace. I also really need to get the crawl space insulated, but I think that will have to wait for a while as the one quote I've gotten was $650, and I don't think I'm up to crawling around down there on my own with the pink fiberglass stuff. I am going to try to shove some weatherstripping under the edges of the baseboards where the carpet is loose and see if that helps.

I also need to weatherstrip my one closet door that leads to the attic entrance, as a lot of cold air is coming in through that closet. I am hoping once I actually have stuff in the closet that it will help cut down on some of the drafts.

Tomorrow's goal is to paint my bedroom. Mom is off the whole day and will try to work on painting the laundry room woodwork and priming the bathroom. If she can get the bathroom primed, I may be able to get it painted on Wednesday AM before work.

Hot Water- Finally!!

Yesterday I worked at the house in the PM after work and got some more woodwork in the living room painted. Working on the windows and the doors was slow going, but I think they are looking good.

This AM went over to the house before work and tried to plant the 2nd beautyberry, which had started looking not so great the yesterday. Originally I was going to plant it just opposite the side door, but when I got digging, the area seemed to be all rocks. I ended up giving up on that spot and moved down quite a ways and found the soil MUCH better and not too hard to dig in. Unfortunately, there were some large roots running through my hole, but I was able to break them up and get them out of the hole. But, at this point, mom had to leave for work and I couldn't plant it myself so it will have to wait until tomorrow. Some branches have leaves that are looking pretty dead, but there are other branches that still look decent, so I'm definately hoping this one makes it for sure. Still have no idea about the other one, but we are soaking it daily.

I went inside to strip wallpaper until it was time to leave for work and just a short time before I would have left, James called to say he was coming over. So, I called in to work and told them I'd be in late. Amazingly, James DID show up and got to work on my power box. I was stripping wallpaper in my room and he was working right outside. He probably had no idea that I could hear a decent amount of his conversation with Norman, including that he needed money which is why he was working at my house.

I ended up calling mom at work to tell her to come to the house and keep supervising when it was getting closer to 4 and they still weren't ready to start on the indoor work (what I was going to pay James for). Finally got power to the AC and heater, the heater came right on, but the AC didn't want to start up right away which freaked me out for a minute, but James said it would reset and it did come on, which was a major relief. A short time later he came back to say that I should have hot water, when I first turned it on, there wasn't any, but then a minute later I had HOT water!

Then all that was left was the original additional work, repairing the non-working outlet in the kitchen and running the water line for the icemaker in my fridge. We also agreed that for additional money, James would add 2 outlets to my bedroom (which currently has only 1). They are also supposed to cut the plywood to fit in the hole where the water heater used to be and said they would attach my dryer cord.

I went to work and mom said. James ran the water line for the ice maker, but somehow the line got kinked and started to leak, so he said he would buy a new line and install it tomorrow. They did get my dryer cord hooked in and tested that the dryer does work. James asked for part of the remaining money, which my mom gave him. At this point, I hope he does come back as I WOULD like the 3 outlets and the water line to the ice maker, but if he is a no show again at least the MAJOR work is done and the rest I can live with until I can hire someone else, and basically I have gotten all the work I paid for now. But, I know he needs money so hopefully this will work in my favor and I will be able to get all the work he promised done.

Still in all, the house is now in livable condition and we can finally do laundry.

On tap for tomorrow after work will be planting the 2nd beautyberry and more woodwork painting. Friday, still more painting and some more laundry. Pretty soon we are going to need to break from working on the house and start working on packing up the apartment.

Painting woodwork

This AM Dipple Plumbing came out to replace the water pipes for the washer and also hooked up our washing machine, so we now have a functional washer! James *SAID* he would be over this AM to work on the house when I talked to him on the phone, but he never showed up, so it has now been a week without any further work on the power box.

I stopped and talked to George for a few minutes when I stopped by the house after work, then Bobbie came over to help out, so I didn't get a chance to check on the plants, but mom had watered them this AM.

Bobbie lent me her sander and it really helped with one window sill that had TONS of splotchy paint on it.

After she left, I went to work on painting the woodwork in the living room. Made decent progress, about 1 1/2 walls done with two doors done and all the baseboards done on those walls. The part that had dried looked great from across the room, IMO. I also developed my own technique for painting down by the carpet and hopefully didn't get too much paint on the carpet. Of course, forgot my camera again, so still no photos of the work I have done.

Lazy Sunday

Decided to sleep in today after mom basically came home and collapsed last night. We ended up not getting over to the house until around noon and mom was too tired to work today.

