Erosion control

As previously mentioned, snow melt in the spring can really do a number on your roads. To correct the swamp that our driveway becomes during mud season we installed a culvert. Works great in normal years. But in really heavy snow years, like this past one, the spring melt simply overwhelms the ground's ability to absorb water and you get this primordial ooze that eats boots, cars, and small animals. 

So we decided to create a low spot. Actually we decided to enhance a naturally occurring low spot so that it could gather water and more slowly feed the culverts and ditches designed to manage the flow.

We started here:

Pretty!

This spot is just to the right of the driveway, on the upper slope. There is a naturally occurring ridge here that drops off on the other side.

The other side

We wanted to open this up so that it could handle more water before flowing out to the culvert.

Entrance to culvert

The culvert is clearly visible from the driveway which is why I'd prettied it up. More gussying is needed as it's now overgrown with beech leaves (those things grow like weeds).

While we had the excavator here we asked him to do a big of digging in there - we couldn't get in with the tractor because it's too soupy. 

Jurassic Park?

A bit of work with the bucket and he'd broadened the low area and dug down to clay. It immediately starting filling.

Pretty ugly at this point

It took about half a day for the water level to rise this much. Since this is not actually a pond - we didn't install a liner or anything - the water will continue to leach into the ground and as the winter thaw and spring rains subside, the area will dry out. That's okay. The main point was that it would be deep enough and wide enough to handle a variety of water levels.

Filling up

The culvert entrance is off stage right. Water is already flowing to it and we will build a rock wall to help control silt that will want to travel into it.

Speaking of silt...all that great soil - I mean, really great multiple years of naturally composted soil - will be put to good use.

There is another pile this big behind me!

It will be used to fill in the low area left by the old camp. And that area has already been designated my future garden site. Looks like I've already made a good start on amending the soil. Woot!

It will be low no more

Traveling - The Vineyard

We took a break from working on the house to do a bit of traveling. Got a good deal on a place in Martha's Vineyard and headed down with Dad and Matt. This was just mid-May so not everything was open for the season yet, but that gave us a glimpse at what all goes into getting a "summer place" up and running. The answer? An amazing number of workers doing an incredible amount of old fashioned work - fixing fences, repairing cedar shingles and roofs, hauling out old stuff and putting in new. A regular bee hive of activity and it was cool to see. The views were pretty darn good too!

From the ferry ride in

Edgartown by the Chappaquiddick ferry 

On the balcony

Sunshine, wine, and Matt

Gay Head Cliff's

Edgartown lighthouse

In addition to wandering around and seeing the sights (mainly beaches, lighthouses, art galleries, and nifty homes) we got some house related ideas and gorged on seafood.

I loved this driveway design. And although brick wouldn't work for our place, we do have rocks. Lots and lots of big Adirondack rocks. So I'm thinking this would be great for the southern side of the house where we don't typically drive but need to sometimes. Grass verge next to the porch to catch sand and dirt before stepping up on the porch, with stone tracks for tractor/truck/car loading, grass in between and on the opposite side before dropping down the big hill. Hmmm, pretty nifty thought.

Incredible driveway design

Chris seemed to think we needed a big lounging guy in the yard, but I told him that's why we have a hammock.

Goofing off

A gate at Mytoi garden really caught my eye. We need something to keep the deer out of the future garden. The sides of this gate are actually bamboo feed through a hole-pierced bar. Simple, good looking in a rustic kind of way, and effective.

Gate at Mytoi garden

Close up!

Seafood is, as you would imagine, widely available and lots of restaurants have signature dishes. We ate at plenty of those but for lunch we went straight to the source. The fish markets are great and they'll cook up some catch of the day for you. We had the two-for-one mussels special and it was incredible and fed all four of us. Easily.

Huge plates of mussels; discard box in middle

And I finally tried raw oysters. I love food. I love seafood. I never got the point of putting a slimy cold oyster into my mouth.

Definite look of trepidation

First one went down with lemon and cocktail sauce. Surprisingly non-slimy and a good mouth feel. But all I could taste was the condiments. So the second was straight. Was it good? Yes. Would I pay that much money per oyster anywhere but at the fish market where they caught them that day? No. These won't be on my restaurant got-to-have list any time soon.

 A good trip overall with some very cold weather and some great food.

