Spring begins

All over the garden there are flower buds just waiting to blossom. I love watching everything burst back into life It's one of my favorite times of year!






Red Easter Lillies, a gift from my mother's garden a year ago. Every day they get an inch taller.






The little fence keeps the dogs from trampling the flowers. I may move them to a safer spot soon.





My yellow climbing rose that only gave me about 3 flowers last year. Let's hope it tops that this year...or it's out.





The new white climbing roses they ordered for me at Repotted. I can't wait to see the blooms for the first time!





Same type of rose, other side of the patio. It's destined to climb and arch over the patio, raining white petals down on people.






The red climbing rose in the fence next to the driveway.




The honeysuckle flowers are about the explode onto the scene!



Strawberries are ripening too. They are SO DELICIOUS.



The new Ladybanks roses Elizabeth at repotted roccomended was the first thing to bloom. It might replace the other yellow rose bush next to it.



Beneath the yellow climbing roses, some wild bulbs I transplanted from the yard into the garden are starting to bloom but promise a lot more to come.

Perhaps that's why I love this part so much, it's the mixture of natural potential and nurturing care and a solid promise of much more goodness to come

The door fence

We're putting a fence across the top of our driveway and replacing the hideous old fences around the back to create a courtyard you can access through the kitchen door. It will also include the new brick paved patio we made last month.

We were going around to salvage yards looking for cool inexpensive wood when we saw all the old doors. The doors are basically a great big solid piece of very old very hard wood that has a cool look. Perfect!

We got a great deal on 26 doors and have found more in trash piles since then. We only need a few more to have enough to complete it.



They'll take a lot of scraping, sanding, painting etc to be ready to weather the next decade outdoors. Marco's been working hard at it.


The first task of construction was to do the front section across the driveway. We needs to dig 2' holes through concrete. Luckily Marco's uncle had a sledge hammer and a post hole digger.


Never again will my mini be parked at the top part of the driveway like that. That part of the driveway is going to be inside the courtyard and the new location of patio furniture and a fire pit!


Of course any project at my house would be incomplete without finding something unexpected. About a foot down in this hole under the driveway he dug up a brick that exactly matches the ones used on my house. Marco put all the posts in last week with the help of our neighbor Louis while I was finishing my stuff for the new Salvage House Pocket Boutique inside Zola's Everyday Vintage.



But once that was done I got to paint and prime the doors and fill in the holes with caulk and foam.


We can't have water seeping in and rotting our doors so we're sealing them up as best we can. After the foam hardened I sliced it off even, put a layer of caulking on, and painted it closed.



And then they finally got around to putting the doors up!!






It still needs a second coat of paint and more doors but it's starting to look great already!!



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Random things dug up

Add this to the list of unusual items found while doing normal work around the house.






Digging out a hole for a new climbing rose I hit something metal and thought it was a cast iron pipe. It was a cast iron pan buried 6 inches deep about a foot away from the porch.

I LOVE HAVING AN OLD HOUSE. You never know what you'll find next! I need to do a post on all our unexpected finds.

Remember when I discovered a hose faucet under three inches of dirt? The stalinist drawing on the back of a wood panel in the cabinets? Oh, or the buried sidewalk by the back patio! The plastic bags of sod under the grass...
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Chicken Coop Update!

This is about where we left off last time. Since then we only added some paint. Then we didn't do a thing for a few months. Amanda and I both have busy schedules.

Anyway, weekend before last we got together and decided to get the roof on.





We chose clear plastic because we heard chickens like light and the area is already well shaded. We cut the pieces to overlap and screwed them down with these special screws that have smooshy washers that seal the hole that the screw makes.





Finally! Someone took a photo of me! Oh, except you can't tell it's me.





I got the job of cutting the roof because of all my time spent with scissors. It's really tough stuff to cut, always about to crack and split, but I think I did a pretty good job.





They're going to have a great view.






Then we started adding the perches. We made them out of a couple of the many branches taken down recently.





And last but not least, the nesting boxes had to be built inside.











We added decorative bumpy wavy wood at the top of the door opening. It's cute and the door will close against it. (It's supposed to be for the wavy plastic roof but didn't fit right, so we made it purely decorative) We also put it on top of the walls between the nesting boxes. Toby actually really liked the finished interior, sniffing and looking around when I put him in as a joke.

Next is the doors and hinges, as well as the wire fence for their yard. Oh, and the walkway up to their door too.

