Like I said in my last post, I love summers in Portland and am so looking forward to enjoying a few weeks in a row here.
The plants are in full bloom, we have enjoyed several pints of home grown blueberries, our zucs are going nuts, the pole beans are ready and the tomatoes are getting red.
The roses are on their second big round of blooms and that is bringing humming birds, butterflies and bees to our garden-I'm luvin' it! And I can't forget to mention gorgeous sunsets.
I love all the outdoor BBQs and other types of celebrations as well. We got to celebrate our friend, Heather last weekend at her baby shower. The theme was baseball as her husband is a coach.
A little picture of her opening the quilt I made for her baby girl.
Forgive me on this video being shakey, but if you want to see a cute toddler enjoying the summer, here you go. :) I might just be a bit opinionated on the cute part. And you probably are wondering how we ever got such a monstrosity of a plastic toy in our yard-well, I offered to sell it for my work (I am a pediatric occupational therapist) as we did not have room for it, and, well, I guess I didn't need to travel far for a buyer-me.
Enjoy your day and hope you get to enjoy some time outside. I'm off to research kitchen stuff while the tots sleep!
After scouring many of the local vintage shops as well as hardware and salvage stores here in Portland, I decided it was high time to turn to the interwebs again (this is what Steve calls them). I wanted to find a gate pull stat. Nothing was found on etsy. but ebay had a few options. I came across this rusty brother. Perfect size at 9" tall and asking to be hung proud (just realized this is bit phalic but totally unintentional). Figured that I could sand and spray him if he was too rusty. Not too ugly of a design either. And just $14.33 after shipping- I paid an extra few pennies to get priority mail instead of the super slow mail.
Couldn't get a picture to download so either click on the link or see this similar one found here
only mine is no reproduction newbie.
Now that we really do (gosh, I hope) have all of our gate hardware, we just need to find some time to get it all in.
Saturday was a productive day as the weather gods were kind to us (As they were not to most of the east coast and we have had you all in our thoughts) as it never got too hot to be outside. In attempt to once again avoid sanding and working on the house siding (I was also on Ben watch), Ben and I turned to the north side of our house which is just a mess of a forest. Anyways, we pulled out most of the weeds and then Steve finished up later. He also took out an old tree stump while he was at it.
Late in the afternoon, Steve talked me into a quick trip to wood waste management to picked up a 1/2 yard of hemlock mulch (we like the dark color and especially like that it is splinter free) in exchange for happy hour at McMennamins Kennedy School. Steve went to town spreading mulch as soon as I got home. We like the results! What a difference about 45 minutes of work does. We still need to figure out if we want to keep all the used bricks (from our chimney and a past dumpster diving trip)...I am opting to let them go (at least most of them) in attempt to clean out the casa. Long term we plan to extend the back yard gate further out in the side yard.
Saturday I also patched and glued the rest (or so I thought) of the siding on the back of the house.
Sunday morning we sanded a ton and then Steve found a bunch of spots that I forgot to glue (oops). We decided to not finish gluing and instead prime the wood...well, we got halfway through priming and we hope to finish up the priming during evenings this week.
and I'm behind and quickly forgetting what I did when so hopefully I will get caught up. The hardest days to blog (they all seem hard with a million house project and a little one running around) are Monday and Tuesday because I have two kiddos under my wing (although I often get in some hard core blog time during naps). So really those are probably the easiest days for me to blog.
Let's try this again. The hardest days are actually Wednesday (yesterday) and Thursday (today). Have you all heard that obnoxious song about how After Wednesday comes Thursday-cracks me up BUT at least I have a song to refer to when I forget the song about the days of the week that I learned in preschool. or wait, didn't I also learn it in Spanish class (can hear it now... lunes, martes...)?
anyways, terrible but cracks me up at the same time.
Soooo, because Wednesday comes first, that is where I will begin.
But back up to Tuesday as Steve also worked more on sanding on Tuesday night while I sorta putzed around outside trying to come up with excuses as to why I could not part-take in helping to fix the siding or sand. I ended up hanging up the little $.50 yard art that I bought at that garage sale last weekend and also glued some more boards together.
sorta cheesy but better than the deteriorating fence
OK, so on Wednesday (drum roll please) we did absolutely nothing. Except share some delicious homemade lasagna and a bottle of vino. How fantastic. Steve's bro had to cancel our hoard fest so we just cancelled work all together for the evening.
Ben beating the heat Weds night
Thursday: I put in my time hunting for the perfect little adornment for our stark and plain bathroom wall. I went to quite a few local thrift shops including lounge lizard, a 60s/70s shop on 20th-ish & hawthorne, ReRun on 7th and Fremont and Seek the Unique on SE 6th & Taylor. It's right near Rejuvenation. Also went to a cool little Store on ne 33rd-ish & hawthorne and bought some sweet kid's metal folding chairs. I will need to post a pic soon as they are in the car and need to come into their new home. They were a screaming deal on sale for $5 a piece, marked down from $10. These things could withstand a nuclear bomb they are so sturdy. Ben is still a little small for them but can't wait to put them by an equally cool (and sturdy) little table someday.
Here are a couple cool finds (did not purchase) at Seek the Unique. I forgot to take pix in the rest of the stores-got too excited at the prospect of shopping without little man by my side.
lure the spirits?
jewelry? bills?
and Thursday night I blogged and tidied the house while Steve did some more sanding outside. He hopes to have the back all primed and ready for some Green paint by Saturday evening.
doesn't look too different from last week but we promise that it is gettin' there
Sat am we walked to breakfast at Bumblekiss on Fremont and sat on their patio and enjoyed a yummy breakfast with perfect weather. On the way home, I picked up this ~14"x14" decorative grate for $.50 at a garage sale we happened upon and plan to nail it up on our backyard fence sometime soon-that fence is hideous so can use any help.
