Foundation

I have spent the last month gathering bids for a number of projects that we would like to hire out at our house, including resurfacing some parts of our exterior foundation, repairing the sash cord on the windows and getting them re-glazed, installing our kitchen and bathroom vents and repairing our front door.

this is a huge hole we found (doesn't go all the way through but it was several inches deep) in the foundation that was covered by dirt.  Might explain why there was one slightly damp area of the basement.

Above are several before pictures...as you can see, some places needed more help than others.  The side of our house by the driveway needed almost no work (just a little around the windows) while the back yard area needed tons of help.

We truly debated about doing this ourselves...hence why we've been in the house 7 years next week and are just getting the project done.  Here are a few videos and tutorials I found on repairing or parging.
Mr Parging -->Love the name! Thorough You Tube video
Mike Haduck video
Written Step-by-step to repair

While we would of saved a ton (literally as this is very inexpensive to do) of money by doing it ourselves, it was so nice to greet the workers at 7:30 this morning and say adieu by 2!

Now we just need to wait for it to dry and add paint!

And our littles....can't believe just how big they are getting with Ben nearing 3 1/2 and Quinn already 3 months.  I just love watching Ben and Quinn starting to bond-it's the sweetest!

Summa, Summa, Summa-time

drivin the tractor at the zoo today

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!

Horse Troughs in the city

this is 1'x2'x6' in size

Well, finally bit the bullet and did it. Guess u could consider it a Mother's day gift of sorts. Steve has been hankering for a horse trough for quite a long while now. Originally we wanted to go with one of the rusty-style ones but decided against it for several reasons.

1. We went with galvanized metal for the wire in our fence
2. The rust would probably get all over us and Ben each time we lean up against it to garden

If you decide to get a trough ( I really need to 'put a horse on it' you know), just know that you will need to drill some holes in the bottom.  We drilled a dozen-ish 1/4" holes with just a regular drill and then raised it up on a few 1"x6" pieces of concrete so that it can drain.  Also put some pea gravel in the bottom prior to adding mulch and dirt.
Oh yea, for you Portlanders, we got it at coastal ranch out in Gresham.

 Finally got the garden all planted and some wire up to hopefully keep the hound (and kiddo) outta the garden. Still enjoying the awesome weather around here!

It's almost Spring!

You wouldn't have guessed it was almost spring in Portland this morning.  While snow is rare in P-town, it's basically unheard of in March.  (and I know that people who live in real snow country wouldn't even call this snow but you would be surprised by how many schools were either closed, delayed or had their buses on snow routes this morning) We woke up to snow this morning and while it now has melted, it was quite the surprise. 

there are a few signs of spring at our house...

Steve even tackled a quick project on Sunday when it wasn't raining.  He used some of the leftover stone from our front walkway project to "extend" the driveway.  We were finding that we needed to step into the dirt about half the time we took Ben out of his car seat and it was tracking lots of mud into the house.  We were also stepping on plants each time we did so. 

this pillow is a little plain if you ask me

And I tackled a little spring spruce up project myself-some lighter, more spring-ish pillows for our living room.  I was getting tired of the dark red pillows that we had.  This fabric took a lot of searching to find being that grey and yellow are the "in" colors (I LOVE them together but they just don't go with our house decor) but I ended up finding it at The Whole Nine Yards on E Burnside.  The best thing about the fabric is that it is totally washable!  Yea for that. 

Sat & Sun, the last 2 days

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. 

Gutters

Just wanted to post pictures of our new gutters....just in time for the crazy thunder and rain storms last weekend.  We opted for 5" half rounds and 3" round downspouts and had a local independent gutter guy do the deed for a good price.  We considered (or more like I did) doing the gutters ourselves last summer, but what can I say, we are burnt out and really want to keep the rain out and not let it in by not doing it right.
     Good decision is what we are thinking.
Here are a couple pictures of prep which included trimming the rafter tails (again, out of omph as well as daylight and rain-free hours), painting and priming that tails as well as soaking the galvanized metal piece sin vinegar to remove some of the galvanized portion and then spray priming with rustoleum oil-based paint for metal.  ...we will probably not get to painting them until next spring...or summer.

Steve doing final paint prep for the garage gutter-we only did the north side because it gets foot & paw traffic.

primed gutter brackets 

 

A Very Blustery Day

This past weekend marked what we were told is going to be the last nice weekend (meaning no rain) for awhile.  Therefore, Steve and I had a lot of painting to do around met taking an all day continuing ed calss on Sat, Steve watching the football game and going to the pumpkin patch (did I mention I love fall).   So here are pictures of the way we worked around the very blustery weather.  We tarped the front side of the house so that we could paint without huge amounts of leaves and other yard debris flying onto the wet paint.  The trap flew off several times and Steve woke up this morning to the trap having completely fallen down and taken down several ladders that were weighted down with rocks.  Seemed to have worked as we avoided having little things stuck to our fresh porch paint.

 

beautiful fall trees changing color across the street

In addition, we found (although I accidently deleted the picture) that wrapping tarps around the siding after we painted it each evening this week (it was dry to touch when we wrapped the tarps around), we avoided the spots we were getting on the paint from the overnight dew or precipitation.