The pitter patter of progress

Look! Just for you I created a fun survey where you can tell me which type of column you'd like to see on our house.(Woo hoo! Lucky you!!)

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Though I'm not sure this picture says a lot, compare and contrast with this one and see all the work we've done.

Mabel went to Nana's and Paw Paw's so I thought we'd spend the weekend solely working on the columns, getting the project finished. There are, with us at least, certain methods to our DIY madness and sometimes we have to be honest with ourselves about these projects. Money is limited, and it is the facet we most often have to remember.

Despite my hope for a big unveil this morning, we had a budget set aside of less than $80. Most of that ended up going into reciprocating saw blades. We bought a $20 one meant for cutting iron which turned out to be overkill; a $3 blade for thick metal was actually the blade we needed. When you're talking about an $80 project, $23 takes a big cut (no pun intended). It didn't leave us enough to get the wood for the facade of the columns, and we decided to wait to get that wood anyway. For a nominally larger cost, we can get a higher grade board from a local lumber yard rather than from the big box store. A higher grade board will mean less knots and mars, making the finished column smoother and much prettier.

This coming weekend we'll both have paychecks to dole out for the finishing wood and trim, so until then our yard will remain (as one friend deftly put it) one trampoline shy of redneck gold. All of that is to give a glimpse inside how our renovations work: with time, ingenuity, and a little bit of spending money. Oh, and a generous Nana to keep the little one distracted and happy all weekend--essential to success.

It took an entire day to get the iron work down and the 4 x 4 (actually 2 2x4s laminated and screwed together) cores for the new columns up. That "entire workday" happened on Saturday, after I spent 6 hours volunteering at the community garden. My body still hurts.

On Sunday Charlie mended the fence while I built a small retaining wall from some 4 x 4s we had on hand. Having the dogs in the fenced area most of the time, they've created paths where they run laps around the perimeter of the space. That path, even on a gently sloping hill, has created an erosion problem which, in turn, created soil build up around the fence at the bottom of the hill. The soil build up pushed the fence every which way, making it lean and wobble. Once again the fence is perpendicular to the ground and we're already seeing and hearing the pitter patter of progress.

Green-Slime-a-Go-Go

When Chiot's Run posted about boiled linseed oil and vinyl siding I flagged it with a mental post it note. In the past we'd used I don't know if you can tell in the image below, but the side of our garage was pretty much slimy and green. {Please don't look at the roof of the garage...it needs some attention, but that's a fall project.}

In case you're not feeling up to scrolling down to the last post to see what the house looked like on Tuesday, let me remind you: 

As we did small prep tasks to tackle the new porch columns the green slime became more noticeable. Let me rephrase that in a more honest fashion: As we cleared up long-standing messes in the area, other details that needed attention became more apparent. Green slime became very very very apparent.

I'd ordered the smaller bottles of both organic linseed oil soap Extra and of organic boiled linseed oil and they arrived just in time to make a quick project of cleaning the garage...and by quick project I mean we were out there for less than an hour. I diluted the soap in water, gathered some stiff bristled brushes, and Charlie and I tackled the task while Mabel sprayed everyone and everything with the hose. The process? Brush on the soap, leave for a few minutes, spray off with the hose.

No one even broke a sweat. Maybe Monday I'll have pictures of the house with new columns! Wish me luck, I've already told Charlie I'm Superintendent on this project.

Our House

We have a functional but no longer charming front porch. I remember being enchanted with it when I was a kid, the scrolling ironwork was straight out of a story book (and I could walk on it like it was my own personal balance beam) but now it's wobbly and rusting out from the bottom; plus it seems to lack scale or something. I'm sure the beat up gutter doesn't help its tired look. It needs a facelift and I've been thinking about simple {affordable!}ways to dress it up.

First off, the 3 bushes directly in front of the porch are coming out. A few more foundation shrubs will be planted in front of a walkway that connects the porch to the garage. The railings are coming off and staying off, making the porch sort of spill into the yard {plans for that later}.

