Garden Spot

Kelly has wanted a garden at every house we have owned so far and so far I have let her down on the last three. It was time to make that change.

My Neighbor Bob was wanting to start construction at his place so we came up with a plan to get an excavator out there. My contacts didn't work out so well so Bob suggested renting a backhoe instead. To make a long story short, that's exactly what we did and three of us ended up splitting the rental. We spent the better part of three days excavating for Bob's house and shop, then I started on our garden spot. The plan was to make a rock retaining wall and then fill it with topsoil.

I gathered all the rock I could at Bob's while he was running the backhoe. Kelly and I stacked it up pretty quickly but it was really easy to tip over once it got over about 15' long so we used the backhoe to move all the boulders we had into the wall line. That helped it a lot. Then we filled in the gaps. Kelly took the new 4-wheeler and snowmobile trailer and gathered more rock around the land. I used the backhoe to gather rock and mine topsoil.

Once we saw how rocky the soil we had was we called to get a price on topsoil. It was almost $400 a truck!! Yeah right!! I'm too tight to spend that kind of dough on dirt so we started mining it again. The girls would ride with me for an hour at a time. I ended up making about 60 trips from the bottom of the hill to the garden spot and I burned about 20 gallons of diesel making it happen but it's done now. Enjoy the pics.

Somehow we got started without taking any good before pictures.














With all of the tractor work done it was time to start tilling. That took some time to arrange since we don't own a tiller. My In-Law's donated two to the cause. One needed some work and the other was a "Mantis" tiller that is an awesome machine for making the seed rows. My folks ended up giving us their old tiller in the hopes that we could fix it and use it. When they quite using it we were all under the impression that the motor was shot. It was stored under their steps for the better part of 10 years without an air cleaner or spark plug in it. I picked up a plug, poured a little oil on top of the cylinder and hoped for the best. I tried to start it the next day and on the first pull that old briggs fired off and we were in business.

Kelly did all the hard work though. She tilled and raked rocks for over a week. These pictures will give you some idea of how many rocks were in that "topsoil" that I mined. She's still cussing me. After the majority of the rocks were gone she hauled a load of manure in from the local feedlot. After shoveling it all out she tilled at least twice more. Then I got to do some fencing. 6' tall woven wire. The posts were 8' tall so starting them was interesting. I think I'll go for the shorter ones when we fence the rest of the land.

To say the least the garden has taken off. These pictures were taken this morning. It takes some water to keep it all going the right direction but I think that we are going to have some excellent produce this fall.

Tree Stand...er Tree House

A few weeks ago, Pete and Sandy came out for a night and the girls (their 2, our 4) all wanted a fort. Pete and I did our best to stack up some logs, firewood, and some other misc. building materials to make them a fort. We decided it was time to make it happen. We had a ton of scrap materials from the house so I started gathering it all up and tried to sketch out a plan. In the end I just started throwing things together.

Here's the start. I got the beam attached across the two trees, a simple square platform framed, diagonal bracing installed, and Kelsey is attaching the flooring which is leftover material from the ceiling.

And here we are taking lunch...Got to get some walls put up so the kids can enjoy this.

Now there's a wall or two. Also made a walkway out of a tree that I didn't want standing anymore. Emily is trying it out.

Here's the view from out front of the treehouse.


A look down the log walkway.




Now it's time to install the roof. As per usual, if there is anything to be done with power tools, wood, and beer, my buddy Pete has to get involved. I think we installed the roof in record time cause there are only two pictures of us actually working. I think we drank the beer in record time too. Fun Day! Thanks Pete!

Master Bath Shower Enclosure

Today the master bathroom shower enclosure get's checked off the list. The guys from American Glass came out and installed the $1500+ glass and frame in about 2 hours. It turned out great as the pictures below show.

The finished product:

Getting started. The frame must be plumb on the door side and square to the other.


The glass enclosure starts to take shape.


Almost ready for the door

And here's how it looks from the master bedroom:

Looks pretty fancy with the tile and jacuzzi tub. Time for a beer.

Crown Moulding--Thanks to Pete and Sandy

I am truely lucky to have the caliber of friends that I do. When I started working at Nye on B crew I ended up working with a guy that I had not seen in years. Pete and his wife quickly became friends and drinking buddies. The Old Chicago beer and shot tours will forever stand as evidence of this.

When Pete heard that I had crown moulding to do he loaded up the family and his very fancy saw and made the hours drive to our house. The trim turned out very fancy so thank you Pete and Sandy. There is no way I could have done it without you.





And to further spruce up the place Kelly and I decided to hang up the saw given to us by my folks. It has an oil painting farm scene on it that is really fancy.



A little better detail of the saw.


And to give credit where credit is Due. Thanks Mom. You should have stuck with the painting.

More Trim--Thanks to Butch and Kelly

With rates at an all time low, Kelly and I set a goal of getting the place re-financed at the lowest rate we could get. When we finally locked at 4.875 the clock started ticking. We would have to get another appraisal and not really knowing what the market was doing we figured we had better have the place looking good. My saving grace is the family. My ever vigilant father-in-law Butch, jumped in the truck and came out to help. Over the course of 4 days we managed to knock out a ton of trim work. Kelly probably had the biggest list of all, which involved getting ahead of the mess that 6 people can make in a huge house. Add on top of that, the mess I can make with air tools, beer cans, and 5 helpers, she had her hands full. Thanks Kelly.

Day one we cleaned up all of the outside areas which included raking and shoveling a truckload of bark from the splitter, moving lumber piles, insulated/chinked windows to be trimmed, hung durarock around wood stove, installed smoke detectors, and we started trimming out the upper living room windows.

Day two we trimmed out 13 windows, 2 doorways, and an attic access.

Day three we trimmed out the stairway, installed crown moulding with Pete, and did a bunch of cabinetry trim work such as kick boards and filler pieces.

Day four we cleaned up and started to recover. The appraiser showed up and gave us the two thumbs up.

Here's a shot of the living room from the front door. From here you can see most of the windows out front with the jambs and cedar trim done. You can also see the crown moulding on the far left wall has been done.


As you step into the kitchen you can now see all of the windows and the fireplace.


Another couple of steps and you can now see the door out to the front deck.


And here is a good look at the door to the front deck. It shows off neat the cedar trim is. It's got a ton of character and looks very nice with the logs.


Kelly and Sandy also managed to get our tv mounted with the adjustable wall mount. It looks pretty sweet hanging up there instead of on the little table we had sitting there before.

Master Bath Trim and Dining Room Window

After taking a few weeks to recover from our Mexican vacation, we got back after it for a day or two. This 4-on 4-off schedule is nice for resting a getting some things done on the house.

The project for the week was to get the master bath trim done. This involved trimming a door jamb to the correct width for the fancy knotty pine door, building extension jambs for the bathroom windows, and then deciding just how to trim everything out. I decided to rip all of the trim down to get even more out of each piece. This helped me stretch what I had so I could finish the crown trim around the top of the walls, the mid trim between sheet rock and wall boards, office(toilet room) door trim, and both windows in the bathroom. Turned out pretty good for an amateur.

Now it's time for the glass shower enclosure. Hopefully the glass company will show up this week to get it all done.







While I had the tools out I also finished up the dining room window. The trim really makes a difference. Next week I'll tackle the big windows out front. Hopefully my trim supply will last.