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On the market

by Stef on April 30, 2013

in Detroit, Home

I mentioned that my semi-recent blog silence was due to a St. Louis/Detroit trip home.  While we wanted to see family and needed a break from work, the real reason for going home was to get our house on the market.

While we’ve been back in the area since our move, we hadn’t been back to the house in almost a year and it hit me a little harder than I expected.  I know a house is just a house, but I grew up in that house. It’s the house I moved to by myself in September of 2005 with Baxter and Cooper and my little MINI Cooper as a very very single girl fresh out of college, trying to figure her shit out. I painted every wall and ripped up floors and worked in the backyard and brought Emma home to that house. By myself.  I hauled the furniture around by myself and assembled it myself and have you ever tried to move a queen mattress up a flight of stairs without help? I hosted birthday parties and BBQs and a pre-wedding party for a former best friend and in those younger years, when everyone my age was still living with their parents and I was the only one with a place of my own, my friends would stay there for weekends on end. I guess I haven’t really shared much dating history, but I honestly thought – expected – to be single my entire life. It’s not a sob story of failed relationships, I just always did things on my own and was comfortable with life that way. I never expected to have a man around so I did everything in that house with my own two hands without apology. Coming back after a fairly sudden departure, this time with a husband in tow… It was… whoa…  Knowing that it was probably the last time I’d see the place, I had a brief internal moment of nostalgia then we got to work.

before

A very daunting before.  Left side is the view that we walked into.  Clearly, we were rushed to leave the first time around. In fact, while chatting with a neighbor they told us that “everyone though you were running from the law, you left so quickly.”   On the right, a first coat of primer on the lower walls.  Finishing the dining room was our biggest priority.

When we left, the lower part of the dining room wall was covered in wallpaper.  Yes, we painted over the wallpaper.  Before you judge, let me explain – sometimes wallpaper is on a wall so long that it won’t come off without damaging the top layer of drywall.  I tried to remove the wallpaper multiple times over the seven years I lived here. It wasn’t happening, so I painted it white.  I knew it would look terrible with visible seams, so we decided to do a quick n’ dirty board and batten treatment.  Yes, the thing that is taking over Pinterest.

boardbatten

Thankfully, the existing chair rail and baseboards were deep enough that we could just keep them in place as our “boards” and just install the battens.  This same trim is throughout the entire house and I’m beyond thrilled that we didn’t have to think about ripping it out and finding a match.

Once we knew the first coat of paint wasn’t causing the wallpaper to bubble up, and was going to actually stick well, mister started installing the battens.  We bought lathe at Lowe’s and cut each piece to size in the dining room with a handsaw.  He sanded the board, the popped it up with a nail gun.  My parents are building a house right now so they have power tools everywhere.  We borrowed the finish nailer from them for the weekend – yet another lucky break.  The spacing was decided by the seams in the wallpaper and couldn’t have worked out better.  We decided that just covering every seam made the battens too far apart, so we added another equally spaced in between the seams.  It worked out better than I ever expected.  It was a lot of work, but not especially difficult. Mister installed the battens and sanded everything while I was working on the rest of the house.

Once everything was installed, we filled nail holes and caulked the gaps.  It dried, we sanded, then I got to work with two more coats of paint.  I couldn’t stop commenting on how great the room looked.  Looking at these pictures now, I’m sad we didn’t do this earlier.  I hated that wallpaper every day of the seven years I lived in the house.  It was very stupid of me to not just come up with a solution earlier so I could actually enjoy the result. Shoulda, coulda, woulda.

guest room progress

The guest room was originally that little sliver of green that you see in the left photo, from the owner’s nursery, I think.  I painted it a dark khaki color when I first moved in then… never finished? Like a fucking genius?  I couldn’t find the khaki paint and didn’t think it was a very good selling point AND so much was still left to be painted (behind me in the photo, there were lots of corners and cutting in so I gave up. I was like 22… forgive me) so we just decided to paint it the same color as the rest of the lower level.  Thanks to all the trim and corners in this room, it was a huge job but well worth it.  The trim was also repainted unfortunately.  I mean, it looks good, but damn I didn’t want to do it.

kitchen

The kitchen was updated by the previous owners. While it’s not my style, I’m not dumb enough to endlessly dump money into a house that’s already maxed out in value for the market.  If we lived here longer I wanted to replace the counter tops and add a back splash but that certainly wasn’t on my agenda to get it listed.  We cleaned, threw up some fresh curtains, and I changed the knobs all back to the originals.  Done and done.

