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.