Front Lawn is going in !!!!!

Finally! Well it's a couple of weeks later than the original plan (so what else is new when I keep changing the plans??), but the yard has been seeded & fertilized & rolled.

Now to give it a good start, Tom is using these teal blue mulch pellets to cover the seed with. They have seed starter in them & when the yard gets watered the pellets expand. In theory, they will protect the seed from washing away in a heavy rain, keep the soil moister longer & provide the seed with starter fertilizer to help it take root & grow.....we'll see how it works! It certainly makes the yard look like it's already covered with Kentucky blue grass.

These Eastern Tiger Swallowtails certainly seem to like it
after it's expanded some!

The Ledge is done!

There are some projects that just are not priorities with Tom & Mandy, but drive me nuts 'cause they're not finished. Like the ledge in the foyer, not a big deal from the downstairs view, but every time I come down the stairs it just looks, well....unfinished. (how's that for polite?) So now that the foyer wall has been repaired, we can get the ledge done! Mandy looks like she's just standing on the floor, but actually she's on scaffolding 10 ft up. We finally decided to cover the ledge with tiles to match the foyer floor & the landing on the stairs. Tom's the gopher on this project, hauling whatever she needs up & down the ladder as Mandy lays the tiles......but between the two of them they did a great job & it looks beautiful!.

No Indoor Mural

One & a half years after the water damage in the foyer, we finally sent Mandy up on the extension ladder to make the repairs. Apparently my idea of turning the water ripples into an indoor mural had been vetoed. (see post 02/23/07) I really do believe she was having way too much fun! She was just ripping right thru the paint bubbles & watching the stuff just hit the floor! Of course she's the repair part of the team-I'm just clean-up.

Nice patch job!

Beautiful finish work!

Finish work in the Loft

Tom is back inside for awhile with Mandy, working on the finish trim for the loft. (I know the idea of using the word finish in relationship to anything in this house is alien but really it's true!)They have cut, stained & installed all the oak thresholds. They look fabulous!In February when they installed the luann for the sub floor in the Loft, it was because the plywood floor had gotten wet (more than once during the building & framing stage of the house) & by now had quite a few layers of dirt & debris on it. You couldn't get it clean to lay the hardwood, so they had to install the sub floor. This created a step up from where the actual oak was installed for the railings. The white line in this picture is the hardwood floor which sits up 3/8ths of an inch above the oak. Now how the heck do you trim that??? Not to mention make it look good? (Which, needless to say had been one of my big anal concerns for quite awhile now, but I try not to say too much......) Oh yee of little faith......Tom bought the oak trim, Mandy stained it & with the router bit, they custom cut trim with a lip to fit over the raised edge. It's a damn fine custom job & looks terrific! (The close up shots aren't bad either.)

Slight Lawn Delay.......

The original plan was to seed our lawn Mother's Day weekend, but we went to my Mom's with my brothers & tackled Mom's landscaping instead. The delay gave me time to come up with another idea, it gave Tom another backache. I decided an island would look great up near the front of the road, I had always wanted one next door & we just never got around to it, now was the perfect opportunity, right? So the area was outlined, landscape bricks laid out in the shape of a kidney, soil brought in & Tom got right to work! We then brought home our beautiful Japanese dwarf maple that the neighbors had been foster parents to for the last 3 years. We transplanted it to our new island & it has center stage! Really.....grass will be coming soon.....

Beginnings of a Front Yard!

Well if you look at the top two pictures, it looks like we actually have grass.....but alas, it's only a spring collection of weeds. All being rototilled into the ground to eventually be destroyed with weed & feed. Even the bottom two look great, a level yard of beautiful top soil is a sight to behold when you're looking at your 3rd summer with no front yard!
We'll be planting grass this weekend!

Front & Side gardens

The flowers (at least I hope they're flowers) are coming up. Remember all those plants I whined about trying to plant in the stone & protect with little yougart containers ( see blog dated Sept 20,2007 "The Yard")? Well most of the plants made it thru the winter, they're supported with their little yougart cup collars (or plastic beer cups when I didn't eat enough yougart) & damn don't they look funny! We're going to have to come up with a permanent solution to hold the stone back so the plants aren't crushed each spring, but we've got time. So the soaker hoses were laid, now we need the landscape lighting & the sidewalk stone. The stone I had selected last fall was, of course, the perfect color to go with the rest of my color scheme. When the timing of laying the stone didn't quite fit in with our plans during the fall schedule, I was going to have to wait for spring.
Long story short.......(really no such thing here), by spring the store had gone out of business and the stone was no longer available!! Nor could I find it elsewhere! I was going to have to "settle". We were going to have to compromise & end up having the same stone as the neighbor's ( which was our old house-so of course it looks damn good-but I wanted different!) It would just be a reverse, purple stone for the beds & yellow for the walkway. Thank heavens the neighbors didn't mind us copying!

Shade Garden

We finally decided on the walkway that will bring you along the garage side of the house to the back deck (well, part of it, the stretch from the garage to our bedroom slider is still just pea gravel). The area between the river deck & our bed room slider had to be built up a bit & quite a large amount of fill was brought in. A retaining wall needed to be constructed & it's right up to the neighbors garage wall. (Neighbors as in: dog that bites Tom, NOT the nice neighbors who feed me & Tom.) We decided a small patio off our bedroom & a wooden walkway that would meander thru the shade garden would be just the thing.

So I'm on a roll, I'm planning the layout of plants & researching shade loving plants, actually found quite a few that flower, I'm ready for another garden! (Maybe....even another pond...shhhh-don't tell Tom yet.) Tom tells me we need to trim a couple of limbs from the tree that are too close to the house. O.K. Then the tree trimmers come.......man is that guy up there!! (When you click on the pic you'll see what I mean.) Look at those power tools! Umm-more than a couple of branches...we have a large pile of branches...we no longer have a shade garden, more like part sun, part shade. "But look at the expanded variety you have now for plants", says my husband. So much for all the planning & research. Back to square one.

Family Room Fireplace

Tom & I have been trying to come up with just the right design for the fireplace surround in the family room. It will be a wood burning fireplace & due to the massive height of the wall, it has to be substantial.

disregard the junk in front of the fireplace & envision......

We've been bouncing ideas around for a year. We've taken books out of the library, we've looked at ones already built, bounced ideas off anyone that would listen. Mandy got the brunt of the idea bouncing....what if...what do you think... if we did this...you get the general idea. So when we finally came up with a plan, showed Mandy pictures of what we thought we might want, she said.....what if...what do you think... if we did this...she did a quick sketch & we said "THAT'S IT"!

sorry, when you click on this one to blow it up, it's a little blurry
(hey, what do you want from a pencil sketch on a legal pad?)

Then Tom & I went shopping.....we had been talking stone around the fire place for awhile, but not like the stone they put up outside, I needed to look at different stone. I knew what I wanted & could tell you when I saw it. I saw it & it was special order 4-6 week lead time (of course), it was pricey ( hey, I have good taste) & once I made up my mind nothing else was quite the same.( Oh Yeah-Spoiled!)
Mandy & Tom finalized the layout (with my input). They calculated sq footage & Tom ordered the stone. Don't know when it will be constructed, but it will happen in our lifetime & it will be awesome! Check out the view from the Loft thru the railings!