bathroom

Sorry for the color differences here – one was during the day, one was on the way out the door at night. I know (KNOW) the realtor is going to freak over the black in here, but I don’t care.  I think it looks amazing.  I painted it a few years ago and I stand by the choice.  The tile is all original and in amazingly good shape.  While I know original bathrooms may horrify some, I find them really charming, especially when they look as great as this one. Thankfully it’s peach instead of pink, and I think the black accents are awesome. I miss this tiny bathroom.  Once the water was turned on, we noticed the toilet was running, so Mister had to install a repair kit.  Otherwise, we just bought some new fluffy white towels and a bathmat then cleaned up and called it a day.

master

We moved the guest bed up to the master bedroom.  We thought it was important for potential buyers to see that a queen bed, two nightstands, and a dresser will all fit in the room.  The dresser is ours but wouldn’t fit in the moving trailer the first time around.  I grabbed some random stuff from closets and threw it around the room until things looked reasonable.  I detest the boob light but it stays.  I touched up some paint, swept and mopped the floors, and washed the curtains and we were done in here.

master landing

landing

This is the landing at the top of the stairs, just outside the master bedroom.  Mister used to have his office up here.  The bookcase was previously painted brown, so I had to paint the entire thing white.  While painting, I realized that they used a whiteish white for the trim up here and there was no way for me to know what color it was.  I had to paint everything – trim, staircase, touch up the gray on the walls, and paint the ceiling white.

final

final2

I wish these pictures weren’t so dark, but we worked well into the evening packing another U-haul and cleaning the place.  This was our final view on the way out the door.  We’re feeling pretty good about how the house will show.  We left enough furniture to help people get a sense of what fits in the space, but left things reasonably sparse.  When the place sells, our final move should be pretty easy.  I’m offering up some of the more basic furniture (not the antiques or custom couch! hands off!) either for sale or as a bargaining piece in the offer.  The home will likely sell to a young person or couple, and I know what its like to start out with no furniture.  This also saves us from moving anything we don’t love cross country.  Your stuff gets effed up when it bounces around a trailer for 1000 miles, so we’re only moving the things that cannot be replaced.

I’m working with a realtor over the phone, so it’s likely that we’ll never set foot in this house again.  I’m sad to see it go, but thrilled that when it sells we can start looking for a place of our own in Wyoming.  And then have baaabies.

 

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Still alive

by Stef on January 21, 2013

in Food, Home, Knitting, Wyoming life

I don’t not want to blog, I just don’t really have anything worthwhile to say these days. Winter is the busy season at our small business and, thankfully, we’ve been busier than Mister and I can handle while still retaining our sanity. Some days that sanity is hanging on by the tiniest whisper of a thread but we can’t really complain, because booming business is what we need. Family was in town over the holidays, so we put their butts to work, ate too much food, and generally enjoyed the familiarity of having loved ones around. My brother and his wife headed home after New Years, my parents headed home a week later, leaving their German Shepherd puppy, Maggie, behind for a few weeks. So on top of standard busyness of our life, we’re now contending with two 7 month old puppies on a daily basis and we. need. a. nap.

Yellowstone landscape

We’ve also changed our hours so we’re open all day Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, with Tuesday and Wednesday off. Then I had the genius (stupid) idea to offer an After Hours line so we inevitably end up in the shop on our days off and its really all just one big blur. As you are partying it up and drinking or eating or napping or lounging your weekends away, we’re dragging our asses out of bed to head into work so I no longer really differentiate one day from another and I’ve lost all time to catch up with loved ones, so I’m pretty much the shittiest friend/sister/daughter in the world. I’m not judging your laziness/drinking-ness/eating-ness though, no. I’m jealous. Alas, soon summer will return and we’ll surely panic that the business can’t survive on this pace of customers! but we’ll have free time and Mister and I plan to ABUSE IT heartily. Nine months ago, had we known the pace of things that would bombard us this winter, we would have been joyriding our asses all over this state and savoring each others company at every moment. Summer is the LIFE and Winter is the WORK and we can just hope it all balances out in the end, I suppose.

Radio is finally turning into the dog that we knew she could be. She’s become a lover. She’s hilarious and sweet and so genuinely, unabashedly thrilled to see us each day, I’m thankful that we stuck it out through the horrors of puppy-hood to add this little member to our family. Radio finds everything in life to be a thrilling adventure and her enthusiasm is infectious. Unfortunately, I’ve taken our success with raising her as a sign that we’re ready for a family, so I’m constantly battling these inner cries of BABY! NOW! Actually, let’s be serious, they’re not so inner, because daily I ask Mister if we’re ready for a baby yet. We’ve rationalized a timeline that we’re both comfortable with, so I’m trying to keep the baby fever at bay. Mostly, I’m wildly offended that, try as I might, I can’t fight the nature of womanhood. What is this get married, want a baby nonsense? I’m better than that! Except… I guess I’m not. For now, I’m enjoying the prospect of meeting two little ones headed into our extended family as we speak. We have a young man coming in a few weeks on my side of the family and a little lady making her appearance any day now on Mister’s side of the family, and I’m giddy at the prospect of getting to spoil them both

