Happy, happy holidays! 

I am SOOOOO happy and I want to share that happiness with everyone! Not only have I finished our Christmas shopping a full week early, I also finished hauling the dirt for our back yard! Yay!

The railroad-tie retaining wall we put in was supposed to be a simple weekend project, cheap and easy to install by ourselves.

A couple of weekends into it and we realized that it wouldn't be done before the ground froze.  We needed help!  Enter our handyman, Kurt.  He had it cut and installed in a couple of days, the only complication being some of our dead men were too close to the surface 'cuz my husband miscalculated how many layers we'd need.  Fixing that added a couple hundred dollars to the bill.

A week or so ago I ordered more topsoil and started hauling wheelbarrow load after wheelbarrow load to the back yard. As the weather got colder, my dirt pile started to freeze and I was really worried that I wouldn't get it done in time. But Wisconsin weather is full of surprises and I had two lovely days this week to get it all hauled and spread. Now I can hit the ground running next spring and get the grass in right away. BONUS! It's also fun to walk along the top, pretending you are on a balance beam.

So close to being done....if only I had a magic wand!

As for my neighbor who recently ripped out his railroad-tie wall, his installation of a new patio, hot tub among the aspens, and rock retaining wall turned out gorgeous! His landscape design company did a meticulous job.

I like it so much that I've decided that when our retaining wall rots out down the road, we'll replace it with a rock wall, which will add nice visual continuity to the bit of woods we share with our neighbors.

My next small project is to make a fabric headboard for my bed. Right now I have a metal-and-wood headboard and footboard that I just never liked. Our bedroom isn't exactly spacious, due to the layout and a large patio door on one wall. A low, neutral headboard that fits under the window is hopefully going to add some much-needed visual space to that room.

I probably won't blog again until the headboard is done which I doubt I'll get to before Christmas, so here's wishing you and yours a really lovely holiday season!

If you look hard enough to the upper right corner you can see the neighbor's new rock wall....love it!

This is going to be a short blog.  Wisconsinites know that you don't ignore a warm November day.  If it's nice ya gotta be out there!  (No matter how trashed the house is!)   'Cuz soon enough it's "geez, it's bleeping cold" time.

Well, today started off being one of those balmy, beautiful days.   Then the rain came.  Doesn't look like it'll last for long though, so I've got a few minutes to quickly tell you about my fun find at our local garden center.

OK, so by now, you've noticed that we start projects but tend not to finish them.  So, we've got our powder room mostly, but not quite, done.  It needed a new light fixture, among other things.

Well, after toying with the idea of making our own and searching 1000s of fixtures online, I gave up looking for the "perfect" fixture and settled for one "that'll do."  Trust me; I had given up on even finding that!  Well, luckily, I found one and even luckier, I found it on sale, which always makes me happy.  We even lucked out a third time 'cuz we were expecting installation to be complicated.  The previous owners had installed their light fixture to the side of the vanity, which looked kind of silly.  We were expecting there to be a reason for it.  You know, a vent or something preventing installation over the center of the vanity.  Turns out not only was there no obstacle, there was even the metal extensions between the studs so that we didn't have to mess around with relocating the electrical connections for the fixture.  Yay!

So, we were lucky three times in this little venture.  Who would guess I'd get lucky one more time?  I did!  I was buying some bulbs at our garden center and while waiting in line at the checkout, I happened to glance at the wall above the register and there was a metal wall sculpture that would be PERFECT in the powder room. AND it was on sale too!  I couldn't believe my luck!

Well, I wasted no time in getting hubby to hang it.  Now I just have to find a towel ring and toilet paper dispenser that'll work...

A Railroad Tie Fiasco

You ever do something to save a few bucks only to find out that long-term you've just cost yourself even more time and money?

Well, let me tell you about our railroad tie fiasco...

So, you may remember that we had a concrete patio put in last spring and, although we love it, it made an already dangerously steep hill even steeper and the dirt was starting to move away from the patio, which once winter came, would crack it apart.  In addition, my kids have been complaining about not having a level, grassy area out back for playing and so we decided to solve both problems by putting in a retaining wall.

Almost halfway done with installing
the timbers; time for the deadmen!

