expirationdates

Memory Tree

Today we planted a tree for our dear friend Rachel.  In 2007 Rachel evaluated our wetlands area and made suggestions on what trees we should plant on our property.  So today we planted an Oregon Ash in her memory  along with a Garry Oak as that was her very favorite tree.

 

We were able to purchase a 16' Oregon Ash from a native plant nursery near here.

 

The site was very wet due to flooding from all the rain we have gotten lately and the antics of our new beavers.

  

  

Planted and protected from the beavers.

 

Next up we planted a Garry Oak in a much dryer area.

  

We fenced it in as well to protect it from the beavers and voles.

  

Linda brought some plum brandy from Serbia that Rachel would have loved, it was called Yellow Jacket. 

We toasted to her and the newly planted trees.

It was a beautiful sunny warm day and Rachel would have loved the entire event, even the mud.

 

Rachel Virden Hulscher

1974-2009

I give you this one thought to keep -
I am with you still - I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the sweet uplifting rush,
of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not think of me as gone -
I am with you still in each new dawn.

Gutters

I can't believe snow is in the forecast again.  We have had our fair share this year for sure.  We lost our deck gutter to snow in January. 

 

I went to Home Depot to see what they had in the way of gutters and of course could not find matching colors.  So I went with this vinyl snap together system.  It was really easy and pretty inexpensive.  The most expensive part were the corners at $6, the gutter length was under $5 and the brackets were under $2.

 

They are self sealing so you don't even have to use caulking.

 

In just a few hours we had replaced it.  This system also had gutter helmets for under $5 a section so I think we will try them out to see if it makes a difference, we are surrounded by big leaf maple tress that hopelessly clog them in the fall.

 I am very happy with the results.  I think little by little we will replace all the gutters on the house with this system.

Next Project: Wood Pile

Thanks everyone for all your kind words about my Dad and for welcoming me back.  It feels all warm and snuggy.

You Gotta Have Goals

Remember this?

 

That was December 15th of 2006.  I remember it, well mostly because we are still dealing with it but I blogged about it back then.  That storm took out both our cars and the fence as well as my green house and most of our garbage cans.  I remember my Dad got the day off since he could not get out of the driveway.

Insurance covered Dave's car but not my 88 Jimmy nor the fence.  We have been working ever since on getting that fence replaced.  It has never been a priority until we got Jackie.  He wants to be out there so bad.

We finally got the back gate posts set in concrete and got fence on the front gate.

 

We still have to figure out why the gate opener does not work and I have one more section in back to get up.  We would have finished it yesterday but the whole house water filter decided it needed to be changed as it started leaking all over the garage.  So, we had to stop what we were doing and take care of that.  Then it started pouring down rain.  We had to take a nap then.  I guess it wasn't such a good idea to be working on the 110 out there while it was raining anyway.

I also spent a fair amount of time this weekend pulling Stinging nettles.

 

It is amazing that we had months of freezing rain and snow and we get two minutes of sun and they pop up all over the place.  They are nasty.

We made a great haul at the native plant sale.

 

We got 5 Paper Burch trees, 5 Indian plum, 10 Nootka Rose, 5 Pacific Dogwood, 15Doug firs, 6 black huckleberry, 5 Oregon grape, 6 Salal and one Gary Oak all for about $1 each.  We have planted most of it but we still need to clear some blackberry to plant the fir trees.  That will be next weekend as we are in for another week of rain it seems.

It's All a Blur to Me Now

Yesterday I was trying to remember when the trees started blooming last year when I realized how much I depend on this blog to back up my memory.  I completely got out of the habit last year.  Perhaps, subconsiously I did not want to remember parts of last year. 

My Dad lost his battle with colangiocarcinoma on December 10th after being diagnosed in April of 2008 with the cancer.

It was really a tough time and blogging during that time was not something that was high on my list.  We all miss him a lot.

We had hospice here as he did not want to be in a hospital.  They are truly Angels.  I hope you never need them but if you do they will make your life bearable.  We can't even begin to thank them for everything they did for us and my Dad.

During his chemo he very badly wanted a dog. Didn't seem like the best time to get a dog and my Mom being a cat person didn't really want a dog-especially a puppy.  We were pretty busy taking care of other stuff.  But he really wanted a dog so we brought Jackie into our lives.

