4. July 2009 by admin.

I decided to finish up the front porch project.  I completed the actual porch itself and stained it a few weeks ago, but never ended up finishing the pillars.  I made new bottom caps where the pillar meets the porch and we put two coats of paint on the pillars to finish it off!  Moxie and Katie say hi.

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4. July 2009 by admin.

We’ve been designing what we want our back patio to look like for a while and I’ve recently started work on the excavation.  We are opting for a 20′ strip of Yellow Groove bamboo along the fence.  It will get 15′-20′ high in just 2-3 years and screen off the neighbors house for some nice privacy and shade.  In order to do this however, I had to make a rhizome barrier trench on the outside of the bamboo since bamboo spreads like crazy.  Its hard to tell from the pics, but I just finished digging the trench today.  Its 24″ deep and plastic sheet made to block the bamboo from escaping will go in the trench and surround the planted bamboo.  It’ll be easier to make sense of it once things really get going!

The dug up area is basically where the patio will go with a planting strip for flowers/shrubs along the garage.

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4. May 2009 by admin.

Half of the boards on our front stoop were rotting and coming detatched from the stair stringers and joists, so it was time to replace the boards, so I thought…  I thought I would do that until I realized that the joists underneath were cracked and rotten as were the stair stringers.  THere was no way any new nails or screws would’ve held.  So I basically had to start from scratch, which was a good thing since I could use proper deck wood and secure everything properly too.  I attached new joists and also sistered them to the existing ones and put in new 4×4 supports in the front.  Here are some pics so far, I’m hoping to have everything finished tomorrow, then I can stain everything in about a month or so once the treated wood dries out.  We also transplanted the rhododendrin closer to the house and will put some miniature mountain laurel in front of them once the steps are done.

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4. May 2009 by admin.

A couple weeks ago we planted a jane Magnolia tree in the front yard.  It still has some of the flowers on it, but the leaves are coming out now.

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4. May 2009 by admin.

Moxie loves the porch and soon heard the chirping birds outside!

but then all she could do was look…

so she took a load off and relaxed a little.

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19. April 2009 by admin.

We spent this morning working on a curtains and getting a system down for that.  We are using Steam-a-seam to fuse the hems together since neither of us knows how to sew and we don’t have a sewing machine.  We bought the fabric from Franklin Mill Store, which is a really nice fabric store with tons of current home decorator fabric.  The curtain rods are a wood with a walnut finish from JCPenney… great sales. :)  We’ve only finished two of the curtains, but I think it will start to go faster now.

I also finished the threshold for the exterior door, it turned out pretty nice.  We had to saw off the bottom of the door with the table saw to get clearance.  I’m not done with all of the moulding, but here is a quick shot of some of the quarter round.  I mixed two stains together to match the floor.  The quarter round was unfinished pine from Home Depot and installed with the nail gun.

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14. April 2009 by admin.

The next project we decided to work on was the side porch.  There was a lot of potential there but nothing was ever done to the space to make it really nice to be in.  There was some stained rubber backed carpet tiles and thats about it.  We decided to put a prefinished hardwood in, paint the walls, and make some curtains for all the windows.  There are windows going all the way around.  First was to reinforce the subloor planks with some 5/32″ plywood.

Then, we started looking at fabrics for the curtains, but none of these really caught our eye, except for Moxie’s?  Guess I’ll have to make another post of the fabric we ended up getting. :)  The non-winning ones, we got samples of from denverfabrics.com.

Under the windows we thought beadboard would look great especially with the age of the house.  I knew I would need a pneumatic finish nailer for some of the hardwood flooring so this was the perfect time to pick up a 16 gauge nailer to use with the beadboard paneling as well.  The nailer was awesome!  I used it for fastening the paneling and the chair rail that meets up against the window sill.  The nail holes were tiny and just a little joint compound and a quick sand over each one concealed the hole.  After some caulking in of a few open cracks, everything got primed.

Now, it really started transforming once the priming was done, we picked colors and applied it. The colors really play into the the colors in the fabric for the curtains.

Now it was time to install the flooring.  We went with a 3/4″ solid hardwood wide plank from Lumber Liquidators.  Its the Knob Hill Birch, handscraped and in a dark stain.  We bought it about two weeks ago and it was sitting in our dining room getting acclimated to the humidity in our house.  Before installing a 15 lb roofing asphalt paper was layed down and stapled.  Then I put a chalk line on the floor against one wall to get a nice straght line for the first row of flooring.  After that I was able to put the rest of the flooring in today with an air floor nailer that I rented.  We really like how it turned out.  Next step is to fill in any nail holes, paint the heater covers, and install the mouldings around the outside.

I wonder what Moxie thinks of her new space?

Time to teach Moxie that she has to clean up for herself in the new porch.

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17. March 2009 by admin.

Boy, I got up off that chair for 2 seconds and Moxie just decides to take over.

“Allright, well I guess I made it up here, time to make myself at home.”

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17. March 2009 by admin.

I cooked this dish from Bon Appetit today for St. Patrick’s Day.   Our neighbor Mary also baked some Irish soda bread and brought us over a big chunk of it, yum!

After sauteing the eggplant.


The lamb then got a good dose of coarse salt and pepper then tossed with flour.  Then it was browned in olive oil.  Of course, Moxie got her share of fresh raw lamb and she loved it!

Here is everything simmering including onions, tomatoes, and lots of garlic.  The bottom of the pot was deglazed with a nice Veramonte Chardonnay.

Here is Mary’s soda bread with a 2005 Bordeaux (Chateau Poitevin Cru Bourgeois Medoc) that we had along with the Shepherd’s Pie.  A layer of mashed potatoes went over the top then got baked in the oven.

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6. March 2009 by admin.

Katie’s Dad had his retirement party this past weekend.  It was great to see some of his coworkers that he had worked with for a long time and to just hang out with the whole family.  Here are a few pics from the weekend.

Then a quick trip back home to Massachusetts, but before we left we got to spend some time with Dave, Sarah, and Oscar at IHOP!

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