Adios, Juniper!

If you've ever heard Barb talk about our front yard, you know she felt very strongly about one thing: SHE HATES THE JUNIPER.

Even all her students will attest to this knowledge. Luckily, the ranting she did to that audience proved to be lucrative, as one of her students graciously offered his John Deere tractor, along with his and his father's services, for a day of Juniper removal.

Brandon was just pouring the coffee, when Barb's student rolled down the street atop his big green tractor at 9:30am. Sure, now he gets his work in on time...




He dug right in to the work, (pun intended), and soon the yard started taking shape.

Without the juniper taking over, we started to realize how large our yard truly was.











After much back-and-forth, we decided to keep the big tree in the front yard, on the condition that it be trimmed up and made to look like an actual shade tree.

Brandon helped so much.


He watched a lot.

No, actually, he and Charles had the awesome "chore" of stomping down the now-dead juniper, bushes, tree limbs, and dead dogwood trees in the trailer.

When they left, the yard already looked a thousand times better.

The next day, we went down to Durham to pick up a rented rototiller, and Brandon embarked on the strenuous task of actually tilling up the yard. It was no picnic. However, it WAS Good Friday, which meant there was no school. So that was good.

When the tilling was finally done, we quickly realized that there was no way that grass would actually grow in what we just tilled up. Thanks to some timely advice from Brandon's dad, (sorry about taking you out of a meeting), we decided to hit up the local dirt company and have 16 cu. yrds of topsoil delivered. However, the dirt didn't arrive until it was nearly time for us to head to church, so we didn't get it spread that night.

The next day, we awoke to two intimidating mountains of dark soil looming in the yard. We started early with the goal of finishing by noon. We had the one shovel we owned.  A brand new yard rake.  A leaf rake. New leather gloves for each of us to don, repelling blisters.

Noon came, and noon went. One pile still remained.

We should have had sunblock. Barb burned pretty well. Brandon got his Spring Break tan in just a day.

We should have had a wheelbarrow. Barb found Brandon a 10-gallon garbage can to haul the dirt around. It takes a LONG time to move 16 cu. yds of dirt by hand.

 note the super awesome shovel-full of dirt being flung in this picture

Well, all tasks can be completed with hard work, no matter how Herculean, and we did just that. Before the sun went down too! While Brandon finished tearing down the last mountain, Barb began moving the keystones from the back yard (demolishing and preparing for a backyard project) to the front, creating a flowerbed around the base of the (pear?) tree. We leveled them out, fertilized the new dirt, and laid a seed mixture we had created ourselves.

We had done a lot of research on grass in NC, and it seemed like everything was very seasonal. What grows in the spring/fall dies in the summer, and what thrives in the summer refuses to grow for the rest of the year. Keeping that in mind, we created our own mixture of fescue, ryegrass, bluegrass, and bermuda grass. We hope to have a green lawn year-round!

One by one, our neighbors came over (some whom we hadn't even met yet) and made sure to tell us how much better they liked our yard without the bushes. They all individually confessed they had "no idea" why the former owner put all that in, and they described how terrified everyone was to go near it, as they had seen snakes slithering in many times. I guess that's why we found 6 baseballs in the debris--no children wanted to venture in to retrieve them. Luckily we didn't find any snakes while tearing up the bushes, and Java was very pleased to have 6 new balls to chew up.

The pile of debris left over, even after our helpers had taken away a gargantuan trailer full, was an unfortunate eyesore on the side of the road, in front of our yard. The city refused to pick it up from a pile, so we had to bag everything. Good thing the bags come in packs of 25!

Spring break was off to a good start! We completed one HUGE task on our list in only 2.5 days! Now it was time to prep the Easter food, and prepare for the feeding of 9 for Easter. Note that we only NOW started preparing the meal... about 20 hours before it was planned to be consumed. Brandon smoked the ham. It was excellent! 

Now on to the true meaning of Spring Break: demolishing the main floor bathroom. I can't wait to have to run upstairs every time nature calls...

Tiling, Take 1

We've known for a while now that we would have a lot of tiling ahead of us: the laundry closet, both bathrooms, and the backsplash in the kitchen. With the laundry room freshly painted, and knowing that the floor would almost completely be covered with appliances, we figured that was the best (and most inconspicuous) place to start.

After some research and a very helpful discussion with a friendly Lowe's employee, we felt ready to gather our supplies and dive in.

Much to Barb's chagrin, the first step in this process was to remove the washer and dryer that she'd just worked so hard to get back in place. Step two was to remove the baseboards she'd just worked so hard to get painted. Oh well, it's all for the good of the cause, right?

With the space now (re)emptied, we got rid of the last piece of the dreaded linoleum we'd been using as a barrier between the washer/dryer and the subfloor.

The next step was to install the cement board, which would act as a water barrier and would help to ensure we were tiling atop a level floor. About a hundred screws later, we were ready to proceed.

We were ready to lay out the tiles and mark them all for cutting. Now, we'd done a lot of research about how to best cut tile. Would a score-and-snap system be precise enough? Do we really need to pay for a wet saw? Would we want to rent the same saw three different times for all of our various projects? Happily, our questions were moot once we found out Lowe's will cut your tile FOR FREE! Just mark it, bring it in, and voila! Twenty minutes later, we had our tiles all cut to size for only the cost of the gas it took us to drive there. Perfect!

Now for the fun part! We mixed together the mortar and started spreading and scoring it. Carefully, we laid the tile and put in the little spacers to make sure everything stayed straight.

The next day, once the tile had set, we came back with the grout. After removing the spacers, we just mashed the grout in between the tiles and wiped away the excess, making sure to clean the tiles as much as possible.

And in one short weekend, the floors had transformed! 

We've decided tiling is WAY easier than ripping out three layers of linoleum, removing thousands of staples, laying padding, and installing laminate flooring. This was just the boost of confidence we needed to tackle the bigger tiling projects still ahead of us. It has been decided: Spring Break, we redo the downstairs bathroom! 

...Here's the only problem: we (purposefully) tiled over the dryer vent, which was precariously run through the floor, into the crawl space, and outside at the exact height where we want to eventually extend the deck. So, even though the laundry room now looked beautiful, there was no way to run the dryer yet. We value function in a laundry room, so clearly we needed a new plan.

The idea was to raise the vent completely so it went out the wall directly instead of making a U under the house. First thing's first, let's remove the vinyl siding and see what we're dealing with.

We measured as best we could with only theoretical plans for the deck extension, and started cutting. The only hole saw we had access to was too small, so we expanded it with the help of Charles' jig saw and Bill's old Dremel.

Once the hole was the right size both inside and outside the house, we had to cut a similar hole in the vinyl siding.

Once that was done, it was a mere matter of inserting the aluminum tube, reattaching the siding, and replacing the exterior vent cover.

Oh, and "patching" the old hole.

Don't worry, it's temporary. Theoretically one day the deck will extend over this area, so that whole piece of siding will be gone anyway. But, priorities! We have working laundry again! YAY!