Started off by trying to spot paint over the patches we missed in the dining room and finish up a few places that didn't get painted yesterday. That took a while, but the dining room looks good. Then it was back into the living room to keep at it with the grey primer. Got the tops of the doors I missed yesterday and all the windows, plus got done prming everything except the crown moulding (which oddly enough, is actually a plate or chair rail instead of true crown moulding).

Checked on the beautyberry I planted yesterday, which had moist soil around it but is not looking good. Some of its leaves are starting to turn brown and all of them are shriveled up and dry feeling. I will call the nursery tomorrow. The other beautyberry still in a pot and the Rose of Sharon both look good. Added some soil to several of the pots of mums and decided that one pot that kept blowing over was a total goner (plus it is full of earwigs- YUCK).

We left around 3:30 so we could go to the mall, so we didn't get a lot of work done today, AND I managed to forget my camera again.

Planting, painting

Have not posted in a few days. Some painting took place during the week, including the dining room and living room ceilings and the living room walls, all done by mom.

Today I started off by talking to James, who again said he would come over and finish the work at the house. I heard him sawing over a George's house for a number of hours, then when I looked out the window one time, his car was gone. And, the work is still not finished at my house. Currently I have no hot water and no climate control.

Did get a call on my cell phone yesterday from Dipple Plumbing. I am not sure what it is about, but it was from the manager. I'm guessing that they are the ones who did the pipe replacing under the house, so I am HOPING that maybe they will come out and replace the washer pipes next week so I can finally use my new washing machine.

I am totally overwhelmed on the plant front and really think we overbought. I definately still need to get the plants from Underwoods. Yesterday I called JFS to have them deliver my two beautyberries, rose of Sharon and 3 hostas. The BIG beautyberry that I tried to talk my mom out of arrived with a HUGE root growing out the side of the pot that had been cut. By this AM, it was looking pretty wilty and dying. So, even though they haven't been out to mark the water and gas lines, I decided that we had to plant it or it would not survive. Spent most of the morning trying to dig a hole deep enough to plant in. Then, I ended up throwing dirt all over the place so I didn't have quite enough dirt left to fill in the hole, even though I was ammending what I had with mushroom compost and Miracle Grow potting soil, so sent my mom out for some garden soil to cover the top (not quite how the books tell you to do it). Also ran out of mulch, so it is not mulched quite all the way around. Did try to give it a soaking water part way through planting, then soaked it again once we had all the dirt in. And, this evening it is raining, so I'm REALLY hoping that it will perk back up and live, as my mom loves it.

The large beautyberry in its new home toward the back of my yard.

The smaller beautyberry, Rose of Sharon and the hostas are all still in their pots and all seem to be doing well. I'll wait until after the lines are marked before planting any of them as none of them seem critical. I seem to have horrible red clay everywhere except right by the side door. That obviously is an area that has been cultivated in the past, but due to the irises coming up, I can't dig there right now.

I can't decide where to put the hostas, so they stay in pots for the time being. Did find some cheap pansys and dusty miller at Home Depot, just should go ahead and buy a fiberglass pot and try to make a container. And, with everything else, I still didn't get around to adding soil to the mums that aren't looking so hot. Plus, as we were leaving today, I realized that I had left my rake and shovel outside, now out in the rain, and had to stop and rush them indoors.

On the inside today, I continued to strip wallpaper in my bedroom and finished off taping off all the walls to prepare to paint the woodwork in the living room. I had started taping last night and got it finished up this AM. My original plan had been to try to get all the woodwork in there primed today, but with the beautyberry taking up most of the morning, that didn't happen. Did most all 3 door frames and baseboards on 1 1/2 walls primed up.

Finished up today by helping mom finish painting the dining room, which is looking good too I think. Bobbie came by briefly, and was more positive than she has been in the past, though she hates the living and dining room color and doesn't get the dark brown woodwork. She did like the laundry room color.

Not too much progress

On Monday it was back to work for me, except I went back to work at the wrong time, so had a little time to go back to the house. Started out the day at Home Depot buying a new outside power box and breakers.

The morning was mainly spent trying to track down an 8 or 10 foot dryer cord. The store I went to originally said they didn't have any 8 foot cords and that the 10 foot cords weren't made anymore as they were not code. I went back to Jeff Lynch, they called two stores (including the one I had been to earlier) and both had the 10 foot cords in stock. Got my cord at the store that DID NOT claim they weren't made anymore.

