Posts made in June, 2009

Rainbow of "Things"

Posted by Lindsay on Jun 30, 2009 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

Rainbow of "Things"

Originally uploaded by lmlcphotos

This picture makes me happy. I snapped it when we were driving back home after swimming in the lake to cool off! After the backyard incident.

Too Tired To Blog…

Posted by Lindsay on Jun 30, 2009 in DIY, Exterior, gardening, Landscaping | 0 comments

Okay, a little dramatic, but it was ridiculously hard work shoveling 7 tons of gravel around in our backyard last weekend!  I’m just now getting the use of my forearms back.    It’s a start to our ugly, ugly backyard, but now all we need to do is 1) get the rest of the gravel out of here (they sent way, way, way too much…grr…) – we’re being creative with what to do with it.  2) plant grass in the dirt areas.  3) build a new fence all around. 4) paint the ugly metal shop/shed and the trim on the house.  5) build a flat deck off the back door.  It will all probably happen in that order.  If we ever get it done this summer!  Now before I cramp up again, here is the backyard transformation…in progress…

This is back in March when Glenn cut the tree down…

And this is recently when a jungle of weeds sprouted out of nowhere!

See – no tree!  But the backyard was very scary for awhile…

Our new best friend, the roto-tiller.  It took 2 entire days to till up the backyard and get all of the rocks/weeds/old grass out of the soil.

Almost done with that step!

Final pile of rocks we pulled out of the yard – not counting the ones we threw over the fence.    That was my job…picking up rocks.  I kept them, because you never know where you could use them!  They’re nice rocks…right?

The 7 tons of “clean rock” the trucking company delivered.  Oh. My. Gosh.  Glancing at this photo I cringe at how ugly the shop is.  But it’s sturdy and a nice workspace inside.  We’re going to paint it black.  Yes, black.  I love black buildings, and since our house is brick I need to get my black building fix in somehow!

The easy part is done…putting down the weed blocker and paver path throughout the backyard.  This breaks it up into 3 sections of grass.  Well, future grass.

This would have been a catastrophe!  The wheelbarrow broke on the 3rd or 4th gravel load of the day – !!!  But Glenn was able to fix it…phew!  That’s what we get for using rusty old tools that came with the house!

The gravel is almost completely spread, and did we even make a dent??  I can’t tell.  And notice that they piled it in front of the shop door.  I had to climb through the window on the left to get the roll of weed blocker out!  It would have been alright if they had sent THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF GRAVEL!  I trusted them.  I gave them the square footage I wanted to cover and he converted it into tons…sweet.  I’d say they sent AT LEAST 2 TONS too much!

What the heck are we supposed to do with it all?!?!?  And where are we supposed to put it!?!?!?  And how will it get there???  I really don’t want to think about it anymore…and I have a lovely pile of rock to sift out of the dirt before we plant.  I need “Curb Appeal” or some other landscaping HGTV show to come to my house with a team.  ASAP!

You might notice in this picture that the path is wider than the original “weed-blocker and paver” shot above…yeah, we widened it to use more gravel.  Nice.  Any tips on where to use it all??  Want to come to my house and take a scoop??  Or a truckload?? Please…??

I don't know how I did it…

Posted by Lindsay on Jun 26, 2009 in Bathroom, Decor, flowers | 4 comments

…but my birthday orchid (thanks, Drea!) from 2008 is thriving!  I’ve posted a couple times (here and here) on how I was waiting for it to bloom, and now almost every single bud has opened up!  And this has happened in just a month!!!  I’ve been keeping him (her?) in the bathroom and I love walking in every day and seeing the gorgeous blooms in the window!  I think the little guy loves his steamy home there.

The secret is patience. I didn’t mind having a pot with just leaves in it all winter. I waited and waited and waited for it to re-grow a stem, because I got a tip to cut the old stem at the base and I guess it worked!

Isn’t she (he?) GORGEOUS! I think I need at least 9 more of these all over my house…

The White (and Green) Stripes

Posted by Lindsay on Jun 24, 2009 in Color Therapy Thursdays, Decor, Dining Room, DIY | 6 comments

I love our striped dining room wall.  I think my favorite part about it is that it was super easy to do and it was our first attempt at painting stripes.  Plus it turned out great!  My husband had the genius idea of using the green from the kitchen (I thought we’d use the gray from the living room to tie it in) because they are two different finishes of paint and because our dining room chairs have green in them.  The ivory is a satin, and the green is a semi-gloss = instant wow factor…like wallpaper.  But without the glue.