Amanda named our coop the "Four Seasons Chicken Resort" We'll welcome our first chicken guests in the spring. Can't wait!

Marco said to me in a mocking tone "chicken resort?! Where's the pool?" So I think I'm going to give the chickens a beautifully tiled puddle too. Perhaps this summer for when it gets hot. This is going to be so fun.




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Bricks

I've become a bit obsessed with bricks.

I've decided I want to pave a section of our front yard for a parking area...and why not do the the back patio area too. That way Lady can run around the soon to be courtyard and not create a mud pit.

What I found out after getting excited about paving both these areas is that bricks are expensive. I estimated I needed at least 1,300 and they're normally $.25-$1 each, which doesn't seem like much until multiplied by 1,300. So I decided I'd keep a lookout for old brick piles here and there and collect them. (let me know if you have some or see some!)

Then I found the jackpot. It got me my first 400 or so bricks.

The old Alamo Motel being torn down had a big pile of bricks and wire and concrete and general debris in amongst the bulldozers and dump trucks. After assuring myself I was not being insane I drove up onto the destruction site, asked the dump truck driver if I could "take a few bricks for my garden," and filled the mini truck. The guy kept saying "now don't hurt yourself!" He had no idea who he was talking to. And I wasn't even in impractical girly shoes. I was wearing my boots!





That's 163 bricks.

A few days later Marco and I went back for more.











This pile was much smaller then the original one I picked bricks from, but it was all bricks so it was easier.





You can see where the bricks used to all be, where they're being torn off the wall.






We had to stop loading when I noticed the car was riding really really low. Compare:





Normal tire to wheel well clearance in the front






Tire about the touch the top of the wheel well in the back! We drove really slow and avoided potholes all the way home.

That load got about 180 bricks.

It took few days of work but we got the back patio laid.
Here's the yard before, with a futon couch frame out there in quite the useless messy area.












This is a pot that someone set down probably 10 years ago and forgot. Now the little plant in that pot has completely grown through the bottom with huge roots going into the ground and a trunk so big it's busting the plastic open. There's two of these side by side. We tore the old pot off the other one and will get this one off soon too.



First we had to dig out the grass and gravel and dirt, then lay the bricks down, then fill the cracks with dirt.



After a couple days working a couple hours each day we got it almost done. I decided that instead of filling the whole area with bricks (which would mean finding more because we were running out) that we would end it with a curve and leave space got plants and grass.

After about 6 hours of work total, and a few good helpers, it's done. I don't seem to have a photo of the finished thing though, and everything outside is covered with and inch of ice and 6 inches of snow right now so as soon as it melts I'll take a photo and put it up here. Suffice to say, it's beautiful.

Now we just need about a thousand more bricks and we can do the front.

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How do you Pick a Colour for the Windows?

My beautiful house is painted with the same all over white trim that's used on most red brick houses. It's cliche and boring, and that simply will not do. I've been looking at other houses collecting ideas and obsessing over what colours to use for months.

I've noticed that the best looking historic houses have three colours, and use two in the windows.


This one really shows the power of a darker colour in the window frame to improve even the bland colour palette of off white windows on red brick.

On a detour through Kessler Park on my way home from Home Depot I found this red brick house with it's almost black blue trim and pops of stone. I love it.

It's unique without being flashy. It has a sophisticated country mansion sort of feel to it. Warm and rich; thick on the senses rich.

But how could I incorporate both the simplicity of the very dark blue trim and the well established superiority of having two colours on the window?

After weeks of wondering and pondering I read a comment online that said one way to incorporate more colours into a historic exterior while keeping it cohesive is use a darker or lighter shade of the same hue. BRILLIANT!!
So I decided to make the window's main trim and the awning a dark blue and accent the window frame with a dark red that is a similar but richer shade of the brick colour.

This book is how you get an exact brick colour. Well, this and bring in a brick. They generally hide these books behind the counter and you have to ask for them. They show ALL the colours, and it's a lot more than the selection of square paint chips on the wall.
I ended up after a number of paint samples deciding on the colours in the right side of this photo, the really dark blue and the dark brick red. It looks even darker from a distance. Now I just have to wait for the weather to get nice again so I can strip off the old paint and caulk, replace any rotted wood, recaulk, prime, and paint the windows one by one. Should be fun! Fun in an exhausting yet rewarding kind of way.