Pushing the limits...

Fall is known for one thing in the Pacific Northwest: rain. Thankfully, this year we've been blessed with day after day of excellent weather. I know one thing for sure - it won't last forever. Come November 1st, the rain/flood season bears down.

Given my poor blog posting performance, I thought I'd take the time to put together a compiled list (mostly pictures) of the past months activities.

Let there be red - Chinese Red!

When we first picked the house colors, we went with a moss green, bramble wood brown, and terra cotta orange. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't force myself to like the orange. It just wasn't working for me. So... I went to the paint store and found the most striking color I could find -- Chinese Red. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

From The Making of a Craftsman Home

Scraping, scraping, scraping, and then more scraping.

I'll say one thing -- this paint doesn't fall off the house by itself.

From The Making of a Craftsman Home

DIRT!

Remember that 15 cubic yard truck load of dirt? Welcome to the new vegetable garden. Hard to believe that just 3 short months ago this was the driveway. Now that's what I call progress of the green type. Next year, I'll be planting lettuce, beets, squash, onions, leeks -- and more. Stay tuned.

From The Making of a Craftsman Home

Water?

Just two years ago our property was completely flat and the water had nowhere to go. Now, there's barely a flat spot remaining -- plus, there are two wetland water retention pools and a drainage creek that directs water over to the stream that runs alongside our property. In addition, I'm installing new gutter downspouts that carry the water away from the foundation. All of this will either work really well, or fail miserably and we'll float away. Hard to say when you live on a former wetland.

From The Making of a Craftsman Home

From The Making of a Craftsman Home

More Trees

At one time, we had two trees in the backyard. Now we've got so many trees that each time we count them -- we come up with a different number. There is somewhere between 20 and 24 trees in the backyard of varying sizes. Recently, I planted an Oregon Ash and several Quaking Aspens. Both of these trees are native to the Northwest. The Oregon Ash loves water and can put up with wet feet. I planted it on the edge of the wetland water retention pool. The Quaking Aspens also love water, and are found in valleys along rivers in the Northwest.

From The Making of a Craftsman Home

There is light at the end of the tunnel -- between dusk and dawn that is

In our spare time, we installed a set of low-voltage craftsman style lights. I really dislike outdoor solar lights since the batteries fail after about the first year, and then they aren't very bright. Therefore, I hardwired a set of low voltage lights.

From The Making of a Craftsman Home

What's next?

Let's face it -- the good weather is about the end. My guesstimate is that the rain will start in the next couple of weeks. From here on out, it's all about the inside of the house.

From concrete to green strip

Building a green strip down the south-side of our house in place of the existing driveway has been a huge project in the making. First step was to remove approximately 1500 sq. feet of concrete (32 tons total), followed by weeks of raking up rocks and broken concrete bits. I knew going into this project that it would be a huge job, but I think we still under estimated the effort involved. As with all large projects, this one is paying off big in personal satisfaction.

This weekend was one of the final steps in the transformation: hauling in fresh top soil that will eventually become the substrate for the vegetable garden and orchard. There is still a lot of preparation before the project is complete, but it's coming together nicely. We're racing against mother nature to try and finish this project before the rains start falling and the fall/winter season begins pouring on us. I'm looking forward to the calm months ahead.

The goal is to have a small scale edible garden in place by spring 2010. We're closing in quickly on successfully reaching our goal.

From 2009 Landscape

Another action packed weekend painting the house

More house painting. Will we ever get done? We're beginning to question our decision to start so late in the year. Anyhow... we're 'rounding the corner'. Soon, we'll be on the south side of the house where it's most damaged from the elements.

This week, we're trying a product by MinMax that claims to harden wood so that you can fill it, and then paint over it. We've got some rain/water damage on our window sills in desperate need of repair.

Looks like the blog is going to be pretty boring this summer unless you enjoy endless updates on house painting :-(

From The Making of a Craftsman Home

An arbor in an afternoon

I woke up today and had no idea which project to work on. So, I decided to start a new one that I could finish in a day.

I built this arbor over the main pathway into the backyard that will eventually support vines. Not sure exactly what I'm going to plant, but I'm thinking kiwi and/or hops.