  When he saw him he pointed and said "I want that one" so it was love at first sight.  A wonderful little pup named after my Dad with a lot of his same personality traits. 

My Mom said "I don't want a dog, I never wanted a dog............I don't know what I ever did without this dog"

He is a joy with so much energy and unconditional love.

Meanwhile this year we have had the most snow and freezing weather we have ever had and another big flood, a new beaver family and beaver pond, new trees-so much to remember. We have actually made some progress on some projects.  If I don't start keep track of these things again I won't be able to remember when anything happened.

So, out with the bad and in with the new-onward and upward and all that jazz.  It's good to be back.  Now? when did those Swallows arrive last year?

Getting ready for the Holidays

They are already playing Christmas songs on the radio...the trees and other Christmas things have been in the stores since before Halloween.  Usually this bothers me and I just ignore it until the day after Thanksgiving but for some reason this year I am all about the Holiday spirit.

We have come a long way with our decorating since the days of bare studs.

 

No matter what stage of building we were in I managed to decorate.  I even had a tiny tree in the RV.

We put lights up too.

 

While the house is still suffering from lack of details like trim, window sills and baseboards we do have drywall and paint and lots more room to decorate.  What do you do with 20' ceilings?  Why you get a 14' Christmas tree.

 

The big question is how do you decorate a 14' tree when all you have are ornaments for small trees.

I printed out pictures of life sized birds, covered them in contact paper and put them all over the tree.

 

The birds really give it a nature feel and being in front of those windows really brings the outside in. 

This post was written for Houseblogs.net as part of a sweepstakes sponsored by SC Johnson’s Right@Home.

Rain, Rain and More Rain

We had one of the prettiest falls I have ever seen out here.  I think becasue we had such a dry October.

Lots of color and it was warm and dry so we could get out and enjoy it.

 

What a different a few weeks makes.  We just had our first flood of the season and our river went from 100 cubic feet per minute to nearly 7000 cubic feet per minute.

 It's amazing how quickly it all came up.  It went from 8' to 18' over night.  We could hear the huge trees racing down the river all night long.  You know that when you get up your view of the river is going to change.

 

This morning we have two giant log jams were there used to be two small ones.  Our beaver dam is gone and a good portion of the island out front.  We also have a refridgerator door in the jam!  I hope we can get that out of there once the water receeds.

I took this video last night just before it peaked.

Cabot's AustralianTimber Oil

Amazing stuff. When we finished our deck, which is made of IPE it was smack in the middle of the rainy season so we never got it oiled.  Then, the time to do it just never seemed to come up.  I finally got out the pressure washer and got it and the house cleaned.  This is what happens in the Pacific Northwest.

You really have to keep up on the moss growth.  In the winter the deck gets too slippery to use. The pressure washer works great but it really hard on the wood.  I had to do some sanding before I oiled it.  You can really see the contrast here where the decking had already turned gray the oil brought back all the beautiful colors. IPE is basically red but has greens and purples and even some yellow in it.  It is very hard wood.

I started putting the oil on with a roller which was one of the suggestions but really it worked best when I put it on by hand with a wool pad.

Now the wood looks like it did when it was new and with the slippery moss cleaned up the deck is way more usable.

I used one gallon and got the floor and some of the railing done.  I need one more gallon to finish the steps.  It really was not all that tough to do and took about an hour to put down once the cleaning was done.

Details Details

I can't believe we are heading in to fall and I don't really feel like I accomplished anything this summer.

I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about the details involved in building your own house that are so easily overlooked when the process gets going.

It's very exciting when you decide to build you own home.  Our house plans went through a lot of changes before we got started.  We were lucky as we had a family member drawing our plans up for us so it didn't cost us an arm and a leg every time we decided to add a window or change a wall.  Those are pretty major things though, I am talking about the little stuff cable outlets, location of wall outlets types of lighting etc.

First off lighting.  It's like buying a printer.......make sure to see how much the bulbs are before you get set on lighting. 

I love this track lighting.  I of course bought it on the clearance tables.  I think it was ten bucks at final clearance and I bought two of them and a round one that matches that we put in the kitchen.