Steve and I spent a couple hours working on the back of the house. The lapboard siding paint has flaked horribly-we think it is do to the wood sitting for several months without being painted (we stripped the paint 4 years ago in the spring but did not get it painted until early fall) and getting tons of sun and heat during the long summer days. The shingles part of the siding is just fine. We are trying to re-prep it for a new coat of paint by the end of the summer. We also used flat paint on the siding which is probably contributing to the demise of it.
Steve stripped (with a heat gun). scraped the paint with a 4" scraper and sanded (combo of 60 grit paper and orbital sander) the chipping paint while I glued back together some of the boards that have splintered badly.
The splintered boards were previously covered be a HUGE (and that is an understatement) deck built by the previous home owners that stretched the width of the house and covered 2/3 of the backyard, making a less of 10' area of useable ground. We hated it being that a. it was ugle b. it was up high so you felt like you were on a perch and anyone walking on the street behind could see you c. we had virtually no grass d. it was ugly. I digress. Steve uncovered the lowest two boards a couple years back in a frantic rage of needed to deconstruct something mindlessly. While this can be good and has led to our awesome brick patio, it has left ugly siding and a truly hideous deck. Anyways, hoping to have the siding prettier by the end of the summer.
For gluing, I used a very scientific method to get out the slightly hardened (yet new unopened bottle) of Gorilla glue, the I wet the wood I wanted to glue per the directions, squeezed glue onto nail using scientific method and smeared on wood. The we pushed wood together by either nailing below using a finish nail (easy to go back and patch as most areas glued would not accept a clamp) or clamped the wood. Last I scraped off the extra glue using some old cardboard and then we waited for the magic to happen.
used a dental pic (from the Hoard which Steve's dad used for model planes) to take out any extra paint flakes in the cracks; monitor is vital as the babe was sleeping and we were takin advantage of the precious time sans babe
think it needs help? Think there used to be stairs here?
scientific method
spreading glue-this is actually time consuming
removing extra glue to cut down on sanding
There is still quite a bit of sanding that needs to get done and I need to glue the other side (to the left of our back door) of the siding
We got some bamboo! and we really like it! We are friend's with the couple over at Swanky & Chiang and after reading my post about researching bamboo, she e-mailed to say that they had loads (literally, over a truck load) of bamboo that they were looking to get rid of (or trying to off load on others). So a couple weekends ago, Steve went off to their house (I stayed home as Ben was napping and boy, was a sad to miss that project) and helped Joe dig out all their short bamboo from the backyard as well as a portion of their tall bamboo from the front. Wish I could tell you the variety but I have no idea, however, they are both clumping varieties, work for us and for the price of free-ninety-nine, the price is definitely right. Well, Joe & Steve ended up having to saw-zaw the roots of the tall bamboo out while hacking at it with a shovel. They got it out and Steve and I got to hack at a little more to fit the clumps into our pots (we decided that pots would work well just in case the bamboo decided that it wanted to take over our yard. And, then we can move it around if we decide we don't care for it.
the rig all loaded with bamboo coming back from the Swanky-Chiang house
pot placement in the back of the house-also provides a little window privacy & the window above happens to belong to Steve and my bedroom
I think this needs some compost to help out that fill dirt
again the area just below our window-Steve transplants some ferns from the side of our house here too; they are happy here with the exception of our Porter pup trampling them often
upside down, oops! the other side of the deck-Steve sifting rocks out of the dirt in prep to put in the pots
south side of the deck
north side
leaning-gotta prop that up somehow
some of this bamboo does not look too happy but we'll see what happens-can you tell what Steve is working on-paint stripping!!!! o so fun!
short bamboo in the new Ben Pen on the south side of the house
Steve finally found some time to get back to the fence this past weekend. On Saturday he went full speed ahead but well, on Sunday, he got distracted and efforts went towards making the backyard entertaining ready. This week he plans to figure out what other pieces of wood he needs to complete the fence and I hope to get the cedar store on Thursday when I am without babe.
Now we just need to pick up one more wheel since this fence is one big dude and is H-E-A-V-Y. Also need to research some fence hardware to lock/open/close it since I am definitely not in like at all with the stuff at Home Depot. I would really like something that allows us to open and close it from each side without having to do the little string rig up deal-e-o that you see on many simple gates.
put on the first hinge without a problem
this is where the problem arose; Steve had to drill out the ground bracket in order to mount the lower hinge on top of the bracket....what a pain but ended up being a pretty easy fix
drilling a support bracket
and the gate goes up
you can so the spring/wheel hardware on the left side of the pix; getting ready to drill on the wheel
wheel #1-to put a second wheel on the other side to hold this big sucker up
there is about a 1/8" clearance on the ground with just one wheel attached
And another look at the gate (yes, we still have that huge pile of compost that we need to finish spreading)
We also made a trip to Mr. Plywood on Stark and found these fence post caps...I was eye-ing the beefier post caps, however, they don't work (And are at least $10 a pop more) as they will not fit with the clearance between the gate and the fixed posts and where the fence posts connects with the garage. We simple need to level out all the posts and attach these toppers with a little construction adhesive.
And Steve's backyard progress...
Steve removed the rest of the pavers and small rubble and readied the area for some sod....lovely mud pit right now and my clean, mopped floors are already covered in doggy prints-motivation to get some sod STAT!
Steve added dug up portland potatoes rocks around the new bench and filled on with pebbles to cut down on dirt and mess
added more dig up rock around these pots which we plan to fill with Bamboo (more on that endeavor soon)
this is just funny as all these tall flowers sprouted out of nowhere and we kinda have a forest in the NW corner of our yard