On that note, I suppose I can ramble about the one thing, work aside, that’s consuming my time lately. After months off, I’ve taken up knitting again with ferocious dedication. There was the herringbone cowl from the most gorgeous soft merino that the puppy eventually destroyed. The same yarn had been frogged thrice before so I decided we weren’t mean to be at the time and set it aside in favor of other projects. I headed onto a series of toddler/baby sweaters because I wanted to try my hand at a garment, but didn’t have the patience to knit something adult sized. They’re adorable, of course, and ridiculously easy to pull together. I started with this basic yoke sweater and added some slight modifications to make a toddler sweater, toddler sweater dress, and a teeny little baby sweater with ruffle trim. Then I added a sweet little hat and these last two are headed off to meet their new owner very very soon.

Finally, I’m once again dealing with the life long struggle of on a diet/off a diet. I know, I know, it’s not a diet it’s a lifestyle blah blah. Whatever it is, my dedication is at an all time high for both health reasons (as in: baby, hopeful pregnancy) and budget reasons (as in: purchase home) so we’re eating at home more than ever. There’s been batches of chili and chicken pot pie, Mister’s favorite sloppy joes, immensely impressive salads, chicken corn chowder, morning smoothies and juices every day, a new take on oatmeal that still blows my mind, pulled pork, nearly non-stop roasted cauliflower, eating leftovers for lunch like a normal well behaved adult. It’s all very dull. I’ve contemplated sharing recipes, but we’re not doing anything revolutionary here. Mister likes straight up standard, delicious food. I like to take that food and make it slightly healthier. Then I track it and watch what I eat and, ideally, it all works out in the end. I’ve also contemplated reporting weight loss here for accountability sake, but then I fear this will veer into the weight loss/healthy living blog zone and of all things we’re doing, living healthy in a way that others look too for guidance is certainly not one of them. But here we are, with this topic at hand, so I’ll put it on record: 2 weeks in, 4lbs down.

So I’m at the end of yet another brain dump and I’m questioning again, what’s the point of this blog? We don’t have a house to work on, which are the updates I really love reporting. I may share our house hunting adventures, but it’s such a point of rabid obsession for me right now that I feel like I’m too close to the issue to make sense of it. I literally cannot stop myself. I obsess over listings and land and stalk websites and pick customer’s brains and it’s honestly so annoying but I can’t shut it down. I’m a woman on an mission and if we bring up the topic, you’ll inevitably just tell me to shut up.  Right now, our life is work and nothing more. I generally keep work off the blog because I’m overly cautious about the personal/professional mix and because, honestly, I highly doubt any of you want to read about ATVs and Snowmobiles and how I look up engine parts all day long.  The knitting continues as always, but I don’t really feel expert enough to take a teaching perspective. I’ll keep sharing the finished products as time and photography allow. I may post a recipe or two as time goes on. I have like… three… posts in progress about hair/grooming products, but I feel like those need to be accompanied by pictures.  Like, of my actual hair, that is, but the mere thought of mirror pictures seems so grossly self-indulgent that I keep shutting the idea down. Maybe I’ll just start posting randomass shit without concern, because I’m not ready to quit yet. It could happen.

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MARRIED

by Stef on August 8, 2012

in Home, Marriage, Wyoming life

As of late last week, I now officially have a reason to call my guy Mister because he’s now my Mr!  In other words, a few weeks ago we decided to move forth with this awesome life we have going here and add on an extra day to our already-planned Vegas work trip and get married.  The conference in Vegas was last week therefore the wedding was last week and now we’re home, back at work, and I get the daily delight of hearing him call me his wife.  It’s not the normal process of things, no, but it certainly worked well for us and we have no regrets.

So, married? How did that come about? Honestly, we weren’t even really engaged.  I think Mister and I have known for years that we were it for each other.  I’ve briefly mentioned before that he moved in with me after a one-way flight from St. Louis.  That, too, wasn’t the normal way of things, but within weeks I knew I never wanted him to leave.  Many years before we had a cheesy plan to be each others default marriage if we weren’t otherwise attached by the age of 30.  I know. Then we decided to stop wasting time and try out the real dating thing, then the living together thing, then the moving thing, and the working together thing and the let’s get a puppy thing, so we’re really just a few years ahead of the game, I suppose!

