The afternoon/weekend project over the past few weeks has been remodeling the old bedroom of my oldest brother. Before, it was just piled with junk and rendered completely useless. The closest was torn apart to fix a leak from the adjacent bathroom, carpet was stained from years of living, and the room just had a scent that’s hard to describe from being closed up for the last nearly 10 years. Sure, the room caused some blow-ups, arguments, and hurt feelings, but it was way past time.
A slight preview can be seen here, but pictures absolutely do it no justice at all. There is new window trim around a window that is painted to match the doors and other trip. Crown molding, and base board will finish the room off, something that it’s always lacked. We based the entire color-scheme off of a Behr pain brochure from Home Depot, and managed to pick out the perfect carpet color the other night at Lowe’s, which ended up being a score. Someone custom ordered a piece of carpet that was the perfect size for what we needed, yet returned it without even picking it up. It was even the exact color we were looking for! So a piece of carpet that should have been $395, we got for $200.
A number of years ago, the county ran new waterlines throughout the entire county. Doing so, left a low spot in our front yard that runs across the top of where the new waterline was placed. It didn’t look terrible, but you could always tell it was low after mowing the yard. A dump truck load of top soil, and about 50 plugs of transplanted centipede grass later, it should look great again once the grass takes over. Blisters? You bet.
I’m working on painting the door to a bedroom, but am changing the door from being stained on both sides to having a painted color on the inside of the room. I’ve been able to find out where to paint the actual door, but the door jamb not so much. So far, I’ve painted to A in the image below, but I’m not sure if that is correct or not. I’m thinking B is where the color change should stop, but it could even need to go as far as C to look correct. Anyone know where is the correct place to properly stop the color change?
We’re taking our fencing project to the next level by carrying it around to the backside of the house. Here we’ll be replacing the chain-link and adding quite a bit of privacy in the process. It’s just something we’re doing when the notion strikes, and as long as it’s not too hot or too mosquito-y out to work on it. So far so good though. These pictures show about 15-20% complete of what will take probably up into the Fall to get complete. The last pictures shows what we’re going from, and we’re planning on finishing up the corner nicely where my Mom left off quite a few years ago. I’m sure I’ll post pictures of it when we get to it.
Harvesting the hive was such an awesome experience. We decided to go ahead and see what we could get out of 3 bars that had become entangled with comb instead of 3 straight ones. We wanted to do this mostly so that we could place them back in and keep a regular check on them to keep them building the comb on single bars instead of spanning across 2 or more bars. The yield was 2 quarts this time. I’m excited to do it again, and hopefully this time we’ll get to see what a single full bar will yield by itself.
Our water heater decided to die on Sunday, and with as much as I love warm/hot showers, that’s one thing that I want to fix ASAP when it goes out. We all ended up having to take cold, brrr, showers this morning, which was more than enough of a kick in the rear to change it out this evening. Changing it wasn’t bad at all. The worst part was having to drain it—which took quite a while, but everything else was easy as ever. Now, we have hot water again, thankfully.
We’ve been done for about a week now with this section, and a section that wrapped around our air conditioning units. Over all, we put up about 90ft worth over the last couple of months, while just working on it for a few hours here and a few hours there. These pictures are of the section at the end of our lot/subdivision and block the view of the carpet plant that’s to the south side of the subdivision.
Our plans are to completely replace the chain-link fence around the backyard with this same cedar fence, for added privacy and much better looks. There’s just something about a chain-link fence that’s taken a few hits from fallen trees over the years that just doesn’t look very nice anymore.
I’m spending my Saturday raking and mowing up a bazillion leaves in both our yard and my grandma’s.
We’ve managed to talk Dad into letting us build a cedar fence on the side of the garage where it’s been needed for years. It turned out so well, that we’re going to build an 80ft long fence up the end of our lot (also the end of the subdivision) to block the view of the carpet plan at the south end, as well as replace the 5ft chain-link fence around the back yard with a new 6ft cedar. It’s going to take a while, but if it turns out as well as this first section has, it’s going to be a huge improvement.
New section of cedar fence
The gate going into the backyard has been in need of some work for a while. My parents originally used treated wood for the bracing part, which worked great for probably the last 10 years, but time and weather has caused it to warp up and drag across the concrete when opening it. So this afternoon we’ve rebuilt the gate using all cedar wood and screws instead of nails. This baby shuts so easily now, and with a little time to let the weather color it, will blend in and look awesome. Next up is replacing the rails that are between the posts along the rest of the fence that is also treated.
Old gate made with treated wood
The world bursts at the seams with people ready to tell you you’re not good enough. On occasion, some may be correct. But do not do their work for them. Seek any job; ask anyone out; pursue any goal. Don’t take it personally when they say “no” — they may not be smart enough to say “yes.”
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