So what is the secret to painting stripes?  The answer is math…and gravity.  I knew I wanted an odd number of stripes so that the ivory was at each end.  I measured the length of the wall and did a little figuring.  I took the length of the wall in inches, and divided it by 7.  This gave me about 16.75″ per stripe so I decided to up the width of the green stripes to an even 17″ so that they are wider than the ivory.  17″ x 4 = 68″.  I then took the width of the wall, subtracted 68″ and this gave me the total width of the ivory stripes, which I then divided by 5 and now I knew how wide each ivory stripe would be (10″ in the center, and the corner ones are a little narrower but you can’t even tell!).

I’m not sure how others lay out their stripes with tape, but this is how we did it!

First step:  Paint the entire wall the lighter color (in our case – an ivory called Acadia White by Benjamin Moore in the satin finish).

Before I show you the next step, here is the little journey from where we started to where it is today.  Here is my husband, Glenn, on the walk-through with the real estate agent.  Notice the wagon wheel light fixture and nasty carpet in the dining area!

Here it is (below) with the carpet ripped out, deciding which flooring to use.  We chose the darker laminate.

Okay, now fast forward a little more and here we are.

Step Two: find the center of the wall and make a small mark.  We did all the marks at the ceiling because we used a weighted string to make sure our tape was straight.

Step Three: measure half the width of your center stripe to the left and right of your center mark.  Our center stripe is green, which is 17 inches, so we measured 8.5″ either way.  Make your mark at the ceiling.  We then made more marks alternating 10″ and 17″.

Step four: Tap a small nail or brad into your mark, attaching a string that is as tall as the wall, weighting it (we used a heavy screw).  This will give you a perfectly vertical line to tape against. If you’re working as a team, one person can hold the string while the other tapes, or you can tap another brad into the other end to hold your string tight while you tape.

Step five: Tape along your string.  Make sure your tape is taped down in the base color (ivory) so that you’re painting in the correct stripes.  It can get a little confusing!

Step six: Fill in any nail holes that you made with putty and then paint your colored stripes!  We used “Misted Fern” in a semi-gloss by Benjamin Moore.  Touch up the base color where the holes were if needed.  I used a tiny paintbrush for touch-ups near the stripes.  We also always make sure to remove the tape as soon as possible for the crispest line, and you don’t want it to dry too much so it doesn’t peel off with the tape.  We were pleasantly surprised with how crisp the lines were (taping trim can be messy sometimes – ugh!), even with a textured wall.

Step seven: Stand back and admire your faux-wallpaper wall!  We were surprised at how easy it was, and how nice it turned out.  Sorry for the lack of “during” pictures, but we did it before I even started this blog!!  If I would have only known…

This is what it used to look like, before the new pendant and sideboard (below):

And here is what it looks like today!  Some of you are probably sick of me talking about my dining room, but it seems like such a huge impact using leftover paint, a $50 antique store sideboard, a discounted pendant lamp, and a free table and chair set!

Do any of you have a striped wall project (or any fancy painting project) you’d like to link us to?? I’d love to see it!  Thanks again for stopping by!

My Bedroom: Breezy and Bright

Posted by Lindsay on Jun 18, 2009 in Bedroom | 8 comments

Now that the weather has warmed up around here, we’ve actually been doing something that I don’t think we’ve done for 7 months — we’ve OPENED OUR WINDOWS!  And in our bedroom, we actually have a really nice view and a cool breeze that sneaks in at night.  It’s very peaceful and fresh.

Aaahhh…it’s so nice to get some fresh air in the house. And here in Likely we have great fresh air…that is unfortunately buzzing with mosquitoes more and more every day, but that is one of the only downsides of living in the country…that we can see, anyway.

The view out of the window behind our bed is the north view, which is so nice and green – that is our neighbor’s house and front yard, which is filled with some gorgeous apple trees. What else could you ask for?

Now for our next project before next winter: new windows. We currently have single pane aluminum windows in our room, Harper’s room, the bathroom, the office, the kitchen and the laundry room. 8 windows total, but we’re only replacing 5 of them right away. They loved to retain moisture and ice up last winter…and moisture on the windows = mold = bad news. But fortunately it’s easy to take care of and we’ve kept an eye on it and kept it clean. The projects never end, do they?