Ever since our move here, the combining of the bank accounts, working together all day every day non-stop only ever talking about work forever and ever and still not killing each other, we became sure that marriage was our plan.  When I explained to my family that we’d likely elope, or similar, I rationalized that our move was really our marriage. Spending all day and all night together successfully was our marriage.  In our minds, judge us if you will, the marriage is just the paperwork to validate the work we’re already doing in our relationship.  The rings are icing on the cake!  I know that’s terribly contradictory to the wedding fever we’re all supposed to experience, but looking around at our work commitments, the effort and money and time required to run a small business, the time it takes to plan a wedding, we knew we didn’t want to wait. We decided better to be married now, as just the two of us, than wait a year to have the time and money for a huge production. Or even a small production. It was all too much.

So we found a sweet little ring on eBay and my wedding band on Etsy.  Mister’s ring is from some tungstenringsftw.com type website with great pricing.  I didn’t know that I wanted a wedding dress but didn’t know that I didn’t want one, so I found a dress that was reasonably priced, my size, could be delivered quickly, and generally fulfilled the requirements that I had in my head for what my wedding dress should look like.  That narrowed the options down to oh, about two.  So I bought the one I liked more and it was probably a size or two too big, because I refuse to admit that yes, I have lost weight since our move, but I liked it well enough and maybe we don’t all need the dream dress to marry our dream guy.  I do not have a diamond and we did not have a proposal, Mister saw me in my wedding dress the day it arrived and we got ready together on our wedding day.  There are no engagement pictures and the whopping five wedding pics came from my phone or Photobooth on my Macbook.  We did take each step and make each selection as a team and hearing the word wife makes my heart soar, so what else can we really ask for in life? That’s all I need.

Our friends and family have reactions across the board.  Some totally get it, they’re maybe even a bit relieved.  They have their own situations going on and I don’t think any of us can deny that weddings, happy and fun as they may be, are work and require money.  Others are bummed, but not suprised. Long before Mister arrived – many years ago – I warned them that I’d never have a wedding. Others don’t really get it, but they aren’t going to argue with us. It just doesn’t make sense to them.  Most are just happy we’re married, by any means necessary.  I think we’ll have a party or celebration later on down the road.  We’ve discussed a one year renewal with the full production and a real honeymoon. We’ve discussed a small dinner in Mister’s hometown and another in my hometown. We’ll see what happens.  For now though, yay! Married! Husband and wife and so much love!

I’m considering another post with the more specific of things: rings, dress, hair, ceremony, announcements, and more, since you and I here didn’t get the fun of planning and plotting over all those things for months on end.  I can barely remember my own blog url these days though, so let’s just see where the week takes us, yes?

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Our new backyard

by Stef on June 17, 2012

in Home, Wyoming life

I guess all those lessons in weeding and yard maintenance are now a bit useless, huh? Who cares though, with a view like this!

Nothing much to say here, just sharing a few quick pictures of our backyard before the sun went down today.  The wind has been insane all day. I think I literally almost got blown over at one point.

Power is out in the entire town tomorrow.  Yes, seriously.  So our shop is closed and we’re leaving the house for a long ATV ride and picnic, I think.  I’ll report back with our adventure soon!

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Scenes from the weekend: Recovery

by Stef on June 3, 2012

in Food, Home, Scenes from the weekend

I’m slowly mending a broken heart by reading myself dizzy, taking up knitting again, trying out new recipes in the kitchen, and going on ATV rides with Mister.  I’m past the point of spontaneous crying, but our home just isn’t the same.  Cooper has always been the relentless enthusiast; he’s never not in a delightful mood.  Emma was the lover and cuddler and I miss it dearly.  Cooper will come around for a belly rub, but we all know he’s only looking out for his own best interest.

We know we want to bring another dog into our home, but we’re at a bit of a stalemate.  Mister and I both really want a German Shepherd as our next dog.  However, I’m opposed to buying from a breeder to an exceptionally annoying degree.  Like, it’s the one thing in the world where I can’t stop myself from sharing my opinion.  Over the years I’ve toned it down from lecturing to just hear me out before you make a decision and I’ve already forced him to hear me out countless times.  All that said, we really want our next dog to be a shop dog so we need a puppy that we can raise alongside us in the store from day one.  Cooper is a rescue with neurotic tendencies and, sweet and delightful as he is, would be a disaster in the shop.  We need/want a dog that can be 100% trusted off leash, is entirely comfortable with all types of people in his space, will immediately come on command and generally not create a liability for us.  Which brings us back to getting a puppy from a breeder and I just can’t go there yet.  So. Yeah.  Despite wanting a German Shepherd, I know I could get any mutt puppy from the shelter and be happy, but we’re in this relationship and there are two people who have a say now, so I’m trying my best to listen and compromise.  I’m hoping this will just all come together in a perfect little package by finding a purebred German Shepherd from a local shelter, but that hasn’t happened yet. I’m trolling any and all sites multiple times a day so we’ll see where it takes us.

