Looking ahead to winter

Despite stifling temperatures these past couple weeks we knew we needed to turn the log pile into a stacked wood pile. The logs had been aging (very unattractively) next to the porch for about six months. That's good but they won't fully dry until they've been split and appropriately stacked. Leave them like this too long and you run the risk of them getting punky (that's a technical term) and rotten.

Logs!

So we rented a hydraulic log splitter and got to work.

Oooh, hydraulics

We got the splitter for 4 hours and spent every bit of it lifting, splitting, and throwing the wood into a big pile. 

Steady progress

A big pile of wood that's been sitting out for six months attracts lots of really creepy stuff. Ants, spiders, and one really cool snake skin (no sign of the actual snake).

I want hazard pay for this

Ta dah!

We didn't quite get done before Chris had to return the splitter. But the leftovers were fairly small and he made quick work of them with the manual splitter, i.e. the maul.

Leftovers

We stacked it all up and figure we ended up with 3+ full cord of wood. Pretty good. We wanted to put away at least 4 cord for this winter's use and we still have a bunch of trees down and drying that need to be bucked for the fall splitting session.  By the time we're done we'll easily have six cord split and stacked which gives us a nice margin of error plus gets next season's wood drying in advance.

Unfortunately there was a stack casualty when we got up the next morning. Looks like something tried to climb the pile and it tipped over. Argh. Hate re-doing work.

Who climbed the wood pile?!?

On the other hand, when the day starts this beautifully it takes quite a while to even notice any damage.

Just gorgeous

Drywalling the garage

We got the garage all cleaned out (the porch is, unfortunately, once again destroyed *sigh*) and set up to install the drywall.

We uncovered the garage door openings so we'd have light and to allow greater air flow. Did you realize that curing concrete floors give off a tremendous amount of moisture? Despite a moisture barrier underneath them? Well, they do. And 88% humidity sure doesn't help matters. 

Left bay holds hobby truck; right is the big bay

Once the doors were open we backed in the truck full of drywall.

Should be all we need. Well, may need more coffee.

Then we used my brother's handy-dandy drywall lift to start putting up the ceiling. Holy cow! Love the drywall lift!

Just crank that baby right up there

We picked a corner and got to work. We'd purchased a couple of rolling scaffolds when we did the framing so we had a great platform from which to work. We also have a drywall screw gun which is awesome.

Scaffold, lift, scaffold. Whew!

 It went fairly quickly and the large bay is now completely covered.

Moving right along there

We have lots of outlets and light boxes as this will be a working garage, not just a place to store cars. Which means we had to cut out around all those little blue boxes. Another handy tool was the Rotozip with a drywall bit. Really made quick work of it all. We did make sure we measured and marked first - the professionals seem to be able to "pop" the sheet and then cut cleanly around the box, but we found it best to mark it out.

Using the "pop" method. Once.

Chris is now taping and mudding. We'll do the smaller bay once this one is completed. Didn't want to move the hobby truck too many times and this seemed the most efficient way to go about the whole thing.

Yet more road work

We've been steadily working to correct our road / driveway issues. We'd made great progress on the road and thought we were doing good on the driveway too. Then it rained. And rained. And rained some more. 

The small culvert got blocked. And the water got backed up. And the driveway was in serious danger of just washing out and down the hill where all that fill would be really wasted. 

There is not supposed to be a pond here...

Chris heroically went in to attempt finding the culvert opening. 

Nope, didn't find it

So we used the tractor to dig the whole thing out (it was totally plugged by the way and we also mushed it when we finally got hold of it).

Creating a ditch in the driveway

And the water just rushed right out.

Not supposed to be a stream here either

Took quite a while for the water level to recede enough to continue work.

See the high water mark on the tree?

 Then we brought in new pipe.

Pipe delivery!

We laid a sand bed, joined the two pipes, and filled in with rock and fines. 

Partially filled; decorative rock in bucket

We used some of our large collection of decorative rock (please, no snickering) to hide the inlet and outlet pipe ends. So far so good!

Cleverly disguised

The final touches are to fill in a few low spots with smallish rocks and then bring in several more loads of fines to put a top coat on the driveway.

Porch and Garage

I designed the house with a massive covered porch. Actually a combination carport and porch. It runs the entire length of the southern side of the structure so it's 64 feet long and 12 feet deep. Totally awesome. Or, it will be. At the moment it's an absolute mess because it's full of stuff we just dumped there for storage until we could get stuff organized. 

