A new back yard, well sort of.......

Boy, this month, especially the last two weeks, have been crazy.  We are trying to get all the outdoor work done before the weather turns and we seem to be doing okay, but we hit the wall this morning.  I worked a little on cleaning the garage and Bill "rough" sanded the new vanity for the powder room, but other than that today was  a day to crash.

So, you ask, what have we been up to. Bill built the window for over the garage walk-in door, we worked with the "landshaper" to get the back/side yard in shape before the rainy season (boy, were our neighbors happy to see those blue tarps and pile of river rock disappear), we built a new entry landing between the garage and the house, the window company completed the 'lock & slide' service on the windows, and I even, get this, baked cookies.  (For those of you who know us well, you know what a odd thing that is.)

The walk-in door to the garage is in and now the window above
it is, too! It's great to have a little daylight in the garage.

That's Charles on the ladder finishing up the 'lock and slide' service on
the windows.  The windows all lock so easily and the sliding doors
glide so smoothly now - it great!  We have to say that Sierra Pacific
Windows has been great to work with and Charles is so helpful.

The beginning of the reshaping of the back/side yard.  The yard had been
destroyed by the construction of the addition and had been under tarps and
straw for erosion control since January.  We finally found someone to come do
the big work of reshaping the yard to keep water away from the foundation.

Things were moving along, then we had to find a home for all the extra soil
(fill) that the leveling close to the house created.

One of our friendly neighborhood deer checking out the work.  Evidenced by
several sets of foot prints, they have been doing a lot of inspecting!

It just happened to be one of the hottest two days of the year (okay, so 80°
isn't that hot, but for this part of the the country...) when we were
doing this.  It involved a lot of raking and moving of soil, bark, rocks, etc.
on our part as a followup to the BobCat work. We were more than a little warm.  

Bill with his hippie-dippie bandana to keep all the sweat out of his eyes!
Don't' worry, Maria, he won't wear it out in public......  Bwahahahah!

The entry to the back/side yard by the garage before it was rolled and planted with 

grass seed.  The area's covered in bark (red brown) will be planted with shrubs, etc.

The brown are will be grass, at least for the time being.

The new yard as seen from the porch off our bedroom.  I am hoping the upper
area (back of the picture) will be a great spot for a hammock!  We'll be planting
the berms with smaller trees and perennials - probably next year.

The Doug Fir vanity for the powder room sans top.  Bill's worked on it this past
week and I'll be finishing it this coming week, so before you know it we'll have
a working powder room!  Time for a party!

The new landing at the door between the garage and the house.  Soooo
much better than the two steps (still in use to the right) that were there
before.  We'll replace the old steps with new ones with longer treads shortly.
Along with the new walk in door provides us with a great doggie and shoe
clean off station before going into the house.  Just in time for the rainy season!!
It still needs some paint, but.......

Oh my!!! It's a bit bright!

Well, the painters left us today!  They were a great crew and so patient with our dogs who couldn't decide if they were friend or foe.  They did a great job - it was pretty amazing to watch them work.  They were precise and could paint with either hand when it came to trim.

Now the colors, well the red has toned down a bit since it was first applied.  It actually comes out of the can magenta!  Then it gradually darkens to a deep red.  Not as deep as I would like perhaps, but.......

And it's starting to get dark earlier!  Argh.  We're going to have to start using those lights more!!!!!  So much for the incredibly low power bills..........

This picture doesn't do it justice, but the paint comes out of the can pink!
Well, dark magenta!  Kind of a shock until it dries and darkens more with age!

All the green is on - now for the trim.  I almost changed my mind at this point
and went for black or brown/purple.  Bill said, "Nah!"

And so the red trim begins..........  Looked a bit like bright red lipstick
at this stage. (The photos dulls the colors some.)

And there you have it!  The front door needs work, but we are planning on
replacing it when we build a roof over the entry next spring, so for now I
think we'll just paint it red.  

Our dinner table looks like a library table with our library light and books
on it!  Why not, we always read when it is just the two of us eating!

And the painting begins!