MOVING ON!

Last weekend we learned that Memorial Day does not mark the start of summer in Wyoming.  Instead, we were met with snow and rain for a few days straight.  We had to drive through the mountains to retrieve a car at the airport and encountered a foot of snow in some spots.  In start contrast, this weekend has been in the 70s and sunny with incredible wind.  We took a long ride today and I tried to capture some scenery from our new home.

Wyoming ATV ride

Wyoming ATV ride

All photos taken from a recreation area just outside of town.  The second picture shows essentially our entire town.  It’s small, yes, but we already love it dearly.

Wyoming ATV ride

Afterwards we headed into the mountains for some trail riding.  We stupidly didn’t take a map along, so we turned around sooner than we would have liked.  I want to start highlighting our routes on one map so we can document our adventures across the hundreds of miles of trails out here.

Entirely unrelated, I’m pretty much just cooking my way through the Smitten Kitchen archives.

Strawberry summer cake – Produce is severely lacking in quality out here. It also spoils just a few days after purchase.  I pulled up this recipe to blow through a pound of strawberries on the brink of death.  It’s perfection and I’m making another tonight.

Homesick Texan Carnitas – I adore carnitas but am grossed out by the amount of fat usually involved.  I followed this theory but trimmed a bit of the extra fat beforehand and just used water without any juices, and it was amazing.  Seriously, I couldn’t believe food this good came out of our own kitchen.

Black Bean Soup - In an effort to use up the leftover carnitas and aging black beans in our pantry, I turned to this recipe. Either my beans or slow cooker are bad because I let it cook from 9am – 5pm on low, then 5pm – 10pm on high, then gave up because the beans were still crunchy, so I threw it in the fridge and cooked on low again for 3 hours this weekend.  The flavor was good though, so I’ll try again.

Sourdough bread – No, I haven’t forgotten Seymour!  I was sure he was ruined after 3 days in the car, but after continually pouring off the hooch and feeding him, I think he’s back in action.  I made an amazing loaf of sourdough this weekend following the recipe I posted earlier.

Finally, for the supportive comments on the last post, thank you.  Immensely.  I can’t click back and read it yet without tears, but I’ll get there.  I really really appreciate the support.

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The house, lately

by Stef on May 3, 2012

in Detroit, Home

When I realized we were leaving, my plan was to photograph our home one last time.  I’d hoped to create a house tour for the blog and submit pics to a few sites that’d shown interest in posting it.

Then this happened.

We leave in less than a week.

::breathe::

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A life update, Short version: We’re moving

by Stef on April 25, 2012

in Detroit, Home

I know when I’m phoning it in here on the blog.  The posts have been lacking lately in both quality and quantity – you don’t need to tell me. I’m thankful to now be able to explain why I had to take a step back from everything. Know that I started writing this a few weeks ago because my brain was scattered and my stomach was in my throat and my stress to my eyeballs and I didn’t know any better way to sort out the emotion than to just dump it out into a story, collect myself, then try to move on with life as usual.

A few weeks ago I was at work and saw a missed call from my Dad.  I called back and he said, “Do you want to move out west and run a powersports shop?”

Yes.

Immediately

Yes. I’ll talk to Mister, of course, but I’m in. 

There’s nothing left here, I said.

I hated those words as they came out of my mouth because I’m an endless champion for Detroit.  I love downtown. I work downtown. I tried to buy a house in the historic districts on more than one occasion.  But the truth is, it’s so hard to find a silver lining when you live in Metro Detroit and we’re lucky enough to be among the privileged ones.  Thankfully, I’ve never been without work but many I know are and have been for ages.  I’ve written around the topic of my dissatisfaction with work many times, without actually telling the stories in any way that would jeopardize my employment because if you lose a job, there isn’t another one waiting to take its place.  I’ve been trying to move into another job for years.  Mere months after I started I realized it wasn’t what I was promised and I started trying to find my way into another company, but there’s nothing out there.  It’s not that I was interviewing and messing up, I couldn’t even find a place to send my application.  Four years later, I was still there. One of the few left from a team of twelve that was eventually “right-sized” to a team of three, working harder than ever, no raises, no gratitude, no satisfaction. It’s exhausting to know that your work means nothing. You don’t matter at all.