With winter on its way, we needed to work fast.  Although I would have preferred a stone, or even landscape block, retaining wall, those didn't seem to fit our needs.  We needed something we could put in cheap and fast, with little skill level and by ourselves.  (We have to save our pennies for the basement remodel we've started.)  Both our next-door neighbors used railroad timbers in their retaining walls, and our yard has some too, so it seemed like a nice bit of landscaping continuity if we used railroad ties.  We figured they'd be fast, cheap and easy.  (We knew they wouldn't be pretty.)

Once we had a weekend available, we did some measuring and drove to Menard's to get the ties.  What a nightmare!  Railroad ties are so heavy, my husband and I can barely lift them.  They were also too heavy for our minivan. We had to split the load so it took multiple trips.

Crushed gravel for under the timbers.  

We knew we needed to dig out a couple of inches for a crushed gravel pad.  But after my father talked to us and we did some research on the 'net, we found out we also needed to put gravel behind the ties for drainage; Because the grade was so steep, digging turned out to be a major task and took several days instead of the couple of hours I originally figured.

Our "have it done in a weekend" project was now a multiple week project.  We ordered crushed gravel for underneath the timbers and #1 size gravel for behind them, delivered to the project site.  A convenient time-saver I highly recommend.

We put down the gravel pad, and started laying the first course of timbers, which was shockingly difficult. Not only do the timbers need to be level length-wise along the wall, they also need to be level (actually, leaning a bit towards the hill) cross-wise.  The timbers aren't cut precisely so we had to use string and stakes to get the level correct.  We also had to do some much deeper digging for one section of the gravel pad because the hill was steeper in one  spot than in another.  Another week went by.

Trying to spare tree roots was a major concern while digging;
it doubled the amount of time it took to dig out the trench

When my husband tried to hammer stakes into the timbers to keep them together, we were once again reminded of what a pain these railroad ties are.  The stakes couldn't get hammered in, even with using a sledge hammer.  Our drill just wasn't cut out for the job.  So, Craigslist was called into the effort and a week later we had a drill that could handle a 1/2" bit that is 13" long.  That solved the stake issue.

Another time-drainer: we found out cutting through those dense ties was close to impossible.  My husband resorted to using a chainsaw, but even that took more time than we thought it would.

It's now been over a month since we started the wall-from-Hades project. Yesterday we had a couple of hours (before it started raining) to lay down the 2nd and 3rd course of timbers, which we did.  Today my back hurts.  Those suckers are crazy heavy.  So much for "ease of installation."

Leveling the base was a job I left to my husband
with  his awesome math skills; I stuck to the grunt work

Since the timbers are too heavy for me to work on by myself, our available work time is severely limited.   We still have two more courses to go, as well as laying the deadmen, the drain pipe and backfilling with dirt. We are moving so slowly that after our efforts yesterday, my husband called our contractor and asked if he wanted to finish the wall for us.  So much for doing it ourselves to save money.

What's worse is that I chatted with both of my neighbors yesterday.  Turns out the one with all the railroad tie retaining walls (that we can see clearly from our back yard, just signed a contract to have them all ripped out and replace them with beautiful stone walls.  The other neighbor is also taking out his railroad ties and putting in landscaping block.  So much for visual continuity.

Ugh.

Carpet or Wood?

Hubby's arm is finally healed and we're back to the business of house-fixin'.   We didn't do much to the house over the summer but we did put in new carpeting in the living room.

Yay!  No more worn-out, crushed and stained carpeting!

We had been debating since we moved in on whether to put in carpet or wood flooring in the living room.   Wood flooring looks great but there's a comfort factor to carpet that is tough to beat.

While we were mired in our indecision, the existing carpeting, which was already bad when we bought the place, was getting worse and worse.  There were some HUGE stains in the dining area from the previous owners that even steam-cleaning and scrubbing with various chemicals wouldn't take out.

When some friends we hadn't seen in ten years wanted to visit this summer,  I decided replacing the carpeting was priority one.  We had less than two weeks before our company arrived.  There wasn't time to put in wood flooring.  It was even a scramble to find a place that could get carpeting ordered and installed that fast.  Luckily, the local flooring store where we had bought our kitchen flooring was able to do it in time.  The big hold-up in the process was, you guessed it, choosing a carpet.