Road maintenance

We have a long driveway. A very, very long driveway. And it feeds off a private road. A very, very long private road. Great for privacy; horrible for road maintenance. Add to this the fact that the driveway started life as a skidder trail (those honking big machines used to drag timber out of the forest during logging) and you can see that we have work ahead of us for years to come.

When we bought the property oh those many years ago we spent time and money improving the road. It worked and we've been able to drive in pretty consistently (the first year the road was so bad we had to bring materials onto the site with a wheelbarrow to get through the mud). Then while we were building last fall we hit some freeze/thaw cycles right when big, heavy trucks needed to come through. They toasted the road.

Just some of the damage

We couldn't fix it right away because we had to get through spring thaw (mud season) and wait for the weight restriction to be lifted from the main roads (limited to 4 tons during aforementioned mud season).

First we put in a new culvert at the main road. Actually, this time we paid for it to be done. Since we needed the excavator and dump trucks anyway, it made sense to have them do the work. 

Goes pretty quick when the equipment is this big. When Chris and I did the driveway culvert back in 2008, it took us all day and we got completely coated in mud (think face-plant comedy routine). Took these guys about an hour. And they were able to correct the grading at the entrance. Looks much better now.

New culvert at road

New grading

Then they started work on the road. They had to smooth it, dig drainage ditches next to it to eliminate sponging, and dig up and replace an old culvert that wasn't quite doing its job.

Repairing the old culvert

Then we had them bring in rocky fill so that we could begin laying a road base up by the house. The main driveway just needed smoothing and fines, so that went pretty quickly and we've done most of the smoothing work there ourselves. We've also started culling rocks from up by the house and moving them to the culvert entrance/exits and the ditches. That should help keep the proper shapes.

The house driveway was in bad shape (Remember when the Nat Grid truck got stuck?) so we needed to completely rebuild that road bed. Step one is some basic grading, which we did with our tractor.

Step two is to bring in some surprisingly rocky fill.

Big rocks!

This looked so wrong when he dumped it out. But those big rocks push to the edges of the road and help keep the dirt in place. If you just have sand or fines it washes away in the first big rain.

So we used the tractor again and slowly spread out the fill. Once it's in place it looks more reasonable but I still wouldn't want to drive a car over it. 

All spread out

We've got two more loads coming of decreasing rock mix. Fines on top will smooth it out and it should hold. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

Pantry lights

Last summer I was trolling the internet and found a ceiling light at IKEA that I just loved. Loved enough that I altered the lighting plan for the pantry by taking out the center ceiling fixture and changing the layout to accommodate two pendant type lights instead. In my imagination, they looked great and would provide nice ambient illumination for that room. As a reminder, the pantry is 12 x 14 and will act as storage, office, and craft/sewing room. Lot going on that room.

Roll forward six months and it's time to actually make an IKEA run (it's 2.5 hours away so you tend to plan a whole trip for it) and buy my lights! Except when we get down there, I hate them. They are too big. Too clumsy. Too darn wrong. Argh.

Now what?

Fortunately IKEA has a pretty darn good lighting selection and I found these that I liked just as much as the ones in my imagination.

Isn't that sweet?

Chris did the actual installation and they went up fairly quickly. Not a huge fan of IKEA instruction sheets - sometimes they assume a bit too much - but the lights went up just fine. (Still have a hot mess in the pantry with all the packing boxes).

Fine tuning the install

The only issue we had was with the drywall cutout for the fixture. It was a wee bit too wide and showed a gap on the second light.

Can you see the drywall gap on the far light?

So we had to take down the light, patch the drywall, touchup the paint, and then reinstall the light. DIY never goes quite as quickly as you think it will.

Now the lights are up and I can unpack at night! Hmmm, not sure that's really an improvement.

Finished downstairs bathroom

Admittedly, I'm biased, but the bathroom came out great. Great! We can now forget all the effort that went into applying and cleaning up 136 square feet of charcoal grout and just appreciate the results.

An unbelievable mess

Once the tile was done, I realized that painting the walls above the tile would be potentially messy as all get out. So I taped up a bunch of plastic (this is where Chris vacated the room - he has no patience for this stuff) and started painting. I used some leftover white paint and added a bit of the charcoal that went on the main walls to get a soft grey. 

