16. May 2010 by admin.

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1. May 2010 by admin.

Back in January we decided to finish a part of the kitchen with a glass mosaic backsplash.  We had designed the kitchen for one, but never ended up doing it.  Here are some pics from the install.  Its 1″x2″ recycled glass that came in 12×12 sheets.  The glass has a matte finish.  We used a larger tile for the top border by vent hood and the sewer shoot :).

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15. August 2009 by admin.

We went camping with our friends Melissa and Nick this last weekend at Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire.  The hike was pretty intense compared to what we were expecting.  Good company and great food!  Scallops on the fire one night and indiv. pizzas on the fire the next with pudgy piee, smores, and cigars of course!

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15. August 2009 by admin.

I saw this butterfly outside amd had to take a picture or two!

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15. August 2009 by admin.

Since finishing the patio, I’ve been working on two cedar Adirondack chairs.  These are made from  Lee Valley Tolls Plan that I ordered online.  It came with full size templates which made it easy to cut the different curved shapes with my jigsaw.  I stained the cedar with a Penofin red label transparent stain.  It should last about 2-3 years and then have to get stained again.  They came out great!
Here are some builing shots.  On the 2nd chair I decided to stain all of the finished and drilled pieces before assembly.  It made everything easier.

All done!

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15. August 2009 by admin.

Well Katie and I finished the patio a week or two ago and it came out great!  All that backbreaking labor paid off I guess. :)  After excavating the site down about 8″ we started filling the area with 3/4 crusher run which is a compacting gravel with no pieces larger than 3/4″.  We had to put down two layers of about 2-3″ each because the compacting machine can only compact that much at one time.  So here we are filling the site and keeping everything graded at the same time.  These pics are all before the compactor was run over it.

Here I am compacting the 2nd and final layer of the gravel base.

Now we layed down an inch of sand and put the pavers on top.  I layed down 7/8″ electrical conduit on the base and screed sand between them with a flat piece of wood.  Katie would bring the pavers up from the driveway and I would screed the sand and lay the pavers down.  We had a specific design from the TechoBloc the manufacturer so we knew how many rectangle and square pieces to order.  We installed a “soldier” border around the outside of the same style but different color pavers to really set it off.  We were both starting to really get tired at this point lol.

Some finished pics!  After getting all the pavers down I had to make some cuts to fill in spaces where whole blocks wouldn’t fit.  This was not fun at all.  I used a wet tile saw and got just covered in the spray.  A snap edge plastic edging was placed around the entire patio to hold the pavers and to keep the sand from washing out.  These are held in place by 10″ galvanized spikes every 18″ or so.  Alas, all the cuts were made and a polymeric sand got swept across the patio to fill in the spaces between the pavers.  Then I had to compact the pavers twice with the compactor, sweeping the special sand over the whole thing between compactions.  After the 2nd compaction, I made sure there was no sand on the surface and then wet everything down with a mist to activate the polymers that are mixed in with the sand.  Success!

The snap edge andthe soldier border.

Special spot for the grill.

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25. July 2009 by admin.

 I’ve been doing lots of digging lately…and its all come to an end!  The Yellow groove bamboo came yesterday and got planted in the “bamboo zone”.  The tops got cut off for shipping but they all have leaves on them.  I can’t wait for them to fill the entire area and shoot up to 15 feet!

The patio area is also all excavated and grated.  I basically had a string attached to a stake in the inner corner set at the final paver height.  I then extended it over the patio area and staked it on the other side so I had a tight line to measure the correct excavation depth.  I did this every couple feet all the way around using the sa me string and a garden rake.

Eventually I made it all the way around and the whole space is graded to 7.5-8″ under the tops of where the pavers are going to be. 4-5″ of crushed stone will go on the dir, then get compacted , followed by an inch of sand and the pavers on top of that.

All of the “crusher run” got delivered into our driveway today so thats what we’ll be doing tomorrow.

Nice pic of the new solar birdbath in action.

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20. July 2009 by admin.

The rhizome barrier material for the bamboo finally came today!  I ordered it over 2 weeks ago but the company I ordered it from only ships on Mondays.  The trench was dug so that 3″ of the barrier material would stick up higher than the ground/dirt level.  This is so that it is easy to spot and clip any rhizomes that try and escape over the barrier.

I ordered 55′ of 24′ wide 60mil thick material and some two-sided tape with polyethylene glue to seal the overlap.

Getting the material into the trench actually wasn’t as easy as I thought.  Its pretty heavy and the trench is pretty narrow in some spots.  But, alas, I got it all in and put three vertical strips of tape on the barrier and even overlapped it by 12 feet; better safe than sorry. :)  Once I got the material in I compacted the soil around the bottom edge and hosed it down to get it nice and compact.  You want to compact the lower 12″ of soil so the bamboo has less of a reason to go deep.  After that, it was time for some pasta with a vegetable medley sauce for dinner with Katie!  Tomorrow, I’ll finish filling in and around the trench and start grading the patio area.

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19. July 2009 by admin.

We’ve been doing a lot of work this past week and weekend on the back yard.  We’ve planted a few Miscanthus ornamental grasses and bunch of perennials.  The Forest Pansy tree got planted last monday too!  All the big granite rocks were dug up out of the bamboo trench.  The bamboo barrier material comes tomorrow!

Our backyard is closed in with fence so we actually let Moxie out in the backyard today for a couple of hours.  She had fun chasing around bugs and butterflies but eventually she had to go back inside.

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11. July 2009 by admin.

Today we went to some nurseries and greenhouses and bought a new tree for the backyard that will be delivered on Tuesday!  Its a Forest Pansy.  I’m trying to dig out an old stump of a tree where this new one will go and am going to borrow a chainsaw tomorrow to try and get it out.

Besides the new tree which isn’t here yet, we got some hand bent iron hooks for the two pillars on the front porch and Katie planted some petunias and other flowers in them.

Next up for the front is a new hanging light that comes on Monday… and eventually a new storm door.

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