Friday, June 6, 2008
The Grass is Greener...
I know, I know...it's been a while. Well, we're happy to announce that the lawn project is completed. We're happy to say that at this point we have nothing else to do but sit back and watch the grass grow, and is it ever growing! We'll try to get some photos up here this weekend (provided the weather is as gross as it's supposed to be). Stay tuned...
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Virtual Tour
Hi everybody!
For everyone that hasn't yet seen the inside of 21 West Lane, here's a little virtual tour of the house. We always go in the back door (the Vermont front door) because we have space for shoes and coats in there so we can keep the dining room clean where the other entry is. So I'm going to start from there. We have just walked up onto the deck, and have opened the door to the mudroom/laundry room. I know you've all already seen this one, if you've read the posts below...
From here, you go through a door on your left into the kitchen. Note: the third photo shown below is a view of the kitchen from the living room. At the right-hand side of the picture, you will see the refridgerator in the background. Just to the right of this is the back door.
Beyond the kitchen is the dining room. They're both pretty much in one large room, but we consider them to be two rooms. Our table doesn't quite fit the space =] In the second photo below, you'll see the real front door to the house, as well as the entry to the living room on the far left.
The living room, like the dining room is a bright room with lots of south-facing windows. The second photo below is looking back into the dining room from the living room. To the right of the photo, just out of the picture, is the wall that we moved the outlet from earlier, and directly to the photographers right is the third bedroom, which we use as an office.
Here's the office. There is another window to the right, and a large closet to the left that can't be seen in the photo.
To get upstairs, you're going to have to use your imagination, because I didn't get a photo of the stairs from the first floor. But you're going to have to walk into the kitchen from the mudroom, and go through the second door on your left. The first door would take you into the downstairs bathroom, and the third door would take you into the basement. Here is a photo of the stairs from the perspective of the master bedroom. Zach's mom painted the photo on the wall above the stairs. It's a view of Ruhpolding from Viola's bedroom window in Germany. On the left, you'll see a narrow hallway that leads to a doorway. This is the way to get to the second bedroom, or maze room, or dads room, or fabian's room...depending on who you ask.
And here is the second bedroom from the stairs. It's not as low as it seems, but the sloping ceiling doesn't leave a ton of headroom throughout. It's a really cozy space with a nice west-facing window, and a good-sized closet (not seen).
The master bedroom is directly at the top of the stairs. The first photo below is what you would see right when you walk in. Viola made the curtains! In the second photo you can see a doorway that leads to the master bathroom. The door to the hallway is directly to the left of this.
And that's about it! I didn't include photos of the basement or bathrooms, as they were hard to photograph. I hope you've enjoyed the tour. I'll try to post more again soon.
For everyone that hasn't yet seen the inside of 21 West Lane, here's a little virtual tour of the house. We always go in the back door (the Vermont front door) because we have space for shoes and coats in there so we can keep the dining room clean where the other entry is. So I'm going to start from there. We have just walked up onto the deck, and have opened the door to the mudroom/laundry room. I know you've all already seen this one, if you've read the posts below...
From here, you go through a door on your left into the kitchen. Note: the third photo shown below is a view of the kitchen from the living room. At the right-hand side of the picture, you will see the refridgerator in the background. Just to the right of this is the back door.
Beyond the kitchen is the dining room. They're both pretty much in one large room, but we consider them to be two rooms. Our table doesn't quite fit the space =] In the second photo below, you'll see the real front door to the house, as well as the entry to the living room on the far left.
The living room, like the dining room is a bright room with lots of south-facing windows. The second photo below is looking back into the dining room from the living room. To the right of the photo, just out of the picture, is the wall that we moved the outlet from earlier, and directly to the photographers right is the third bedroom, which we use as an office.
Here's the office. There is another window to the right, and a large closet to the left that can't be seen in the photo.
To get upstairs, you're going to have to use your imagination, because I didn't get a photo of the stairs from the first floor. But you're going to have to walk into the kitchen from the mudroom, and go through the second door on your left. The first door would take you into the downstairs bathroom, and the third door would take you into the basement. Here is a photo of the stairs from the perspective of the master bedroom. Zach's mom painted the photo on the wall above the stairs. It's a view of Ruhpolding from Viola's bedroom window in Germany. On the left, you'll see a narrow hallway that leads to a doorway. This is the way to get to the second bedroom, or maze room, or dads room, or fabian's room...depending on who you ask.
And here is the second bedroom from the stairs. It's not as low as it seems, but the sloping ceiling doesn't leave a ton of headroom throughout. It's a really cozy space with a nice west-facing window, and a good-sized closet (not seen).
The master bedroom is directly at the top of the stairs. The first photo below is what you would see right when you walk in. Viola made the curtains! In the second photo you can see a doorway that leads to the master bathroom. The door to the hallway is directly to the left of this.
