Calm before the spring storm....

Calm before the spring storm....

May 10th  -- A snow storm is predicted for tomorrow with between 3 and 8 inches of snow.  Really?  The warm spring so far sounded too good to be true.  Besides preparing for the pending storm, the house continues to inch toward completion.

I have been looking forward to the return of Eric, the floor refinisher guy.  He is a very pleasant and nice guy who did an amazing job on the new hardwood floors.  Today he is scheduled to refinish the floors on the upper-level sitting room and front bedroom/office.  Those rooms are shown in these photos:

BEFORE:

 The floors in the foyer and living room will also be refinished.

BEFORE:

Before Eric started, we had to semi-dismantle the computer desk and hutch in my office and we moved it into the closet outside the second bathroom.

The day before I had "sealed" as many doorways as I could that were adjacent to the rooms where the floors will be refinished.

Here are a few side-by-side comparison photos that really don't do justice to showing what a skilled craftsman Eric is:

Before:                                                                     During:

Before:                                                                           During:

 

Here are a few more "during" photos:

In the meantime, I tried to take advantage of the clam weather before the storm to erect the trellis, shown here.

I used three pieces of 10' 1/2" steel electrical conduit for the uprights; two rounded corners and a "T" to join the two 5' pieces.  I first pounded 1/2" rebar spikes that were 2 feet long into the ground and then set the uprights over the rebar.  I also secured the trellis to the chain link fence.  When I was done, the trellis was very solid and is not going anywhere.  

The trellis will provide a privacy screen between my neighbor's dining room windows and my patio and a view into the dining room and guest suite.

I will weave wire on the uprights so that foliage -- to be determined later -- will grow up the trellis to eventually become a living privacy screen.  In the meantime, I purchased some laminated burlap and a grommet kit and I will hang burlap panels from the trellis.  The laminated burlap will not block light into my neighbor's windows.

After I finished setting up the trellis, I decided to work on tidying up the greenhouse and doing some weather-proofing, especially since it will snow tomorrow and I have already moved some recently purchased plants into the greenhouse.

 I used some leftover flagstone to make a little walkway into the greenhouse.

 I purchased a piece of hard foam insulation that had a heat reflector surface on one side -- the piece was about 36" by 25".  My primary goal was to position the insulation so as to block the predicted cold and drafty air from entering the greenhouse around the window well that one of the greenhouse walls bisects.

You can see here that I cut various sized pieces and "jammed" them in to ward off cold drafts.

I also jammed some leftover bricks under the threshold of the greenhouse door.  When I have a chance I will buy a can of foam insulation and will spray that stuff in between the bricks and the foam insulation in the window well  to make a weather-tighter greenhouse.

By the end of the day the rain had started...hard to believe that this rain will turn into snow overnight.  I only hope that the typical wet spring snow doesn't damage the dogwood tree that is in full, glorious bloom,

Closer and closer, but not there yet...

Closer and closer, but not there yet....

May 5th to 8th -- The landscaper came back to install the drip/sprinkler heads in the raised beds.  Each bed has corner sprayers that are adjustable and a center spray, also adjustable.

The flagstone patio is really looking great, especially since I've moved the gas grill.

There was a thunder and lighting storm last night with hail, so I moved some of the plants that I've already purchased, but haven't planted yet into the greenhouse -- in this photo you can see  the white standards that will hold the wire shelves for the greenhouse -- eventually they will get installed so I'll have shelving on the south facing greenhouse window.

The fabricator called to say that the last of the granite was being delivered and would be installed today.  Here is the granite counter top for the second upstairs bathroom.

I also had them cut a removable piece of granite to place over the small sink in the kitchen when I want to use that for a working space.

Here is the last of the granite installed on the extra vanity that is now in the basement for the old gas cook top that came out of my previous kitchen.  The burner grills and caps will be positioned on the cook top once the pipe for the gas connection is made.  I now need to get the plumber to come back to install this gas line and to install the faucet and toilet in the second upstairs bathroom.

This will be the future center of my foray into home brewing with the cook top, sink, and refrigerator that is waiting to be filled with my own micro-brew!

A good kind of tired....

A good kind of tired....

May 3rd & 4th -- I spent this weekend in the yard...not lounging but slaving away.  The goal was to set the wooden raise bed frames into the ground by digging so that the corner stakes of the frames would be underground 3-4" permitting the beds to rest on the ground so that I wouldn't lose soil.   Well, that was the plan.  It turned out that just like my old house, nothing was square.  The ground was uneven, even after it was "leveled" and filled with pea gravel and the raised bed frames are not square because several of the boards were warped.  Nevertheless, after all that digging to set the frames, I also ended up relocating the composter before I actually got around to hauling the "planter's mix" to the beds.  Needless to say, I slept extremely well Saturday night after being in the yard from about 10:00 am to 7:00 pm and I am anticipating another good night of sleep after being in the yard today from 9:30 am to 5:00 pm.

The main task today was moving the mountain of "planter's mix" to the raised beds.

After about 3 hours, I realized that I needed to take some photos...so here is the delivered soil after 3 hours of work.  I would shovel the soil into a 5 gallon bucket, attach the bucket to a handy "magna cart" so that I could wheel the cart from the back of the garage and then pull it up the stairs through the gate in the rear fence to whichever raised bed I wanted to fill -- all five of them.

Here is Mt Planter's Mix after about three hours of labor.....

And here it what it looked like when I decided to quit at the end of the day.  I lost count of the number of trips I made with my 5 gallon bucket.  Let me just say that both my back and arms concur that it was a ginormous number of trips.

Here is one of the raised beds, filled with planter's mix and mulch, but I decided to remove the mulch because I want to use all of the planter's mix.  You can also see the irrigation hose, because the landscaper will be back tomorrow afternoon to install the nozzles.  I need to figure out how I am going to rototill these beds with the irrigation hose!

I ended up relocating the composter and using the compost in some of the raised beds and pulling out the old turf that the landscaper removed to compost.  Now I have my black composter and a steel garbage can with no bottom as my two composters along the north side of the house, as shown below.

Here is where the composter used to be...near the south fence by the edge of the garage and along the little wooden deck I built several years ago.

By the end of the day on Sunday, you can see here that I not only filled the five raised beds, but I had to move a pile of mulch from one of the 8 by 8 beds to the corner of the backyard.  I'll put the mulch in the beds, but after the irrigation is complete tomorrow.

I also moved a couple of wheelbarrow loads of the planter's mix to a little planting bed in between the front privacy fence and the patio of the south side deck.  I need to split a bunch of daylilies and will transplant them into this flower bed.

I noticed that along the south side of the patio, in an existing flower bed, the hostas are coming up.

 Some lily of the valley are also coming up

And the periwinkle ground cover has flowered

 Here is the view from the porch off the master bedroom as I look out over the fruits of my labor while I am sipping a cold beer, after a physically taxing weekend.  Yeah, but it is a good kind of tired! 


 I know I will sleep well tonight.