I thought it'd be a no-brainer:  Go in.  Choose a color.  Do you want loop or non-loop?  Done.  Obviously, I had never bought carpet before.

We were more concerned with matching existing flooring
that would meet up with the carpet
than matching the walls, which I will probably
repaint at some point when I'm bored with the color.

I knew there were texture differences in carpet (aka berber vs. shag) but I didn't realize there were so many categories, different types of materials, backings and face weights.   After looking at our options, we chose a casual textured carpet, which wasn't quite as plush as I wanted but was very soft and not scratchy.  We also bought the more expensive waterproof pad.

I had intended on a basic beige carpet, perhaps with two different colors of beige threads.  But I couldn't find exactly what I wanted.  In the end, we went with a peppery colored carpet, Shaw's Down to Earth in Mixed Spice, which my husband was a little uneasy about since it's not very traditional.  For me, the main selling point was that it's supposedly good at hiding stains.  And it is!  (Actually, it's too good; our cat hurled up a hairball the other day and after I removed the gooey pile of fur, I had a hard time finding the stain so I could clean it.  I had to pat the carpet by hand to find where it was wet.  Ewww...)

Flecks of bright color sort of blend and fade
when you see the carpet as a whole

The weird thing about this multi-colored carpet is that from a distance you can't see all the colors.  It doesn't look like just one color, but you'd never guess there's yellow, red, blue and green threads in there, along with beiges and black, unless you get down and examine the threads closely.  It's definitely not a look for everyone but I think it'll be a good fit for our stain-prone family.

Anyhow, back to the install, the carpet was installed and mostly aired out by the time our guests arrived and I was so happy about that!

I've already had the...ahem...opportunity to clean spots from the carpet.  The latest was a Silly Putty incident, which I was able to get out of the carpet with some Goo Gone.  I was told that newer types of carpeting shouldn't be cleaned with detergent, just steam extraction, which means we'll really be putting our steam vac to the test.

The Next Big Thing

It's been a while since I've had anything to post.  After we had the concrete patio installed back in June, we started on the basement. It is currently unfinished but has lots of potential. 

We drew up a floor plan, chatted with our local building inspector, had our electrician come out to assess the situation and started talking to plumbers.  Our home was built in the wild and crazy days before building to code was a necessity and our basement is lacking in some basics.  Like plumbing....any kind of plumbing.  No sump, no drain, no anything.

Having the plumbers come out was informative.  One particularly impressive plumber pointed out several flaws in our first floor plumbing and also noticed some issues with the basement.  He was astonished to see that our furnace outputs its condensation directly to the outside, not to a sump.  He was even more astonished to hear that we haven't had an issue with it freezing in the winter.  (I suppose that's something we get to look forward to. )



See that black tube on the far wall?  That's where the water
goes when our softener is flushed out.  (Definetely not to code.)

Our water softener water is also dumped outside year-round.  We were told that typically people have that waste water enter their septic all year, but sometimes, people have it dumped outside, except for the winter when it is sent to the septic.  Again, the plumbers were puzzled that it hadn't frozen.  (I admit I felt rather foolish; I hadn't noticed the rubber tubing that leads to an outside wall and had just assumed that there was a floor drain.  Now I know why there is a continually wet patch in my back yard.) 

Anyhow, another question was what building materials should we use?  We had noticed that there had been water in the basement some time in the past and had several basement waterproofers come out to look at us.  Surprisingly, despite how bad I thought things were, none of them were particularly worried.  After talking with the professionals, reading books, talking to the building inspector and surfing hours and hours on the 'net, we've decided to hold off on any waterproofing work. 



The floor plan was pretty easy to work out;

all the living space will be where are windows/outside egress
and since there's already a fireplace installed,

it was simple to determine where the main entertainment area goes.



Seriously, just to find out whether we should use plastic sheeting on the walls took days to figure out.  Every source said something different...so confusing! After that, we had to choose studs and insulation.  My husband wanted to use normal wood studs and fiberglass insulation but I feel that keeping the basement mold- and mildew-free is a priority so we decided to try metal studs and foam board insulation.  Again, so much conflicting info out there I have no idea if it's the right thing to do or not.  I guess we'll find out.