After locating the cord, it was back to Home Depot, as the breakers didn't fit the box, and we needed more pipe and conduit.

Finally went in to work after taking a break to go to the Dr about my completely shot nerves. The Dr said I am suffering from anxiety. Really... I'd have never guessed...

Today (Tuesday) it was off to work at the normal time. Didn't hear from mom at all today at work. Found out after work that James had not been by all day. James called in the evening and he had been at the Dr all day with his wife. So, outside box wiring is still not done, as it needs to be grounded and the AC still needs to be wired in. Also think the water heater may need to be wired in as well. The dryer connection is supposed to work and the range does currently work.

Mom got her room primed, but the primer made the wallpaper glue that would not come off come up in some places, so we may now finally be able to get off all that paste, but it will be a massive undertaking. Either that or we will just strip the bubbling up parts.

We also did some more wallpaper stripping in my room. It is slowly coming along.

I Attempt Gardening

Today we had a bunch on errands that we needed to run and not much to do at the house as we are waiting on the whole water/electricity thing to be fixed, so it was off to the mall first.

On the way over to the house, we decided to stop at the Farmer's Market to see their fall festival, which turned out to be a LOT Of plants.

We looked at several of the set-ups and found one that was Carolina Wild, who I had found online and had wanted to visit their store. So, I ended up buying three little pots of creeping phlox, which can live in all my shade and are a native plant.

Went to another stand and that had chocolate chip ajuga for only $2 each, so we ended up buying 5 of them. Then it was off to Home Depot (where else) to buy mushroom compost to ammend my soil with, some mulch, kneeling pads and a hose. I wasn't feeling great and hauling the mushroom compost into the cart was not easy.

Got home and decided to start with the ajuga, which I planned to plant around the tree right in front of the porch. I started by raking away all the leaves and grass clippings in the area. It looks like there is some clover (maybe??) already growing there as well as something with very fine almost little grass like shoots, so I left those two plants wherever I found them and concentrated on getting up the weeds. I found MANY MANY weed roots. I did not even BEGIN to get rid of all the weed roots. In fact, I'm afraid there were cut ends of weed roots in the sides of some of the holes I planted the ajuga in. Hope the ajuga does okay.

It took me quite a while to try to pull up weed roots and then try to dig little holes, clear MORE weed roots and then finally plant the ajuga. The final ajuga I planted is not in quite as deep a hole as the others as I encountered a HUGE root down there that I wonder if it might be one of the tree roots, so I just sort of shifted the hole a tad and planted the plant.

I also tried to clear all the surface debris off the dirt right in front of the porch in case I want to do a foundation planting. When I was done planting the ajuga, I watered each plant a little bit and then spred mulch over the whole area. I really have no clue what I am doing or how to mulch, just tried to copy what I've seen on the ground elsewhere. The front of my house does have the red clay, it was quite hardpacked some places, so I tried to loosen it up some. I did mix in a little bit of mushroom compost with the soil when I was refilling the holes. I am wondering now if I should have added more of the mushroom stuff, or just tried to work it into the whole area. But, I'm only planting ajuga and there were A LOT of weeds.

Ajuga (it is the little dark green clumps) under the tree, with mulch.

Then it was on to the creeping phlox, which I was going to plant over by the gas meter, in a shady area along the side of the house. I was pretty tired at this point and the soil over there seems better, so I spent less time digging up weeds (did find some sort of vine growing along the ground, but it seems dormant right now) and ammending the soil for these three little plants. Did get all three in the ground, hopefully they will thrive and aren't too close to where there is water runoff from the roof and that whatever that vine is won't get them.

Creeping Phlox- pre-mulch. This is a native plant. Hopefully it will survive.

My next project is going to be finding someone with a pickup truck to help me get my big shrubs, especially the ones at Underwoods as they have been there quite a while now. Almost went and got the hydranga and camellia today but I was too tired to try to dig a hole big enough for a shurb. I'll need to be REALLY energetic to plant the beautyberries, they are HUGE!.

While I was gardening, mom got the laundry room painted with a second coat of paint and then used the same paint on the ceiling, which looks REALLY good. She will finish that up with another coat on the ceiling tomorrow, then I just have to paint the trim and we have one room done, 5 to go.

The appliances arrive

Today was the day that James was supposed to come back and install the new outside box, which should give me both hot water and AC. James was working over at George's house all day and came over after 7 to tell us he would finish the job on Monday. As we are not currently living in the house, this works. James will also now run a water line for the ice maker in the fridge and run hot and cold water lines for my washer (more on this below...).