Project supplies:

11 1"x1"x8' for the top grid
2 2"x4"x8' for the side horizontal sections
4 4"x4"x8' vertical posts

I used all pressure treated lumber, but not the stuff with the visible perforations on the surface. I just think that lumber looks bad, but it would probably last longer.

First, I used post-hole diggers to set the poles, and then I attached the horizontal 2x4 members. I cut the ends at an 11 degree angle to give it a craftsman look. Then, I placed the grid members on top. All said and told, it took about 4 hours to complete. Not a bad days work, and it looks great. Can't wait to see if with vines growing on it!

From 2009 Landscape

From 2009 Landscape

Busy Summer

Just because we haven't blogged in two months doesn't mean we haven't accomplished anything this year! Here are a few of the projects we've been working on in June/July...

Repaint the house. Step 1: remove 100 years worth of paint. Not fun.

From 2009 Landscape

From 2009 Landscape

Build a waterfall. We decided to take a day off from working on the house and put together a waterfall for our pond. Turned out okay. It's not done, but here are some pictures in its current state.

From 2009 Landscape

From 2009 Landscape

We mostly finished the Central Park landscaping. I dug the wetland areas, laid culvert pipe, and installed plants. 95% of the plants in Central Park are Washington natives. Some of the plants are: Dogwood, Nootka Rose, Evergreen Huckleberry, Oregon Grape, Vine Maple, Western White Pine, Salal, Redtwig Dogwood, Oceanspray, Indian Plum, and Goats Beard. Non natives include, Contorted Willow and Gunnera. It looks anemic in the pictures, but once this grows in it'll be a forest. In a few years, I'll also layer in more shade tolerant plants such as deer and sword ferns. Once one winter passes and I get a chance to track how the wetlands flood, I'll also be planting cattail.

From 2009 Landscape

In this picture, you're looking at the primary wetland pool, which runs under the bridge and fills the secondary pool. From this pool the water will run into a culvert and out the stream that runs alongside our property.

From 2009 Landscape

And now, the mother of all projects. You may remember the driveway removal project. Well, after two days with a bobcat and a dump truck, most of the concrete is gone. HURRAY!

From 2009 Landscape

This was definitely a project I thought would never end. Now, we've opened 1400 square feet of ground where we'll install a vegetable garden and an orchard. As you can see, I've got a serious amount of gravel to pick up, and then I've got to start building soil. Here comes the sheet mulch!

As you can see it's been a productive summer! Stay tuned for more.

Sometimes a garden requires heavy equipment

Our garden and orchard, both of which we had planned out before we closed on this house, have been languishing under a huge swath of concrete. Today I finally got the bobcat rented and bounced around smash smash smashing it all up.


Let me just say this is possibly the best $400 I've ever spent. Last year I spent most of the summer breaking out two sections of the driveway "Medieval Style" with a big lever and a big hammer. Last fall we got a quote of $3600 to remove the other 60ft and then waffled when the economy tanked. This machine did the work in 5ish hours. Not only was it easy and quick, this thing is like being on a rollercoaster with a 50cal wrecker bar on the front. Completely awesome! I was a little sad when I ran out of driveway.

On the other pile though, we now have a metric buttload of concrete chunks to get rid of. The craigslist ad is up, but I think it could take all summer to get people to take it.

Landscape April 2009 Progress

Before:

If February 2009, we had this pile of dirt delivered. You may recall that the truck got stuck.

From 2009 Landscape

... and, we got some rock delivered.

From 2009 Landscape

After:

Well, a lot can happen in three months, and it's not because the weather has cooperated.

The rock pile now looks a bit smaller.

From 2009 Landscape

The dirt pile isn't so much a pile anymore. The idea for this bridge came to me as I was building out the landscape stage.

From 2009 Landscape

As you can see here, I'm using a lot of the rock to build up retaining walls. Pretty nice considering just two years ago you couldn't iron this space any flatter.

From 2009 Landscape

And for a top down view. This is a picture of the landscape taken from the upstairs window.

From 2009 Landscape

... and a lot more to come! Happy spring.