We patched some small cracks in our concrete pad and concrete block walls that the waterproofers had pointed out, and put down some of the metal track for where the interior walls will go.  We didn't get far though. 

Hubby decided to get a little crazy at a party and rolled a go-kart, busting his elbow.  That resulted in surgery and a 6 week 'no lift, no strain' command.  It was going to cost about $500 to get a sump drilled and installed into our concrete floor so he wanted to do it himself, but now we need to wait until he's healed.  With our unexpected medical bills, we need to limit remodeling costs as much as we can, meaning no hiring of handymen to speed us on our way.  So basically, other than putting in a few studs and some insulation panels, we haven't done much.  Summer just isn't the best time for a massive project.  After all, that's what a long, boring winter is for, right? 

Efflorescence on the back wall indicates moisture coming through the concrete block.

Patio Ponderings

Ridding my yard of thousands of garlic mustard
plants ready to set seed is what I did in May....all of May. 
My back really hurts.

Hey all!  It's been a while since my last post.  I've been busting my tail to get all that evil-incarnate garlic mustard pulled before it sets seed, which means anything related to the house, including basic cleaning, has been pushed to the side.  No time to blog either.  ('til now.)

Still, the month of May wasn't a total loss.  There was one house project that is now mostly completed.  I managed to hire a contractor to put in a concrete patio under our deck.  And, despite all the rain we've had, the contractor managed to install it a couple of weeks earlier than expected.  It only took his crew two days to complete the patio, which was about 540 sq. ft.

Over the winter, I had toyed with the idea of putting in a patio myself but things have been so crazy I decided to hire out the job.  (So it'd get done in our lifetime.)

Overall, I'm very happy with how it turned out.  We had a terrible time with brambles, saplings and other plants growing right up to the basement door, making it almost impossible to get outside.  And even if you did want to wander among the thorny brambles, every time it rained, dirt splashed up into the door's track; gunking it up so badly you couldn't open it.

So, I'm glad we had that space paved.  However, there were a couple of issues, due mostly to my poor communication skills and lack of help-hiring experience.  I'm not complaining; just pointing out the mistakes I made so that others can learn from them.



Watch that last step; it's a doozy!

First, I had a perennial bed close to the house.  Most people wouldn't even notice it 'cuz our yard is basically a jungle. 

I moved most of the plants I thought might be 'dozed over, but I miscalculated how much room the skid loader would need.  So, since I never pointed out the perennial bed to the contractor, my GORGEOUS Roy Davidson pulmonarias, columbine and false solomon's seal plants were gone within minutes after they started working.  Waaaah! 

Second, when my contractor had quoted the job, he had made the statement that he was going to install the patio so we could walk right out from the basement door.  It just sounded like common sense to me.  (Of course we want to be able to walk out onto the patio from our door!)  I didn't think to question it.  Turns out I should have. 

As promised, they installed the patio almost flush with the basement door, resulting in a patio so high off the ground that I'm going to have to put in steps off the end of it in order to access the rest of the yard. Also, the bottom stair step is now only a couple of inches from the ground, which looks a bit weird.

Finally, my husband told me to be sure not to pay the contractor until I verified that they completed the job correctly (duh!) and <i>also</i> cleaned up everything.  Although I scrutinized their concrete work, I only eyeballed the cleanup effort.  So now our 2nd driveway has ruts in it that were only partially filled back in.  Oops!  Guess I should have worn my glasses.

I now have to figure out where to put steps
to the rest of the yard and also how to put in a
retaining wall that doesn't detract from the round bump-out

Despite these errors, the patio looks great and I love the rounded bump-out we added on the advice of the contractor.  I wouldn't have thought to go beyond the deck myself but it is a nice touch and makes the patio more usable. The only downside is that we have to make sure our cats don't attempt to jump down from the deck.  Before they would have landed on soft dirt and plants.  Now it'd be a bone-breaker.