Today began with only one goal: paint the laundry room BEFORE Jeff Lynch arrived with the appliances. We didn't really get started painting until about noon, taping off took longer and actually used more tape that I had expected. Oops. When we got ready to paint, we discovered that somehow the paint roller we had bought at Home Depot the other day had not ended up at our house, so it was off to Lowes quick to buy a new roller.

We did the one coat of paint on and realized that it would have been best if we had primed the walls first, as the strange wallboard in there did not paint super smoothly. We will try to fill in with a second coat in some areas tomorrow.

My appliances did finally arrive, along with two really nice delivery guys. Of course, there were problems... One of the bins fell out of the fridge while it was being rolled in to the house and cracked (we will pick a new one up on Monday at the store) and that wasn't a big deal. But, no washer hookup yet, as the drain is there but the hot and cold water pipes must have been stolen, and guess what... the sellers' work crew didn't replace them. So, those would need to be replaced. The dryer woudn't have been a problem, except to stretch to the outlet, we need an 8 foot cord and Jeff Lynch, Home Depot and Lowes only carry 4 & 6 foot cords. There is a place that carries 8 foot cords, but they aren't open on Saturday. So, currently I'm 0-2 on appliances. I had prepaid to have Jeff Lynch tap my water line to run a line in for the icemaker in my fridge. But, they can only tap copper and all the pipe under my house is now CPVC. Need to get a plumber to do that (James can fix both that and the hot and cold water to the washer and add it to my ever growing bill...). So, the fridge DOES work, just not the icemaker and water dispenser. It does have a filter on the water part, which I hadn't even noticed before, but that is nice.

Freshly painted laundry room with washer & dryer awaiting help to work.

I had been so depressed earlier in the day that we called our friend Audrie to come over, just to get someone else to look at the house. She and her sister Terri arrived and both liked the house and really liked our big kitchen and bedrooms. They both said they were surprised at how nice it was for what we paid for it and that all we really had was cosmetic changes (well and our major plumbing and electrical issues...). Terri also helped me identify some plants in the yard. I have poison ivy on one tree and also behind the shack in the back. Need to get Roundup to take care of it. I also have honeysuckle choking my nandina by the front porch. Terri showed me how to remove it and said to try to trace the honeysuckle back to its source. Also, most of the trees on the left side of the house are some sort of junk tree so I can whack on them freely and should pull out some of the smaller ones, but leave others to provide a privacy screen.

Then, I made the mistake of trying to get the front door deadbolt and lock on. What a disaster. Luckily Terri saved the day and we know have new locks on front and side door. Don't know why the front door has been such a production when the side door was so easy...

After getting so upset trying to deal with the locks, I went outside to take out my aggression on the honeysuckle choking the nandina. After a while of work, the nandina looks much better and most of the honeysuckle is cut back to a few inches above the ground. I will go look at it again in a few weeks. I also took most of the branches off the little junk tree next to the nandina and will remove that tree when I have some help.
This nandina is much happier now.

I then went back into what I think of as "the tunnel" and cut down a few of the lowest hanging limbs in there to open it up just a little bit. Also cut back some limbs on a few of the junk trees by the AC unit and water heater. Finally removed all the branches from another little tree volunteer that I want to remove completely. I plan to plant the flying dragon in its place. Found gardening to be theraputic. Terri did say not to do any digging as I don't know what I might disturb. Looks like I have flag irises coming up by the side door. I do know along one fence it looks like it might have been a bed at one point so I won't dig there, but I want to plant the beautyberries at either end along that fenceline. Hopefully I won't get into anything good doing that. Still can't figure out where to put the rose of Sharon, the camellia and the hydranga. Yes, I am thinking I overbought right now. Oops. And, no pickup truck so I still can't go get the stuff. Hum... problems problems.

The tunnel... you can see the new AC on the left and some of the construction debris from the AC and water heater installations.

We were packing up to leave for the day when James came over to tell us he would come and finish the work on Monday.

Tomorrow we will go back and prime mom's room. She got the rest of the wallpaper off and spackled it all today. Also might try giving the laundry room a second coat of paint. I am also thinking of trying to add two little pieces of the bead board, some baseboard and chair rail to make the area where the water heater used to be look like the rest of the kitchen. That would involve buying a handsaw and a miter box and trying to make miter cuts. I may want to buy a piece of scrap trim too to practice on... We'll see how brave I feel tomorrow.

Can I fix this corner up with baseboard and wainscotting, or will I just paint it?????