House Projects

In addition to the dining room, we've also made some home improvements elsewhere. And by "we", I mean 90% Craig. For the last five weeks or so, he has been out of work and getting so much done around our house. I LOVE having him home and, after seeing how productive he's been, I really wish we could afford to live on one income. It is SO much harder getting everything done at home when we're both working full time. But alas, the current economy and future goals we hold for our family are not afforded on one income. We're getting by for now and thankful that I carry our awesome health insurance, but next week Craig will be heading back into the work force in a new (and completely different) job. I'll update more as he gets settled.

In the meantime, here are some photo updates of our home thanks to Craig's handiwork.

These are actually back in July, at the point that only one tree had been taken down so far. You can see part of the trunk pieces sitting there. Actually, maybe you can't see them amidst all the weeds in that bed. Embarrassing. Just embarrassing. I know it looks like he was pulling weeds here, but in fact, I pulled all the weeds all around our house most recently.

A lot of the plants and trees are badly overgrown here too. I pruned most of them shortly after this.

Since then, both of the front ash trees shown have come down and it was a HUGE job to do it on our own. Thankfully, we had some friends help to get the trees down and then Craig and I did all the branch clean up.

Yuck. I have no idea how this got so bad. But it will not happen again.

When I mention here about digging up all the rocks around the trees, I'm talking about the hundreds (thousands?) of small rocks embedded in the dirt all around the stump. It's an awful job. But they had to be removed in order to grind the stumps.

The plan was to remove the peninsula bed and just leave a wide circle surrounding the buckeye tree.

Gross. But this is me hoeing the line Craig marked off for the area that will be removed. I then pulled all the weeds and we shoveled all the mulch into the bed around the buckeye tree before pulling up the mat below.

Will and Craig "working" together to form the new boundaries of the tree bed. Will got out his play drill and chainsaw tools from his uncles to help out. :)

And this picture is from this week. I didn't take a bunch but you can see the change and also that lots of the landscaping has been trimmed back. I'm bummed that buckeye trees shed their leaves so early and that they don't really even turn a pretty fall color before doing so. This is our only tree left with leaves - the rest are pines in the back - and it already looks wintery.

This past week, Craig rented a stump grinder and ground out all three stumps by himself. We split the cost of the rental with our friend Mike (who also had a stump to grind that day) so the cost savings was incredible compared to having someone do the work for us. We got all three stumps done for way less than what it would have cost to pay someone for ONE.

There was a LOT of saw dust that Craig had to shovel and haul back to our burn pile as well.

Since then, Craig and his dad hauled some dirt over to our house to fill in the craters and Craig planted grass seed. Hopefully, we'll see some growth soon.

On par with our habit of killing trees, this little pine doesn't seem to have survived the transplant. Poor thing. We'll have to get a pretty (flowering?) tree next spring in this spot.

On the bright side, another one of Craig's jobs recently has been to rework our plumbing a bit so that we can make use of the well (below our deck) and have hose access on both sides of our house to water our plants/grass and wash the cars for free. We actually use Oregon city water inside the house, but the well is handy and free outside!

Another big job that doesn't look exciting but that Craig is very pleased with is the replacement of a new (bigger) electrical box in the basement. I'm not sure if I'll say this correctly, but I think we had several switches on one circuit in the old box. This one allows one per, so that we can turn off just one part of the electricity as needed.

Next up: the deck.

We haven't painted the white spindles yet (maybe next spring) but Craig has been wanting to rebuild the deck steps and restain. I think the last time we gave the deck and spindles a fresh coat was when I was pregnant with Will. This poor structure gets the brunt of so much bad weather coming from the southwest since we're right beside an open field with no wind block. It shows.

Here you can see the old, curved steps coming down off the deck with no railing. We were beginning to question their sturdiness and Craig really wanted them to come down straight. He still hasn't built the railing yet, but the new steps and deck stain are done.

Done!

Might as well stain the front porch while he's at it. He rebuilt these steps too a few years back. Both look so much better.

And with some extra lumber, he framed a small area for my garden next spring! :) It's on the south side of the garage and we're starting out fairly small. We'll see how that goes.

And finally: the dining room table.

It had a crack in the wood near the center of it, so we borrowed some big clamps from our friend Mike and Craig was able to glue and clamp the split closed.

There were also lots of worn spots from moisture damage because it never had a protective finish on it. We had to use coasters on our table and be careful of hot dishes that might have condensation (i.e. a pizza box).

So after sealing the crack, he sanded the whole thing, restained it to match the other dining room furniture and gave it FOUR coats of poly. This baby is sealed! Have I mentioned this table is an antique? I think I have. It was built in the late 1800's we think and has been in Craig's family forever. The four extension leaves are built in and just pop up when in use. I love it.

We moved it back into the dining room after all the stain and poly coats, but Craig still plans to somehow build an extension to the top of the legs so that we can remove the rolling balls on the bottom. I know it will look nicer, but it will definitely be a 2-person job to extend the table then. Right now it's just so easy for me to extend by myself. I'm looking forward to it though.

So that's what my hubby's been up to.

He amazes me all the time. He can do just about anything.

And if he hasn't done it before, he does it anyway and learns as he goes.

That's the way he was raised and I appreciate that every day.

I also appreciate that our children will be taught how to cook and do handiwork for themselves in the future. It's a shame when skills aren't passed down and taught to the next generation.

Love you, babe!