Critter Cam

The back yard was full of critters today.

Squirrels eating bird food...


Birds patiently waiting for the squirrels to get their bellies full...


Squirrels eating squirrel food...

Making The Most Of The Weather Reprieve

The outside temperature was 28 degrees Saturday morning, but the sun came out and it warmed to about 45. That's considered a heat wave this time of year in northern Indiana.

We took full advantage of the break in the weather to take care of a few outside chores.

Bruce carried about a cord of firewood from the woods to the patio and stacked it into the log racks he built.


Then, he hung the Christmas lights on the front of the house.


I planted the tulip bulbs that I had meant to plant about a month ago. And, did some final outdoor and garden cleanup -- washed windows, put away the garden art and hoses, cleaned out the trash cans and emptied the planters.

Bring on the snow... we're ready.

I'd go broke if my job was flipping houses

I've noticed, in all of the Flip This House episodes, that the key to a successful flip is working fast. That way you get the work done and the house sold before the first mortgage payment is due.

Around our house, home improvement projects move in slow motion. I really don't think it's because we're procrastinators. More likely it's because we're unsure of ourselves when it comes to such things and rather than jumping right in and doing something wrong, we tend to spend a lot of time online researching exactly how to do it right (and checking Fark and updating our Facebook pages...).

Last winter, after watching a few hundred hours worth of home improvement shows on HGTV, I had this idea that it would be nice to epoxy the garage floor and paint the walls. We bought the epoxy kit back in April and finished the first half of the garage floor epoxy project in mid-September.

Then, Bruce decided he wanted to put in a couple extra electrical outlets before we finished the other half of the garage.

We bought the electrical supplies and Bruce even cut out the holes for the outlets. Then, he ran into a big problem. There's a large amount of wood at the bottom of the garage walls, inside the drywall. And, he'll have to drill through that to run wiring down to the power box in the basement.

It took a couple of weeks to find a three-foot-long drill bit. And, now that we've got that, Bruce has been dutifully Googling for tips on how to drill horizontally inside the walls to connect the two outlet boxes.

Not sure if we'll ever get the electrical outlets finished, but we did go ahead and finish the garage floor epoxy last night. Plus, we rehung the dartboard with a new frame around it to protect the newly painted walls.

Crossed Another Fall Chore Off My List

Wow, what a difference this stain made on the cedar fence. We just put the fence up this spring and it had really faded quite a bit over the summer.

Someone that lives in a nearby neighborhood had such a beautifully stained fence that I knocked on their door to find out what they used on it to get that color. They happily shared the info with me and I picked up two gallons of the stain at the Osceola hardware store.

On Friday, it took me six hours to stain the front of the six panels of fence. Bruce helped me stain the back side on Saturday and it only took three hours.

I absolutely love Hardware Plus -- the Osceola hardware store. Their prices are competitive and they have knowledgeable employees on standby to answer any questions. In fact, they intercept you as you walk through the door and guide you through the store picking up everything on your list.

Garage Revitilization Project - Phase II

I've finally finished the first half of the garage make-over project. I finished painting the ceiling today and then touched up the top of the walls with the wall paint color. Then we moved all of the cabinets, freezer and everything else over to the finished side so I can start in on the other side.

Unfortunately, as we moved all of the cabinets back to that side of the garage, we gouged the new epoxy floor coating. I'll have to touch that up.

If things go good this week, I'll paint this week, each evening after work, and then next weekend epoxy the floor. Then, it will be completely finished.

Bruce Makes Progress on Fall Chores

The neighbor behind us played the "bitch and win" game and won! He'd been complaining about our bushes making it hard to mow the back of his yard.

Today Bruce gave the bushes a major trimming. When he finished, I mentioned that if we put edging down around the bushes and filled in with mulch that the area would look a lot better. He suggested I invite my friends at HGTV over to take on that project.

HGTV Makeover - I Want

I got stuck in the HTGV mode Saturday morning. This front of house makeover was particularly interesting because the house has the same basic shape as ours and their Craftsman makeover is exactly what I want.

These people had a huge budget though. They spent $2,000 on four light fixtures. $18K on stone and $22K on the stamped and stained concrete driveway. We don't need new windows thankfully -- theirs cost $36K. No mention on the show what the porch with gable cost.

Another project... what in the heck are we thinking???