And that's about it! I didn't include photos of the basement or bathrooms, as they were hard to photograph. I hope you've enjoyed the tour. I'll try to post more again soon.
We haven't forgotten about you...
Hey everyone-
Thanks for your patience on the next blog entry. I've been slacking on putting any new posts up. We haven't done much on the house lately, but are planning on seeding the lawn by the end of this month or in early June. All of the gardens are filling in, including the BIG one out at Rock Point, where we have all of our vegetables. We'll try to get some photos up tonight, including some photos of the inside of the house also, hopefully. Oh, and Zach wanted to point out that he understood the comment written in German...despite the fact that he's been very poor at keeping up with his studies =[
Thanks for your patience on the next blog entry. I've been slacking on putting any new posts up. We haven't done much on the house lately, but are planning on seeding the lawn by the end of this month or in early June. All of the gardens are filling in, including the BIG one out at Rock Point, where we have all of our vegetables. We'll try to get some photos up tonight, including some photos of the inside of the house also, hopefully. Oh, and Zach wanted to point out that he understood the comment written in German...despite the fact that he's been very poor at keeping up with his studies =[
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Anyone can comment
OK, blog update - I guess people could only comment on the blog if they were "registered users". I just turned this off, so that anyone can comment and doesn't have to set up a special account.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
The April Renovation-fest
As if moving tons of gravel wasn't enough (see post below), Viola and I quickly created a list of other small projects that we wanted to have done around the house and property. We tricked my dad and stepmom, Deb, into coming up for a weekend. We said it was going to be a party for Deb...little did they know. The time that wasn't spent at Lowe's was spent working on a Myriad of projects:
My dad and I started out ambitously on Saturday, but got shot down a few times. Here we are sitting up on the roof after discovering that our plan to repair the chimney was well-intentioned, but possibly a little over our heads...so we decided to clean and repair a gutter...it's almost the same.
While this was going on, Deb and Viola were busy trying to clean up the lawn. They removed a bunch of trash and piles of twigs and junk, and got down to removing the wall of cinder blocks leaning against the front of the house (see the first photo of the south-west side in the second post of this blog) so that we could use the space to plant some grass and flowers.
I don't remember the order of the next projects, but let's say it went down like this:
Deb and Viola were going to start bleaching the deck, which had more moss and mildew growing on it than wood was visible, so I thought I'd be helpful and get the hose out so they could wash the bleach off afterward. Well, only then did we realize that there was a fairly large crack in the copper pipe inside the basement, in a really awkward location. It looked pretty grim. But then we had a birthday party for Deb (we weren't lying when we told her we'd have a party), I had a few drinks, and then threatened to repair the broken pipe without the help of a plumber. Here's Deb with her cake, just to back up for a second:
Right, so I've got my Dad worried that I'm going to flood the basement and do more harm than good, he gets me to come to my senses and stop thinking about it, and we all go to bed. Well, when we get up the next morning, the old man had come to his senses and we got to work to sweat some pipe, as we call it in the industry. Here's the finished result:
Oh wait, no, that's my Dad's foot after getting napalmed with hot solder. Let that be a lesson to all of you: never sweat pipe (that's right, I'm in the industry) while wearing sandals. Here's the actual finished pipe. Note the vicinity of the rubber hoses and electrical cables...
Ok, just to make a long blog post a little shorter, we also:
Installed an emergency switch to the furnace. Yes, we did more than just add the fancy "Emergency Switch" plate. We ran a bunch of cable, pouned in a bunch of staples, stripped some wire, yadda yadda yadda...more than just adding the fancy plate. Yes, we're in the electricy industry, also. Just ask Ted and Kristine.
Added lattice to the back porch.
Added some drainage to the side of the house with wood trim.
Installed a dryer vent. Note the before photo where the hose actually went out the window! ...and yes, we made a hell of a mess in our mudroom.
Moved an electric outlet from a weird spot on the middle of our living room wall to floor level. Note: in the first photo, the dog crate isn't ours - it was just there when we first looked at the house.
My dad and I started out ambitously on Saturday, but got shot down a few times. Here we are sitting up on the roof after discovering that our plan to repair the chimney was well-intentioned, but possibly a little over our heads...so we decided to clean and repair a gutter...it's almost the same.
While this was going on, Deb and Viola were busy trying to clean up the lawn. They removed a bunch of trash and piles of twigs and junk, and got down to removing the wall of cinder blocks leaning against the front of the house (see the first photo of the south-west side in the second post of this blog) so that we could use the space to plant some grass and flowers.