I didn't take pictures of the entire porch, but suffice it to say, the whole thing looked much like this. Wood, boxes, parts and equipment all jumbled together in a big mess.

Carport full of "stuff"

And the garage looks like this:

Just jammed in there

Dumped every which way

Impossible to find or use anything

Oh! The shame! Actually, this is what happens when you have to store your stuff before you're actually done with the storage area. But it's now time to drywall the garage and that means all this stuff has to come out. And when it's put back, it'll be organized so that Chris has a functioning workshop. So that we can do more building projects! Yeah!

So far, this is the progress we've made. And it feels great. The porch has been cleaned off and set up for work space / storage space. The garage is partly emptied and the stuff is now organized on the porch (as opposed to just thrown into the space).

Floor space!

Middle of porch is functional

Sitting area is actually usable

We can actually sit out on the porch without threading our way through boxes and debris! Hooray! We'll keep working on clearing out the garage so we can put up the drywall. That's a major step, a gateway project if you will, that enables us to start finish work on the exterior (space to set up saws, tools, protected space for staining and cutting) as well as make progress on inside stuff (doorways, trim, closets!). And we'll be sure to take time to sit and enjoy the non-working end of the porch as well.

Now that's a garden!

We're working on clearing and filling the future big garden but there is no way that space will be ready for plants this year. Heck, given how much fill I'm going to have to add coupled with the state that soil will likely be in (read, not fertile), it will likely be two years before it's ready for a crop. I'll spend this year getting it flat and next year amending the soil. And that's okay - I'm not in a hurry. I did however want some darn tomatoes this year. And basil. Basil is a key summer ingredient around here. 

So we decided to build a small box garden. Just big enough for six tomato plants. Plus two small container gardens for basil. Six basil plants will just barely provide enough, but it'll do for this year.

We got some landscape timbers, picked a spot, and knocked it together fairly quickly.

Chris's explaining posture (remember?)  

Dry fitting

We bored holes in the timbers and used rebar to pin them together and into the ground. A few big nails here and there kept the layers together too.

Big nails for the layers

Rebar for the corners

We filled the box with a combination of ground soil, potting soil, and 10-10-10 fertilizer to bring it up to snuff. Then I added tomato starts and some marigolds, put the basil containers on either end, and voila! instant garden.

Growing well

Had a few miscalculations. No gutters on the house yet so it's getting too much rain runoff from the roof. Should have moved it further out. But since the gutters will be up before summer is over, I just rigged a cover (not shown) that deflects most of the runoff. Not pretty, but it's working. I've also got a bit more shade on the west end of the box than I'd expected. Full southern exposure but one big tree is casting afternoon shade so the last plant in the row is a bit stunted. Oh well, it's only for this year anyway.

I can hardly wait for fresh tomatoes. I didn't wait on the basil. As soon as the plants had a good bush I snipped them back and made pesto. Ate it that night with fresh-baked bread and lettuce "stolen" from my Dad's garden. Awesome!

Look how cute!

We went to the Round Lake Antique Festival this past weekend and found this little cutie.

An old kitchen trash can that I'm going to put in the downstairs bathroom. Love the little feet!

The interior can has a handle and you lift the whole thing out to dump the trash. Love a covered trash can in the guest bath. I just think it looks a little neater. Particularly since we don't have any cabinetry in there where you can normally hide the can.

Foot pedal lifts lid

It works great and just needs a little cleaning up. Great find!

Traveling - DC

Attended a wedding in DC and decided to head down the week before so we could do the tourist bit. Didn't want to pay DC hotel prices for the entire week (definitely stayed in the wedding hotel for the weekend though) so we got a campsite at Greenbelt State Park. Only a few miles from the metro so we could ride into the city each day. Love the metro!

The only time we saw sunshine

It rained every single night (and most days). The tent leaked. There was a tornado. We still had fun.

We saw weird art:

Oddly, this wasn't a Far Side model

 We saw installation art designed to make a point:

The National Mall - was that trash?

No. It was bones.

Over three weekends, volunteers laid out "bones" representing the people killed through genocide. Unfortunately the volunteers cleaning up weren't able to specify which genocide it represented. And how incredibly sad that there are so many to pick from that we didn't immediately just know.

We saw great woodworking:

In the West Wing of National Gallery

 We saw really big doors:

Do they even open???

And we saw family, had beer, and ate really good food.

Beer flight!

 We also got an idea or two for some art at home:

Get the welder out Honey!

Had a good time and enjoyed seeing Chris's family.