I thought I'd finish painting the garage ceiling tonight. Well, at least half of it. But Bruce had other ideas. We've been complaining for months about the doggie urine smell coming from our dining room. So tonight Bruce ripped up the carpet.

We don't have any new flooring to put down yet and will probably wait until one of the home centers has another six-months-same-as-cash sale before we get the hardwood flooring we want. So, for now, our beautiful dining room furniture, which now serves as my office furniture, is sitting on very unattractive raw underlayment.

Now that I'm working from home three days a week, I'm hoping that I can keep the dog from using our house as his personal urinal.

Why is this taking so long???

Several times a week I watch home improvement shows on HGTV in which people make major home renovations in 30 minutes including new flooring, kitchen counters and paint. Yea, I know there's a lot of editing involved, but I seriously think I'm the slowest painter in the world. Good thing I work in an office instead of as a home improvement person.

I'm still working on the first half of my garage revitalization project. Tonight I painted the edges of the ceiling and it took a really, really long time. Plus, I'm not good at edging so now I'll have to touch up the tops of the green walls with a tiny little paint brush. I tried to convince myself that the ceiling wasn't that dirty. But in the photo above you can really see the difference between the new white paint and the old ceiling paint.

A Needed Distraction

Now that the walls look so nice, I'm ready to tackle the ceiling. But, I hate painting ceilings. The last time I painted a ceiling I ended up covered in little specs of paint.

So, as a distraction from that project, I painted the garage cabinets.

Here's the before...

And the after...

Cortina Valley

A quick trip to Menards for some wall and ceiling paint turned into a major shopping trip. We settled on a very light green (cortina valley) paint for the garage walls. Painting a light color in a room with bad lighting is not that easy to do. Now that it's dry, I can see a few spots that I missed. So, tomorrow night I'll touch up the walls and paint the ceiling.

Thanks to our Menards shopping trip, our fall chore list has grown significantly.

• We bought supplies to put additional electrical outlets in the garage.

• We picked up some new flooring for the kitchen. The sales guy suggested that it would be an easy weekend project. Somehow I think we'll be eating out for a month while the kitchen floor is ripped up.
  

• I got some paint for the garage cabinets so that's one more thing I'll have to finish before I can start the epoxy on the other side of the garage floor.

• Then, I got 200 flower bulbs which will need to be planted in the next few weeks.

• We didn't get the flooring for the dining room/office. Spike has left puddles all over the carpet in that room and I've tried for months to get the smell out. Since Menards had wood flooring on sale, we thought we'd pick some up today and then rip up the carpet and put the new flooring down. It looks so simple on HGTV. Turned out the stuff we like is real wood and requires quite a bit more labor and specialized tools to install. So, we'll leave that purchase, and project, for another day.

What a Difference Some Paint Makes

I've had this long-time fantasy of having a garage with stark white walls, a shiny floor and nothing at all in the garage except for my Ford Mustang Convertible. And, of course, that Mustang is on a turntable so it spins around while I admire my car from all angles.

We'll today I patched up the garage walls (still working on just the south half of the garage while all the junk is crammed on the north half) and painted the walls with Kilz primer. It sure looks nice. Sometime this weekend we're going paint shopping.

Here's the Before photo (not sure why it came out blurry):

Here's the After photo.

Planting a Tree is Easy...

... when someone else does the digging.

Two more fall chores crossed off the list:

• Tree Planting: Done

• Front Yard Seeding: Done

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Planting a Tree is Hard

I'm skipping around on my fall chores list. The garage floor epoxy seems dry to the touch, but I think I'll let it set for another day to really firm up before I start in on the garage wall patch and paint job and then epoxy the other half of the garage floor.

Tonight's projects were going to be planting the Japanese Maple tree that I bought earlier this summer, and sowing a bit more grass seed in the front yard.

I got a late start -- worked late and stopped to help out a friend after work. By the time I got home, ate dinner, and got some tools out of the shed, it was a bit after 7 pm.

I really thought I could get the tree in the ground before sunset. I measured out the area -- 7' long on the sides -- and marked it with bright red powder. I dug out a couple of dozen shovelsful of sod. But, it got too dark to see the red powder and I was really sweaty, so I turned in my shovel for the evening.

Although little Spikey is standing in the exact same spot in both the before and after photos, I suspect he moved around a bit while I was digging.