A bit of fun with metallic paint

I thought the existing hallway was too bland

Augh! What have I done? I painted an accent wall in my hall today and I can't decide if I like it or hate it. Also, since I had some leftover paint I painted some trees on the other walls. 

Why did I do this, you ask? Well, maybe days and days of icy rain and cold has finally driven me mad. After waking up to another yucky gray day here in Wisconsin, I was looking for something to do that would shake away the blah's and anxiety I've been feeling the last couple of days. Voila! A trip to Menard's to pick up basement remodeling supplies and what do I see? Funky metallic paint on sale with a rebate too! Just the kind of fun, small project I needed.

We have a long, narrow hallway leading from the main living area to the bedrooms. The walls were painted a lovely cream color. Although I love the color, there's a boring element to the whole space that I just can't put a finger on. Sure, putting up some pictures or artwork is one way to make a space more interesting but the hall is such a tight squeeze that I'd rather keep it streamlined.

I read in one of my home decorating books that painting a darker color (or a vibrant interesting color) on the end wall of a long narrow space helps visually shorten and broaden the area. On our end wall, we had a nice mirror that I had bought a long time ago at one of those strange liquidator stores.  It looked good but didn't do enough to liven up the hall.

I recently moved the mirror to our garage entryway to help lighten up that dark corner and then looked for months for a similar mirror to put back in the hall but couldn't find one. I ended up buying a simple, unframed, beveled mirror that just looks too plain for such a plain space.

When I saw the Rustoleum Metallic Accents at the store, I figured that I could kill several birds at the same time by painting the hallway's end wall with some nice metallic paint: "framing" the new mirror, visually modifying the space and giving the area a bit of interest in one fell swoop!

Even with light from the bedrooms the hall is always dark
 and if all the doors are shut it's a cave

But what color? There were several that I really liked. It had to be a color that wasn't too dark, which was too bad because the color my husband and I liked the best was reddish brown "Warm Copper."

I first chose a light green but when I got it home I noticed the silvery hints in the color weren't what I wanted. I then chose "Soft Gold" which seemed like the right choice until I got it on the walls.

I don't usually tape off walls I'm painting but it was such a narrow space I ended up taping it all off. The instructions recommended rollers instead of brushes and they are right, it looks best rolled. The paint doesn't have very good coverage and so two coats were needed. In some spots I did three.

You can see how the metallic paint
shows every inconsistency in the wall's texture

Well, I don't know if I grabbed the wrong can of paint at the store but the color is not what I was expecting. "Soft Gold" is way darker and golder than I thought it would be (I guess that's why they sell those samples) and it's so metallic. I thought I'd like that effect but up close I noticed that it shows every flaw and texture variation in the wall, which isn't good because the hall's end wall has plenty of flaws.

I should have stopped there but then I painted some trees along the length of the two side walls.  I used painting tape and a level to make sure the trunks would be straight and that they would all be approx. the same height and width. 

The metallic paint catches the light giving them an interesting ombre' effect.  Still, I should have worked out what kind of tree I wanted to paint before I started.  Instead of beautiful airy saplings, I got something that looked stenciled and stiff (and suspiciously like something that would be stitched on a colonial embroidery sampler.)

So, the lessons I learned include the following: One, buy the paint sample first and try it before you buy the big can. Second, paint is always darker and more intense when massed on a wall versus the little paint chip. Thirdly, if your wall is flawed, metallic paint is probably not a good choice.  Oh and the last lesson, the little quart jars of paint are really tippy. (I knocked over the open jar twice and spilled at least half the paint on the tarp before I had even started painting.)

The one thing I thought turned out well was painting the light switch to match the accent wall. I spray-painted the switch and then I lightly sanded, brush-painted and textured the switchplate. Oh, and I should tell you that painting the end wall in a long room really does make the room seem wider and shorter. 

I guess I'll try to live with it for a while until my husband doesn't remember me buying the paint anymore.  Then, I'll either love the new look or I'll repaint the end wall with a cream color (non-metallic) a shade or two darker than the side walls, and either paint over the trees leaving the walls bare or try another image. Something more organic in form, like willows, grass, a swirling line of leaves or maybe just a wavy line.

Feel free to let me know what you think of the wall and trees and if I should undo what I did or keep it.