The painters have been with us since Wednesday and all I can say is I am sure glad we decided to hire them to do the job.  We are using the same painter, Greggerson Painting, who painted our previous home on Springland Lane because we noticed that after 8 years our home still looked new, while many of the others showed need (in some cases desperate) of repainting.  They have been great and are a really nice crew.  They washed the place last week and let it dry thoroughly before starting sanding, caulking and priming this Wednesday.  After two days of that they starting painting today.  Two layers and back brushing (with the coolest brush extender) and it's looking great.  Can't wait to add the trim color (dark red) next week!

Yahoo!  The painting has started.  You can get a glimpse of the main color
at the right of the photo and on the deck where Jason is working.  After
seeing the primer and tape last night we were glad we hadn't chosen
blue and white for our colors! :-)  They wrapped or cover everything that isn't to be painted!

A view from the inside - kind of creepy.  

Another view from the inside.  I much prefer the neighbors' garden!

The south end done and ready for trim work.  They were so nice not
to close us in (with all the plastic over the windows) all weekend.

And a last picture of the front of the house before the new paint.  Our
poor neighbors, they were probably wondering if we were ever going to
get this place painted!  

First party and a new door!

We cleaned the back porch just in time to have a party for our dear "old neighborhood" friends who have been kind enough to feed us and host 4 O'clockers since we moved, all knowing it was going to be a long time before we hosted one again. It was a beautiful day and the covered patio proved to be a great gathering place.  (Now we need to have a "Thanks for your patience" party for our new neighbors!  We'll wait until the painting is done!)

Monday found us back at work - Bill having the time of his life (NOT) installing a "walk-in" door to the garage.  I wouldn't put this project up there on the list of favorites........  It sure is going to be nice to have that entry during the wet (and sometimes muddy) months.

The crew on the patio.  We still need to pressure wash the concrete, but it was at least usable.  It was fun being able to have everyone outside.  Becky and Paul had deserted us by then :-(

Pete and Bill found the comfy chairs (a gift from my sister Ann years ago) and
rarely left them!  Minnie agreed.  Pete loved them so much that he and
Mary Jo went to REI the next day and got themselves a pair.

A picture of the island a little late in the game!  It had been full of
food and drink....  It's a great design for a party.

The Bobs!  There sure are a lot of them in that generation!

Sam and Minnie's favorite new hangout.  They get a great view of the
world from up there.

I even got the loft/studio picked up before the guests arrived.  It's getting
there.  I try to stay a head of the dog toys, but it is pretty worthless.

Monday found Bill ripping out the old windows and prepping for the
addition of a walk-in door on the side of the garage.

Sam and Minnie watching Bill work.......

Voila (and a lot of other not so choice words later) a new walk-in
door to the garage.  Lots of lessons learned and a lot of happiness
this evening.  Biggest lesson - check those lock and hardware packages
before you leave the parking lot of the hardware store! The faceplate and
screws were missing from the handle package.  Bellingham sure is quiet at
7:30 at night - parking lots almost empty!

From the inside!  Don't even ask what is all the junk in the foreground of the
photo!  Onto a new platform entry from the garage to the house and a  vanity
for the powder room.......

We actually have a usable back patio!!!

This has been an odd couple of weeks.  We were really able to focus when we were working on the windows - we knew each day that we had to get up early, pull out the windows, prep, sand, coat, let dry two or three times depending on the window and then finish up by reinstalling them before we called it a night!  Since then we've been working on all kinds of little stuff, but nothing that was so rewarding.  All in all that makes it harder to focus for me.

The painters came and cleaned the outside - the place looks so good, maybe we don't have to paint!  NOT! But it does look much better and now that it turned sunny again they are coming back to do the prep work and paint.  Medium dark green/grey with dark red trim. Finding that perfect red was a royal pain.  I just want it to be done.  (I am thinking our neighbors probably want that even more!)

We are ooking for a excavator who can do some grading for us now that the construction is done.  Not having a lot of luck - they are all busy! Any grading work in the watershed (where we used to live) has to be done by Oct 1, so we may be out of luck for a while.

We did get the back patio cleaned off yesterday and that, despite being a full afternoon's project, was very rewarding.  We haven't seen it clean since we started removing the cedar paneling and kitchen cupboards back in November/December.  Well, the cedar paneling is still there, but at least the porch is usable!  And the patio off the bedroom doesn't have tiling buckets on it anymore!   Yahoo!

And last, but not least, we found a extra long and wide shower curtain for the master shower!  Yahoo - no more dark green and creme two-level combo.  It's so much brighter and easier to use!  And it looks better, too!