I’ve mentioned snowmobiling on the blog before but not much beyond.  This is the heart of our family though.  I grew up around snowmobiles and dirt bikes and four wheelers, three wheelers, boats, jet skis, trucks, cars, garage builds.  Engines.  It’s what we do.  It’s certainly part of who we are.  Mister and I actually met through a car club. I KNOW it’s just so… weird.. yeah.  You have to be one of these people to understand it, I guess. Every time Mister and I go to the farm or one of our family cabins in Northern Michigan we do the One day we should just run away and live in a small town bit.  We come up with ideas, we daydream, we talk about abstract plans for the future and then we never follow through with them because really, who just picks up their life and moves away from every thing and every one they know? I guess we do, now.  This is our future.

So here’s the quick and dirty of it all. Mister and I are moving to very rural area out west to co-own a powersports shop (snowmobile & ATV sales, service, rentals, and more) with my parents and to run it ourselves.  We are taking Emma, Cooper, and Baxter along, of course.  We are selling some of our stuff, donating even more, and shoving the rest into a trailer for the long trek west.  We will try to sell our home but with Metro Detroit among the hardest hit areas of the country, our hopes are not very high.

Above all, I want to make it clear that we are so excited and this shake up was so necessary.  This adventure has forced me to stop being a flaky indecisive baby.  The second I said yes, we were off running. There was no turning back, no second guessing.  This adventure has also forced Mister and me to put a lot of things right in the spotlight – our relationship, our goals, our future, money, kids, everything – and we’re all in.  We’re combining the stress of moving, changing jobs, running a business, selling a house, and more into one big lump of excitment and chaos and, naysayers be damned, just going for it.  Many people are skeptical. I’ve gotten raised eyebrows and words of advice and you should really…enter advice here…  but if ever there were a moment to be stubborn, this is that moment.  We’re going. We “shouldn’t really….” anything.  What’s the point of a daydream if you aren’t willing to make it come true?

We headed to our new town for the first time ever this past weekend.  Yes, we agreed to a life change having never even been to the area before!  Now that we’re home, we have approximately three weeks to finish work on our home, pack up, and move ourselves west.  I’m finishing my final weeks at work while Mister is still in class and has exams ahead. Everything is insane right now. Let the countdown begin…

The view from our hotel the first morning

Headed through the mountains to explore our new town

Our neighbors yard!

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What’s black and white and spread all over?

by Stef on April 12, 2012

in Home, Intentional home

Oh hey blog, fancy seeing you here. It’s been awhile, huh?

So this is what our yard looks like now.

mulch & flowers

Amazing, right!?

Also, dirty lie.

weeds & yardwork

Our yard still looks like this in most places.

Guys, this stuff is hard. And by hard, I just mean in terms of quantity, not difficulty. And when I come home from work at 6:30 and it’s cold out, the last thing I want to do is pull weeds and mess around in the dirt. But – BUT! – I’m going to stick with this, so today I tackled one section of the flower beds while Mister was mowing the lawn.

Really, this work couldn’t be easier, you just have to do it.  Follow-through is always the tough part.  We have these twin bushes on either side of the steps to the deck.  Before you gasp at how much I hacked it back, know that they get huge every year.  Once it fills back in, I’ll shape the guy a little better.

If you look closely in the upper left pic, you can see the creeping charlie running along the base of the deck.  Since that’s my main battle this year, my goal was to get some newspaper and mulch down today.  My workplace has a library and they get tons of newspapers, so I asked our librarians to send them my way instead of to the trash.  You’ll go to good use, Detroit News!  On my last post, Tiffany from No Ordinary Homestead supported my newspaper idea and suggested 5-10 layers thick.  I’d say I averaged 7 layers, just because that’s the way the stacks were pulling apart.  Once the dirt was covered I sprayed the whole area with the hose then covered everything with the mulch I hate, but we’re working with for now.

weeding & flowers

This same bed continues around until the next set of steps on the deck.  Once I pulled the weeds and got some mulch down, I realized the bed wasn’t over planted like I originally thought.  I sound like an idiot for not even knowing what’s in my own yard, but yay for less work!  Before I packed everything away, I pulled out some old flower boxes from the garage and planted a flat of Alyssum that we picked up at Lowe’s this weekend.  Since we’re being honest here, I never follow directions with the cheap annuals and I’ve never had them not survive.  These guys are tough and you really can’t mess them up.  I added some fresh soil specifically intended for potted plants, popped the plants out of their plastic holders then just stuffed them into the dirt and gave a good watering.  They’ll stand back up (oops! too much hose pressure) and start filling out in just a few days.

I’m going to watch this finished bed for a few days before I start on the others.  I also need to figure out what we’re going to do about mulch.  I always end up using three times what I anticipate and I can’t rationalize buying more of the stuff we dislike just for it to match, so we may end up with mismatched mulch in some places.

What about you guys? Are you facing a ton of yardwork and making progress? I’ve been lazy about it for the past six years, so I won’t judge if you’re not on it yet!