Garage Floor Epoxy Project - Day 3

I came home from work Monday, anxious to finish the first half of the garage floor revitalization project. Sunday night I slow cooked enough food for the entire week so I could jump into my fall chores each night after work, rather than wasting time cooking. So, as I warmed up and ate Monday's dinner, I watched the garage floor epoxy instructional DVD.

Step 1 -- rinse the garage floor, apply cleaning agent provided with the kit, scrub, rinse and repeat. DANG! I could have done this Sunday had I realized the kit included its own cleaning agent. I considered skipping this step since I had invested so much time scrubbing, rinsing and repeating on Sunday. After wrestling with the decision -- scrub again or skip it -- I considered the possibility that the epoxy wouldn't stick on the concrete if it wasn't treated with this magical cleaning agent.

So, Monday evening was spent cleaning the garage floor, yet again, but this time with the approved (and pleasantly citrusy smelling) cleaning agent.

Then, as that was drying, I cleaned some veggies for diety snacking for the week. And, with nothing to watch on TV and since I hadn't turned on my computer yet, I washed the patio door windows -- inside and out.

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Fast forward to Tuesday. A quick dinner of warmed food from my Sunday cooking marathon and then it was finally time to start painting on the garage floor epoxy. From starting to finish it took about 2-1/2 hours. That included washing out the paint brush and roller.

It's going to take 24-48 hours to dry so I'm guessing by Thursday I can start painting the walls. As I was scrubbing the floor Monday I noticed how badly the walls needed patched up and painted so I stopped by the paint store on my lunch hour Tuesday and bought some spackle and a gallon of primer. I might as well get the walls spruced up while that side of the garage is totally free of clutter.

Maybe by Saturday I'll be ready to start in on the other half of the garage floor. That will give me something fun to do while I watch Purdue kick ND's butt.

Fall Chores Continued

I crossed #2 off my list today. I painted the front door. I'd really like to get a new front door, but the one I have my eye on is nearly four grand. I don't want it that bad!

As I stood back to admire my paint job I noticed the porch lights are quite rusted. I think I'll add a #11 to my fall chore list and paint those light fixtures. They have a brass finish now, but I'm thinking about painting them black -- maybe a textured black finish.

I'd really prefer new light fixtures -- in sort of an arts and crafts design -- but again, not really interested in spending money right now. It's hard to justify any sort of expenditure, beyond the basic necessities, when the entire US economic system is in such a state of uncertainty.


I made some progress on a couple of other fall chores today. I washed the garage windows. Well, I washed the insides, but I'll have to wait for the plants in the window baskets to die back before I can wash the outsides of the windows.

I've got six hours into the garage floor epoxy project. I bought the epoxy in April, thinking I'd get it done this summer, but summer is over and I never got around to it. Around 10am I started moving everything from one side of the garage to the other. Then, I spent the next several hours sweeping, hand-scrubbing, power washing and shop vacuuming the empty half of the floor. I think it should be dry enough to epoxy tomorrow evening. Then, it needs to set for a couple of days. So, next weekend I get to move everything to the other side of the garage and start the process all over again. Wow... it better look great when I'm finished because this is a huge amount of work.

Garden Cleanup

Saturday I pulled the last of the kohlorabi and cukes out of the garden. The tomatoes have been done for a few weeks. The strawberries and peppers are still blooming. I spent a few hours Saturday morning pulling up the dead plants and spent vines. Garden cleanup was #1 on my list of fall chores. I know I'll have another full day of garden cleanup in the coming weeks, but for now, I've crossed it off my list.

Still to go:

2) Paint Front Door
3) Plant Japanese Maple Tree
4) Mulch
5) Replace Warped Deck Board
6) Water Seal Fence
7) Wash Windows
8) Garage Floor Epoxy
9) Put Down More Grass Seed
10) Paint Garage Walls

New Grass

I'll need to get some more grass seed down this week. The new grass is coming in nicely, but there are a couple of bare spots.

Compare this photo to the photos below. Since April we've removed all of the bushes, removed 13 trees, brought in 16 tons of black dirt, planted several new types of flowers and reclaimed much of the formerly wooded area into grass for the lawn.

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Still Working on Curb Appeal Project

Here's a before and after view of the front of the garage. We took out the bushes in April and added some flowers. Later this fall I plan to add some red mulch, but that will be much easier to do after all of the flowers die back.

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No Painting Today

I had planned to paint the front door today. But, I didn't have the heart to scrape off or paint over the many critters hanging out there.

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