Each one takes 4 halogen 50 bulbs at eight bucks each.  Let me to the math for you.....thats $32 every time I have to change out the tracks.  Three 4 bulb units will run me just under a hundred bucks to fill with bulbs.  I have done that twice now since they have been installed.  They now sit empty because I am not gonna do it again.  So I am looking for track that takes a "regular" bulb and preferably one I can put a compact fluorescent in.  Sometimes a bargain is not a bargain if it costs you so much to keep it going.

In floor outlets.  I'm gonna get some grief for this one but when the house building is in full swing there are about a million things going on at once.  I had to pick the location of where those outlets would go in our living room.

Now I am not one of those people that arrange the furniture and it never moves for 20 years.  I rearrange it constantly.  I tried to imagine all the ways in which I would have it and where best to put the outlets.  I remember when I was making this decision I was doing a bunch of other stuff and really I should have spent more time on it.  They are really too far from the fireplace which is where I do tend to center the living room furniture although I have had the dining room table over there.  I really only use them when I put the couch there with a table behind it for lamps.  Otherwise they are covered with a rug.

We put up our own electrical boxes.  When you are doing that try to imagine what it will look like with drywall over it.  I have one light switch in my living room smack in the middle of a wall and that switch is for the stairwell lighting to the garage.  It was near the edge of the wall until we decided to extend the wall.  We forgot to move it before the drywall went up.  It's a three way switch and we usually leave it on all the time so now there is a picture hanging over it.

These are for speakers.  Not only are they not level, they are not centered on the wall.

If I had thought about it I would have also moved that light switch for the closet light inside the closet door.

You can't assume your dry waller will know everything.  We have these big lovely beams in our great room.  They should have finished off the raw edges with a special piece made just for that.

Then it would have had a rounded edge just like our windows.  Once someone told us this was how it was done, it was too late.  It will eventually get trim but it would have been nice to just have it finished off.

So, what I am saying is if you are planning your own home and building it yourself don't get caught up totally in the building 24/7 and take time to sit in each room and really imagine how you will use it and how it's gonna look finished.  These are all pretty minor things but they can bug you when you know it would have taking a minute or two do change it.

Oh My Gosh? Is It Really A Post

Yes.  Sort of.  I have just finished the last white room in the house.  I finally painted my office/rec room.  I will expand on it tomorrow with pictures I just needed to prime the pump and get back in here and start posting.

I have also gotten set up to finally finish tiling my kitchen back splash.  I have had a a tile saw set up in my living room longer than I care to remember.  The last two tiling projects are the kitchen and the stairs to the third floor. 

We have had an awesome summer, our river float ended up being on the hottest day of the summer and was great.  It's been cool and raining just about ever since.

Dave, Howard and Marshall win the prize for most creative float.  They were the Titanic band, the Unsinkable Ti-Tones.  Dave worked for a week making a piano and a double bass out of Styrofoam and plywood.

The amazing thing is they floated too!

It was pretty funny.

It feels good to be back here.  Promise, I won't be a stranger.

Driveway Gate Installation

Hey!? Who has been lurking on my site?  Dave!  Yes, we did start to install our gate this past weekend.  It is one of the final tasks in this very long project of getting this fence replaced.  We also set a few more posts in concrete.  We are just about ready to stretch the rest of the fence.

We looked at gates and boy are they expensive. Some are in the thousands of dollars. After looking around at gates we chose the Adjust-a-gate and it's a kit where you buy and put the metal frame together and add the wood and facing yourself.  My Dad got us an automatic gate opener too so we are just about set.

The hinges are really hefty and screwed into our 6" x 6" pressure treated posts.

We got the largest gate they make and that has three rails of 2" x 4" pressure treated boards.

It took a couple of hours to put together and get level.  We really needed a line level but couldn't find it of course.  So I made one using zip ties.  I love zip ties.

Here is the finished frame.

I think we are going to use the same green lattice that we are using for our arbors for the face of the gate for now.  It will match our arbors, be affordable and then later we can take it off and do something more fancy if we want.

For  now, we need to dig a trench for the power to the gate opener, install the gate opener, attach the lattice and level and pour concrete under the gate-so not this weekend but soon, soon we should have a gate and an enclosed yard.