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The intentional yard: It’s a jungle out here, kids

by Stef on April 4, 2012

in Home, Intentional home

The yard is one of the things that sold me on this place way back in 2005.  The previous owners clearly devoted quite a bit of time to maintaining the landscaping here.  Or, as I’ve now realized, probably, in an attempt to sell the house, ripped up all the beds and planted tiny baby perfectly manicured little bushes and flowers then quickly handed the place over to us.  In the years since, what was once a well maintained little zone of relaxation has turned into a jungle that’s trying to ruin our lives.  Seriously though, it’s time to get the laziness in check and I’ve made it my mission to stay on top of the landscaping this year.

Since moving in, Mister has taken over lawn mowing duties and that alone has made a huge difference. I used to let the lawn grow, scalp it, let it grow, scalp it, repeat until the snow comes.

Ugly lawn with weeds and dead grass

Before

Green grass/healthy lawn

Current, as of tonight!

Thanks to his regular maintenance, the front lawn is now a lush carpet of grass awesomeness and we’re secure in our status as All-Star of The Block. I monitor these things. 

Green grass/healthy lawn

We’ve also been working to clear out the garage, so last weekend we laid a few bags of mulch that have been sitting around since, oh, 2006?  I hate this mulch but it was purchased many years ago on a very restricted budget.  It’s recycled tires and I expected it to have long since dried out in the garage, but all the freshly open bags are still in great shape so we’re working with what we’ve got here!  The previous owners had those front bushes manicured into some uppity stepped configuration that belongs at a country club, not at our little bungalow, so I’ve been growing them out for almost 7 years now. We’ll get there soon.

 Front Yard To-Do: Power wash the front of the house, trim bushes, repair concrete steps, repaint stoop and steps, remove winter wreath from door, plant annual flower boxes

Things we’ll realistically accomplish: Trim bushes, remove wreath, plant flower boxes – I’ll take it!

Backyard with weeds and creeping charlie

In the backyard we’re forever working against the dogs and weeds.  Honestly, I’ve reached a point of just writing off this grass. We don’t yet have kids that need to run around the area.  It’s just a dog bathroom and I’m mostly ok with it.  Previously, as part of our battle with the flooding basement, the back yard was dug up to replace a pipe.  Since then it’s been uneven and won’t really grow grass anyway, then the dogs ruin whatever grass is there. I’m over it.  The weeds though – this is why we’re really here.

Creeping charlie

This is Creeping Charlie.  If you don’t deal with it regularly, it could (and does. yearly) take over this entire yard in a few weeks time.  On the positive side, its exceedingly easy to pull.  On the negative side, there’s always seven times as much as you think is really there and once you’ve pulled four lawn bags of the stuff and it’s suffocated out your entire yard so there’s just dirt left behind and you look around to realize yeah, I have four lawn bags collected, but I haven’t even slightly made a dent in this effing disaster and oh my god it’ll never end didn’t we do this same thing last year?

I’m on a mission to stop it. THIS IS THE YEAR. In cases where the lawn is more creeping charlie than grass, it’s often suggested to just strip up the entire layer of sod and start over, or give up on grass entirely and lay down a ground cover plant or mulch. I think my neighbors have reached this point. They don’t have grass, they just have creeping charlie.  Then it comes under the fence and ruins our yard as well.  Unfortunately, we cannot afford to re-sod the entire yard, and have no intentions to do so when it’ll just be ruined by the neighbors weeds next year, so we have to take other measures.  We are not environmentally sustainable experts in green gardening so I don’t quote anything I say here, but I’ve been told that newspaper is a great way to combat weeds. You lay down a bunch of wet layers, cover it with mulch, keep it moist, and then it saves you from weeding and your life is awesome. So we’re going to try it.

weeding

Beyond the weed situation, all the plants need some basic maintenance.  I never know if you’re supposed cut everything back in the fall or leave the dead stuff at the end of the fall to protect over the winter, then cut fresh in the spring.  Fall has long since passed, so we’re going with the cut fresh in the spring route.

The hydrangeas (left) are ridiculously massive and need to be cut way back.  Inspired by a recent discussion with another commenter on Young House Love, I’m going to try to get some cuttings to root so we can transplant them elsewhere in the yard.  We are totally overstocked in tulips, daffodils, and hyacinth (top right). These guys grow like crazy and seem to double every year. I love them though, so I just want to break up some bulbs and spread them around a bit more evenly.  We also need to remove the long dead Azalea.  These grasses (bottom right) are dead and ugly but will eventually grow huge and glorious and have these really cool stripes.  I’ve been told you can break off chunks and transplant them and I’m especially interested in this to help fill in some dead spots thanks to the previously mentioned backhoe digging up the entire yard incident.