Too soft. Darkened it up and applied another coat. Nope, still too light. Gave another go and now have a nice grey (although slightly on the blue end of the color spectrum) above the tile.

Third times the charm

It was also finally warm enough to spray paint the assembled sink base. Here it is in all its skeletal beauty.

Sink base looking weird

Finished tile

We added some nice towel hooks that I got from Lowe's. The shower is long enough that the towels can hang inside without getting wet. Which means you can dry off without opening the curtain and therefor get to keep all that wonderful heat inside with you.

More finished tile

Then we needed to hang the shampoo/soap bar. Picked up a set from IKEA and we used the infamous blue tape method to get a level mark.

Blue tape is level, just pick your spot to drill.

Drilling through tile sucks. Nerve-wracking because you don't want to crack the tile and hard because, hey, it's tile. After this Chris swore he was going to buy some good tile bits. I held him to it and went directly to Home Depot. When we get to the upstairs bathroom, we'll be ready!

Drilling...

But the finished bar looks nice. 

Just add soap

We hung an antique mirror opposite the shower (those are the two shower windows you see reflected).

Bad reflections

 And went with a framed chalkboard for over the sink. Kitchy? Yup. So worth it. The sink base isn't quite done. The two shelves left & right will be finished and raised up nearly level with the sink. But we're waiting on a couple of nicer slabs from some of the trees on the property (they have to dry before we use them). For now a couple of cutoffs from the scrap pile are working fine.

Partially completed sink

We also don't have a door. Or trim. But those are coming soon. We do have pretty hooks and I found a neat place to put some of the art we've collected over the years.

Hmmm, need that door...

And we're back!

We've been MIA for a little while and although I swore I wouldn't apologize every time I disappear for a bit, I do think an explanation is warranted this time.

This is why I've been remiss in my blogging:

The culprit

We began trying to get satellite internet in early April. The less-than-competent installer who came out used his broken compass to approximate the satellite location and identified the many trees that needed to be cut in order to get a view of the southern sky.

Now, we knew we'd have to cut trees. We purposely selected an antennae site that would track over the  future garden so that the trees would not come down in vain. 

This is the future site after much clearing though with much more clearing needed. In process so to speak. Note Chris there to the right - those are very tall trees.

Still more trees need to come down

We took down the indicated trees and asked the installer to come out again to do a final check as we didn't want to take down more than required. He finally showed up and indicated that we cut the wrong trees (?!?) and we needed to go much further to the right. Huh?

Time is passing because we have to call LA in order to schedule each visit - and sometimes he just doesn't show. Can you tell I'm annoyed by all this?

Getting there...

We clear a bunch more trees. And call again. And thanks be, we get a different installer. Who uses his handy-dandy iPhone ap to find the satellite and says "you didn't have to go all the way over there - the link is just past that group of trees on the left." The left!!!

15 years of clear sight to satellite

So, despite a bit of bitterness (ahem), we now have internet and I can begin to post in the lighthearted and slightly informative manner that you've all come to expect. Rant over.

And what have you accomplished lately?

We're at the stage in several projects where it feels like not much is getting done. The downstairs bathroom is still the priority but each step seems to require down time: lay tile - let it cure; grout - let it dry; seal the grout - let it cure.

To keep on track and not flail around like we're growing in DIY, we created an "April" list. Whenever we have a bit of downtime, we check the list and make sure we're working on one of those things, not something random.

Some things on the list are big: downstairs bathroom; build upstairs storage area. Some are small: hang candelabra over dining table; hang pantry lights; etc. It's working for us (except mud season forced us to add "repair road" to the list).

So the last couple days while the sealant was curing we've:
1. Taped the sink base so that I could spray paint the pipe (have to wait for the weather to get over 50. Heck, at this point I'm hoping it gets over 40 soon).
2. Hung the pantry lights
3. Repaired drywall around switch covers and pipes
4. Unpacked more of the pantry stuff
5. Installed a twin bed in the pantry (that'll make more sense later, trust me)
6. Moved a storage cabinet out of the Nest and into the kitchen
7. Worked on repairing the water-logged road
8. Read a couple books (gotta take some downtime too, ya know)
9. Applied a finish coat of paint to the bathroom walls

Tonight I'm making spaghetti sauce, opening a bottle of red wine, and enjoying the fact that it's finally stopped raining/snowing.