One year and three days, but who's counting?

One year and three days, but who's counting?

May 31st --  It is officially over one year since this project has started, but by early next week the rest of any new home improvements will officially be done outside of my home remodel contract.
  
There are four things left on the punch list that the finish carpenter will tackle tomorrow morning, plus he is going to do two things for me that were not on the list -- connect the gas cook top in the basement and build a small shelf for the master bathroom.

The painter promised to come on Monday to complete the interior and exterior painting.

The contractor will be here on Tuesday to pick put the remaining construction debris/left over materials, which I officially moved off the deck and piled up for him to take --- hint, hint!.  

The new refrigerator should be delivered on Tuesday and that blog post will be devoted to the resolution of the refrigerator debacle!

Most of the stuff that was on the deck wrapped in a blue tarp was extra interior trim and mill work, which I am storing on the rafters in the garage, as shown below.  Just when I thought that it would not be possible to get anything else in my garage, well..here you go.  I need to be taking things that have been stored in the garage out of the garage, and here I am literally filling the garage to the rafters!

However, once I got all that stuff off of the deck, I was able to hose it down and bring out my patio furniture.  

I am getting closer and closer to when I'll enjoy my morning cafe latte and newspaper on the deck while enjoying the warmth of the morning sun.

I also got my vegetable garden planted and this was a challenge since I had a new space to plant and new raised beds.  It look some time figuring out, and this year will no doubt be an experiment.,  

I decided to plant corn in the two 4 by 8' beds.

This bed will be used next year as a cold frame bed with  a few windows I saved so that I can have early salad greens and snap peas, but for now there are zukes, patty pan, and acorn squash in this bed.

One of the 8 by 8' raised bed has cukes (ready to climb up the trellis), basil, Japanese and Italian eggplant, 5 different types of bell peppers (green, yellow, orange, red), kale, Swiss chard, beets, three bean salad (yellow, green, and purple bush beans that I mix up and plant together), elephant garlic and shallots. 

The other 8 by 8' bed is devoted to 9 tomato plants (e.g., Better Boy, Early Girl, Mister Stripey Heirloom, Roma, Yellow Pear, Grape, Beefsteak, Sweet 100 cherry, and Juliet -- a roma-grape hybrid) and one tomatillo plant.  This is the bed with the tall stakes shown here.

And, here is the bird's eye view of the garden from the cover porch off the master bedroom!

I also rearranged the bed in the guest suite and it looks great.  I need to get the protective covering off the replaced translucent library door, but haven't had time yet.

I did get a few more pieces of furniture and boxes of clothes out of the garage.  This rocker will eventually go into the reading nook in the master bedroom, but It is looking pretty good these days as the only piece of furniture in the upper level sitting room.