Adventures in Remuddling

Last year was all about renovating the inside of our house, and mostly the first floor (kitchen and bath). This year, the plan was to work on the landscaping.

Well it’s already mid-July and we have not done much landscaping besides the driveway (which was a much bigger project than I thought) . We had grand visions of a potager garden in the front and a serene, relaxing area out back. Not much has been done, although I did plant some herbs in pots.

Continue reading “Landscape Work” »

According to our landscape plan, we need 2 barrels to act as a rain water collection system. I’ve seen old wine or whiskey barrels used before. But most rain barrels are made from 55-gallon food grade containers (which are more plentiful and cheaper). A couple of months ago, we bought 2 rain barrels from our local home improvement co-op.

Continue reading “Rain Barrel” »

Last year, during the heavy rains, we had a major water problem in our basement. With some strategic gutter placement, we had solved most of those problems. During the winter, however, we encountered another water (or ice) related problem near our back steps. Snow would accumulate on our deck, then melt and drip off the side of the deck (where there’s no gutter), and accumulate near the steps, and then would freeze (because it was in the shadow of the deck). Big chunks of ice by our back steps. Not good. Salt and various other ice melting formulas were used to break up the ice, but eventually more water/snow would accumulate and the process would start all over.

Continue reading “Water, Water, Everywhere…” »

When Tig was researching pavers for our driveway, he scoured the metro area for quarries, stoneyards and gravel places. He would even look at Google satellite map images and compare different location sizes to see if they really had, “the largest selection” of stones. He called many places, but visited only a handful to scope out prices and selection. Thankfully, I was spared the shopping experience during the parking spot project.Last weekend, however, he twisted my arm and made me look at stones for hours.

Continue reading “Stoned” »

The master gardener (who is also the general contractor) has been recovering from a knee injury. As a result, our status in our neighborhood has sunk to a new low. Weeds have been growing like - well, weeds - through our hedges which have not been trimmed in ages.

Continue reading “Not keeping up with the Joneses” »

The meteor explains the lack of blog activity over the past month.

OK. So no meteor hit. But it kind of looks like it did.

A magnolia tree used to occupy that hole. According to our master landscape plan, a potager garden will be out front, and therefore no room for a tree in the center of the yard. We did not chop it down, but we opted to move it to the backyard instead. (Especially since the arborist estimated the tree of that size was worth $800).

Continue reading “A Meteor Landed in Our Front Yard” »

We’ve had this disussion before. And we’ve had to revisit it recently. What kind of stone do we want for our small retaining wall in the front yard? To bring you back up to speed, our master landscape plan calls for a level front “potager” planting area. Which means a retaining wall about 15-18″ high needs to be built.

So a recent trip to the stoneyard led us to these 2 contenders: Corinthian or Colonial.

colonial

corinthian

Continue reading “Stone Choices - Corinthian or Colonial” »

Our Front Yard

See those 2 red bushes by the house and the green privet hedges? They are not part of our master landscape plan. In fact, they’re in the way of better things, like blueberry bushes and a stone wall to level our front yard. Aftering pondering our stone choices in a previous post, we planned for the small retaining wall to be placed just behind the privet bushes. One of those “burning bushes” was also in the way. Since finishing the wall before the onset of the winter snow and freeze was my main goal, building the wall, and thus moving the bush became a priority. We decided to try and keep the bush but move it next to the recently transplanted Magnolia in the back yard.

Continue reading “Moving the Burning Bush” »

A couple of weeks ago while building the stone wall, a neighbor asked me how I learned to do this. I was tempted to say something witty like “I was a stone mason in a previous life, working on the Great Wall of China”. Instead, the truth came out: “Everything I know, I learned from the internet.”

Okay, that’s not entirely true, because I do read (skim) lots of home improvement books.

Here is my wall building process, which was compiled from books as well as the internet:

First: Dig. Then dig some more, and when you think you’re done, dig some more. I had flashbacks of working on the driveway during this process.

A pallet and a half of stone next to the trench that’s being dug.

Continue reading “Building a Dry Stacked Stone Wall” »

It’s a good thing I finished the wall before last month’s winter storms hit our area. Three snowfalls within a week netted almost 2 feet of snow.

Underneath that pile of white snow is the wall I finished a few weeks ago.

Continue reading “Finishing the dry stacked stone wall” »