Back Yard To-Do: Take care of weeding/mulch sooner rather than later, cut back all plants and remove dead plants, propagate hydrangea, separate and plant ornamental grasses, separate and plant tulip, daffodil and hyacinth bulbs, fix flower box that fell off the garage over the winter, vow to scoop yard more regularly, remove dog kennel and general junk from behind garage

Things we’ll realistically accomplish: Weeding/mulch, cut back plants, propagate hydrangea, scoop yard somewhat more regularly

Why am I immediately dismissing things that we want to do but probably won’t accomplish? I think its important to manage expectations. We’re going from essentially zero law maintenance and letting the lawn turn into a jungle into a whole plan to revitalize the space and I know that won’t happen in just one year.  We also have to spend one weekend every month at the farm for military duty and in the heat of summer, that weekend away without watering the yard and flower beds can easily kill things off, so I don’t want to get overzealous and financially/emotionally commit to something we can’t maintain.

This is a vow to try harder this year.  Maybe all this time outside in the sun will help with my vitamin D deficiency.

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Out with the old (rug), in with the new (rug)

by Stef on March 18, 2012

in Home

It’s officially feeling like summer, even here in Michigan, and our little bungalow isn’t really an all-star at regulating upstairs temperatures so Mister and I headed to Target this weekend to find a new fan in the hopes of no longer melting at night. The fan part was simple; it works, we’re now cool, so on, so forth.  Far more importantly, I got distracted (as I usually do) while looking for the fan section and decided to investigate rugs for a bit.

The before rug

I generally find great rugs at Target, but they’re never as inexpensive as I want/expect them to be.  Let’s be clear – Target = Love.  But with that, I expect a certain, ahem, “cost-effective” pricing and their rugs (and furniture, I should note) generally fall in line with Overstock.com pricing, and you’ll usually get a better product from Overstock.

So I was in the store, rugs lookin’ all awesome in front o’ my face, trying to convince myself to break down and get one.  I found, loved, contemplated, then rejected a nubby charcoal popcorn texture rug that I still love, but I’m sure the dogs would destroy when I spied a seemingly decent neutral-ish 5×7 rug out the corner of my eye.  Closer inspection showed that it was far softer than what I’ve come to expect from jute, plus it had a cute seafoamy green blue border.  Ok.. things are looking good.  Then, the gold mine, a clearance sticker and the price? $55.98.  Better yet, I came prepared with $25 American Express Visa card.  We usually get one of these at work during the holidays, on staff appreciation day, and on our yearly anniversary.  You can’t spend them online though and I do about 99.95% of my shopping online, so I have a few sitting around.   So a $55.98 rug – $25 free money = $30.98 for a 5×7 rug and I’d buy pretty much any rug at that price. Totally sold!

I love that old rug. I still do. It’s just not a wise choice for the space.  It’s wool and we spend spend far more time on that couch than I’d like to admit, so the the rug is shedding constantly.  We also don’t let the dogs on the furniture (I knoooow… I did before Mister moved in and they ruined a previous couch, so it’s for the best, really) so they spend all day long on the rug with their toys.  I’ve also never loved the blue green rug paired with the green couch, but I love the rug itself so I wanted to make it work.  No worries, the old rug is still here sitting pretty, just in a new spot.

All our artwork is crooked. Remind me to fix that. And show you everything in closer detail.

So here’s the new guy.  Neutral, durable, cheap, larger, a comfy place for the dogs to chew bones – yes to all of these things.  It’s not WOWing the world, I’m sure, but it’s a great switch and so incredibly worth the <$40 I spent.  Before someone pipes in and tells me the “all furniture on or all furniture off” rule of living room rug sizing – I know.  Our house is teeeny tiny.  If we went larger, the rug would cover the entire living room floor.  If we went smaller it’d be a glorified front d00r mat and look silly.  The size is perfect as is.

As for the old rug, he’s made friends with a couple of super friendly Eames chairs, so I’m sure he’ll be just fine.

The dining room table is currently exhibiting some hoarder-esque tendencies, so this is all I’ll show for now. Perhaps we’ll be properly motivated to rewire the old barn light soon and install it above the dining table, giving me no choice but to clear off the table and share some pics. The gold wallpaper plagues me daily, a leftover from the previous owners. I told you — 6+ years later and I’m still sitting on certain projects. Sigh.

If anyone else is looking for a great basic rug, I suggest checking out your local target for the same deal! It comes in a few border colors – seafoam (listed as green, but really more blue/aqua), black, red, and more. If someone wants a link, just chime in below and I’ll dig around online for the exact match!

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