Tomorrow, in our typical Labor Day tradition of working (Bill's argument is he doesn't like crowds), we are going to install, well at least start to, the"man" door in the garage for easier access.  Having a true "mud" entrance when we walk the dogs twice a day is a great plus.  We had one in our old house and it made a huge difference, so......  Also hate opening and closing the garage door each time we just want to walk in and out.

That's all for now - hope you are having a great holiday!

The new, improved extra wide, extra long shower curtain!  Much better, but
it needs some weights in the bottom!  'Nother project! :-(
That's Bill inside!

A view of the cleaned deck from the kitchen.  Thinking of replacing the "steps
to nowhere" with a water feature.  Have had mixed reviews on that - everyone likes
the idea, but some warn us that it is a LOT of work....  Mmmmm, might have
to think about that some more.

The patio cleaned off with some chairs for today's 4 O'clocker.  (A 4 O'clocker
is a tradition started by a friend who wasn't up for fixing "all out"  dinners anymore
and wanted to go more informal.  It started with cheese and wine, but as you can
guess, we're back to full meals - just informal ones.  We haven't hosted one since
before our move in October, so it's about time!) Notice the old cedar paneling from
the living room in the upper right - oh well - still one thing to deal with!

The patio off the bedroom.  It used to be part of the bedroom with the
carpet glued directly to the concrete and a thin plastic (Lexan) roof.
We'll fix it up next year!

The Windows are Done!!!!!!

Time to celebrate!  We finished finishing the windows!  Yahoo!  It has been two weeks this past Friday since we started this part of the project and we are sooo happy to be done!  We even broke out some champagne and brie! (Some of you know what a big deal that is!)  We even used our wedding champagne flutes! It was two weeks of nonstop 10 - 12 hour days (oh, we did take two days last weekend to do other project related things - apart from each other - it was a very necessary break). We are ready to take a day tomorrow to just clean up and catchup!  The back porch will finally be a back porch again as we return the tile saw to Bob (THANK YOU, BOB ) and stack the extra wood elsewhere!  Yahoo!!!!  Now to find some furniture for out there!  (And lights, I want some of those string lights!!!)   We also washed some windows (Annie, the inside of the windows will be ready for you in two weeks!) and the patio roof.  Maybe the best news it that the other morning we pared down our to-do list from 6 pages to 5!  We're getting closer!

The old "to-do" list with some of the tasks crossed off in red.....

has been replaced with a new 5 page list!  Yahoo!  I think the font is even bigger!!!!! 

One of the doors to the upstairs deck before we finished them!  Nice
insect control with the Puffs Plus,  don't you think!  Now they
actually have door hardware that works!

And what it looks like now!  (Sorry for the night shot!) No more insects coming
in through the holes! 

We used the upstairs deck as the workspace to finish one of the
guest room doors!  Nice place to have to work!  Hope our guests
enjoy it as much.

Each window had several little nail holes that need to be
filled before the windows could be finished!  No wonder my back
hurts!  We got pretty good at it - well, we should have figuring there
were more than 1200 holes that needed to be filled! 

Man, those holes were tiny!  But thanks to a tool we found in
Alfred's tool box, it went fairly well!

This red ladder became a staple in the living room!  Lovely decor,
don't you  think!  It's gone as of this afternoon!  Yay!

We decided this benchmark deserved a celebration!  Bill went and got us
a bottle of champagne and some brie!  It tasted great!

We even used our wedding champagne flutes - I think for
maybe the third time!  Not a good record, huh?

So, tomorrow is cleanup day! This is what the living room has looked like for
the last few days.  We covered everything with plastic drop clothes to protect it
from all the sanding dust.  It will be great to get back to some sense of "normal."

LOOK!  Clean windows - well at least on the outside.  Being that we didn't
want to have to borrow "the plank" we used to climb up on the porch again,
I decided to wash the upper living room windows today while Bill finished
the last of the inside window finishes.  Well, once I got started it was hard to
 stop so....  Didn't get even half done, but Bill claims the brightness is blinding!
Our friend Andi turned us on to a product called "Squeegee Off," it works great!

