Adventures in Remuddling

A long overdue two-part article on love, remuddling, and the meaning of life:

Take your estimate of how long it will take to do a renovation, and triple it. That way, you’re not blaming each other when you’re three months behind and under stress. We were naive enough to believe that we could get two bathrooms and a kitchen done in a month, an idea so absurd that we laugh ourselves silly thinking about it today. I know better now. When my very optimistic husband says that the driveway will be done in 2 weeks, I nod in agreement and mentally double or triple it. The truth is, there is always a setback or a delay, even when we think we got it all figured out. For example, the living room. We’ve painted many rooms and thought we were seasoned pros. But the renovations gods saw our budding smugness and smited us with a knee injury, which set us back a few days.

Continue reading “Love Among the Ruins - Part Two” »

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” »

As a child, I have fond memories of my parents taking detours on the way home just so we can see the holiday light displays on peoples’ lawn.

A fellow resident in our town has garnered local fame (or infamy) for his holiday light display. This year, his display consists of approximately 500,000 lights, a 650-lb 23-ft diameter crown, multitudes of inflatable characters (santa, snowmen, penguins, a Tigger, etc), and a whopping electric bill (upwards of $3,000/month).

Whether you like it or not, it’s definitely a remuddling feat for the record books. According to a local newspaper article describing the work on the “crowning achievement”:

Continue reading “Holiday Remuddling” »