I don't remember the order of the next projects, but let's say it went down like this:
Deb and Viola were going to start bleaching the deck, which had more moss and mildew growing on it than wood was visible, so I thought I'd be helpful and get the hose out so they could wash the bleach off afterward. Well, only then did we realize that there was a fairly large crack in the copper pipe inside the basement, in a really awkward location. It looked pretty grim. But then we had a birthday party for Deb (we weren't lying when we told her we'd have a party), I had a few drinks, and then threatened to repair the broken pipe without the help of a plumber. Here's Deb with her cake, just to back up for a second:
Right, so I've got my Dad worried that I'm going to flood the basement and do more harm than good, he gets me to come to my senses and stop thinking about it, and we all go to bed. Well, when we get up the next morning, the old man had come to his senses and we got to work to sweat some pipe, as we call it in the industry. Here's the finished result:
Oh wait, no, that's my Dad's foot after getting napalmed with hot solder. Let that be a lesson to all of you: never sweat pipe (that's right, I'm in the industry) while wearing sandals. Here's the actual finished pipe. Note the vicinity of the rubber hoses and electrical cables...
Ok, just to make a long blog post a little shorter, we also:
Installed an emergency switch to the furnace. Yes, we did more than just add the fancy "Emergency Switch" plate. We ran a bunch of cable, pouned in a bunch of staples, stripped some wire, yadda yadda yadda...more than just adding the fancy plate. Yes, we're in the electricy industry, also. Just ask Ted and Kristine.
Added lattice to the back porch.
Added some drainage to the side of the house with wood trim.
Installed a dryer vent. Note the before photo where the hose actually went out the window! ...and yes, we made a hell of a mess in our mudroom.
Moved an electric outlet from a weird spot on the middle of our living room wall to floor level. Note: in the first photo, the dog crate isn't ours - it was just there when we first looked at the house.
I think that's about everything we covered. It was a lot of work, but well worth it. Oh, plus we got a new barbeque grill! We're looking forward to using it a lot this summer, so whenever anybody wants to swing by...
Where the gravel went...
I don't remember if I mentioned this earlier, but when we bought 21 West Lane, it didn't come with a driveway or parking spaces. This is extremely problematic, especially because it's illegal to park on the street during the winter (the plow wouldn't be able to clear the streets otherwise). There was already a large gate at the back of the property, but wasn't set up in a way that made it easy for two cars to park in the back yard, plus, even if we did park in the back yard, we didn't want to be parking on the grass. Luckily we had all of this extra gravel...
Well, it took a day or so to do some repairs to the fence and gate, and to move the fence around a bit to allow two cars to pass through, and then about 60 or 70 wheelbarrows full of gravel, but we built ourselves a driveway. We edged it with some nice looking stones (the same ones we used around the garden out front), and installed a small herb garden in the back corner. It was brutally hard work, but well worth it.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
The Gravel Project: Bringing you up to speed
So when we first bought 21 West, we immediately started coming up with a laundry list of projects, both big and small, that we wanted to do around the house. Finally, after watching the snow slowly receed, we decided that the lawn was in most desparate need of some tweaking, so we started planning our attack. Most unfortunatley, I didn't take photos of the entire property in it's original condition because, honestly, much of it was too un-appealing to want to photograph. The front yard and most of the side yard was entirely covered with gravel, in many spots up to 5" deep. There were numerous piles of brush, dead plants, and trash, and we had a makeshift chicken coop in the north-west corner of the house. Well, needless to say, we wanted to have a lawn instead of a pile of rocks out front, and had no need for chickens, so those pieces needed to go. On top of all of this, the property has no parking area. We decided that our first order of business was to move all of the gravel (I'm guessing about 5-6 yards of it) from the front yard to the back yard, where we would install two new parking spaces with a corner garden. At this point, we've nearly finished the project. The last two pieces of the puzzle are planting flowers in the two new flower beds and seeding the lawn. Enjoy the photos of what we've done so far!
Side Yard Progress:
South-West Corner Progress:
Now for the BIG one...here's where all the gravel goes away...
South-East Corner Progress:
OK, that's it for this one, I'll post more later...
South-West Corner Progress:
Now for the BIG one...here's where all the gravel goes away...
South-East Corner Progress:
OK, that's it for this one, I'll post more later...
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Welcome to our Home
Hello?...
Is this thing on?...
Welcome to Viola and Zach's progress report on the renovations to 21 West Lane! We're currently working on a big project of landscaping our property, and have finished up a number of small projects around the house. I'll post photos and descriptions of where we are in the process shortly, but right now I'm going to lay down with a big bowl of ice cream and a movie because Viola and I just finished a day of moving probably around 3.5 yards of dirt and rocks around our yard. We deserve it. More to come this week, as the weather turns too rainy to work...
-Zach
Is this thing on?...
Welcome to Viola and Zach's progress report on the renovations to 21 West Lane! We're currently working on a big project of landscaping our property, and have finished up a number of small projects around the house. I'll post photos and descriptions of where we are in the process shortly, but right now I'm going to lay down with a big bowl of ice cream and a movie because Viola and I just finished a day of moving probably around 3.5 yards of dirt and rocks around our yard. We deserve it. More to come this week, as the weather turns too rainy to work...
-Zach
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