Well, once I got started on the windows it seemed like a good time to clean
the patio "roof" (for lack of a better term) also.  It is plastic material that was
covered with needles and yuck before I started, now it lets all kind of light in!
Nice change!  That wood is all the cedar paneling we pulled off the interior
walls, just waiting for Bill to turn it into a kayak for 10!

And here is the contraption we set up to clean the upper windows and the patio roof.
Ladder, plank, ladder!  It actually worked pretty well.  I even got pretty good at going up
and down it without Bill's help!  He was kind enough to do all the inside work that needed
the 12' ladder . And there is so much more light under the roof now! Time to find some
outdoor furniture!  

Momma told me there would be days like this or....

It's been a while and we've had our ups and downs (hence the title), but all in all things are progressing nicely.  We've kept more than busy this month with finishing the insides of the windows (more info with the pictures below), tiling the entry way and the finishing touches in the bathrooms, installing the "closet system," trying to figure out exterior paint colors, etc, etc, etc.  After too long without a break we took yesterday "off" and limited our project work to picking up some paint samples and hanging mirrors.  It went so well we decided to approach today in much the same way.  Well, I did get to do some bill paying and bill built some steps for the dogs, but we didn't even try to do another window or door!  Yahoo!  It's hard to believe it is halfway through August!

A birds-eye view of me in the entry prepping the underlayment
for the slate tile.  It was the last major tile work to be done
and went fairly painlessly considering.  

The slate as it looked when we first put it in.  The white
hole in the back if the picture is for a floor mat that will sit
down in the tile.  That way it won't interfere with the door
opening and closing.  We'll find (or have made) a tray to fit
beneath it. 

Ta-da!  Done except for the final sealing (we have to wait
bit for that) and trim.  We still have the funky old front door,
but will probably wait to replace it until we build the porch roof
next spring.

The other tile work that needed to be completed.  Trim in the master bath.
Love all those spacers - they crack me up.  Still have to grout and caulk this .
Put mirrors up in here yesterday - what a difference.  It's a lot brighter and I can
actually see how bad my hair looks rather than just imagine it! The only
problem with the mirrors is that when we look in them we can see how bad the
side yard, which needs to be graded,  looks! 

Ah, the windows.  The thing with buying the windows the way we
did is that we have to finish the inside of each window ourselves.
Didn't seem like such a big thing when we ordered them, but!!!!!
It means taking each operable window completely apart - first you
take it out of the "frame" and then all the hardware has to be
removed - before you can start with the actual finishing.  That in
itself includes wetting it, filling holes, sanding, applying the finish
(we used ZAR water-based exterior polyurethane that was recommended
by our painter) and then repeating the sanding/finishing process one or
two more times.  We can do 4 windows a day max!  It's slow and tedious,
but they look great.  We would recommend Zar in minute.

All the hardware and weather stripping for 4 windows.  We had to develop
this layout system so we got everything back in the right place.  We didn't do
it for the first window and let's just say the project hit a low point as we
were trying to get it back in place.

So this is one of the operable windows with the "window" removed.  It is
actually pretty slick the way the window pops in and out.

This was the typical scene all week - we'd leave for a walk or a meal and lock
the front door only to look at the window to the left and see that it wasn't there!
The back of the house was wide open about 1/2 the time!  Daily habits are
hard to break.  It provided some well needed laughter!

The office windows done!  They look great!  

Can't say the same for the office!  We had to move all the desks, etc. in order
to get to the windows and it's still a mess!  Oh well!!

The master bedroom slider done!  Man that 3' door is heavy, but it looks great.
It had to be taken out and the hardware removed just like the windows, but
now I know how they work! Now to finish the 4' one in the living room - might
have to go to the gym fora few weeks first!

The left side of the master bedroom closet installed!  We bought our system
via Easycloset.com which is a handy online way get a system.  It's cheaper than
a lot of competitors, but you have to do the design and installation yourself, so....
I need more hanging space for long things, but we'll get it worked out.

Bill putting the finishing touches on the right side of the closet where all the
hanging clothes go.  We thought this was going to be the easy side to
install, but it ended up being a little longer that the space (watch those
crooked walls when you measure) and it was a painful end of a day.

Ta-da!  The closet.  Not organized yet, but at least we can
sleep on the bed (where we had piled all the clothes
during the installation!).  Nice to have a place for shoes
where they aren't buried under the hanging clothes.