Southern Living White Plains house plan

I'm a sucker for metal roofs, so that might be part of my draw to this Southern Living house. I'm not crazy about the lattice work between the columns, but like the idea of having something for vines to climb. The size of the porch seems pretty close to our own, so it's easy to imagine these in place of our current supports.

RBVa front porch restoration

RBVa's front porch restoration is probably closest to what our house would've looked like with wooden columns rather than metal work. Without the railing, though, I'm not sure a design like this would look like an upgrade from our current porch layout.

Sears kit home

I love the sizable columns on this Sears kit home, but also wonder if they would be too clunky for our porch. I also love the simple, Craftsman details and the clapboard wrapped pedestals on each column.

Image from the HGTV website

Perhaps the best solution? Simple columns with arched details, like these found on the HGTV website, at the top would add shape and architectural interest to the porch without adding too much visual weight.

Since porches are on my mind, The Porches Inn popped up as a link in my flickrstream, and reinforced the porch update obsession.Above all else, though, I blame Aesthetic Outburst for making me think of ways to charm up our porch.

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Plants I didn't really need

Yesterday, between work and a doctor's appoint, I had an hour to fill. I took the free time as a rare opportunity to visit Campbell's greenhouse, a long standing Charlotte nursery with a great reputation for selection and variety (and a quick google shows perhaps a less than great reputation for kindness and manners). Their plant reputation, and the fact that it's frequented by Myer's Park homeowners, kept me away for fear the plants were too pricey, the environment too hoity, and that I'd walk away disappointed or far poorer than I could rationalize.

vernal witch hazel by flickr user lobstah1977 purple basil by flickr user proteinbiochemist Pelargonium* by flickr use louisa_catlover

What did I take home? Some sort of purple basil -- perhaps it will end up in several of these ideas on Farmgirl Fare.  I haven't been too experimental with some of my veggies the past couple years, opting for tried and true varieties to keep us happy over the winter but the purple was way too pretty to ignore. I also bought a vernal witch hazel, I've been asking around about witch hazel, but haven't found the east coast native variety (Hamamelis virginiana). This variety is native to the states slightly west of here and has the same useful properties as H. virginiana, so I figured what-the-hey and added it to my pile.  I've been looking for a rose pelargonium because the fragrance is a natural tick repellent, but haven't found one yet. They had apple and mint scented geraniums, so I brought home an apple variety.  I spent less than $30, not too shabby considering a few weeks ago the witch hazel alone would've easily set me back that much. Since they're out of season for flowering, though, I think I got a pretty good deal on it. 


*To be honest, the picture of the scented geranium wasn't labeled, but mine looks very much like this one.

The mess

When Ez talked about showing a little realness on blogs I immediately wondered if it would come across as self-indulgent and waylaying faults (Hello, my name is Renee and I'm a serial pessimist.) When I see imperfection in the mainstream perfect world I automatically think it's supposed to be a wink, like Martha Stewart saying, "Hey, look at me, I'm just like you." Except she has a giant sheet ironing contraption. I barely get the sheets washed, much less ironed, no matter how much she winks I'm not a part of that inside joke, I just feel even more inept.

But, in the spirit of openness and honesty, a few things I don't talk about because, well, they're a little messier than  where I usually take my blog posts:

• I have better intentions than follow through. I also have no attention span. Small goals and completed tasks amaze me. {In fact, this post was supposed to happen several weeks ago.}
• I am messy to the extreme and constantly battle the mess. I am also obsessive about recycling, and working with printing on paper makes it even harder to battle the mess. Charlie, is pretty much the same, sans recycling obsession. Poor, poor Mabel.
• Despite the fact that this blog shows otherwise, Mabel does not play outside all the time with natural toys in utter wonder. Sometimes she climbs all over me while watching Blues Clues as I nap on the couch because I didn't sleep well because we still co-sleep and she does acrobatics in her sleep. I can't take and post pictures of these moments because 1) I'm asleep, and 2) I'd have to learn to Photoshop the pool of drool collecting on the pillow at the corner of my mouth.
• I fibbed, I know how to use Photoshop and I'm not afraid to erase some crumbs from a picture of our dinner. Ironically, our kitchen is simultaneously the cleanest and messiest rooms in the house. I don't know how that happens, but it does.
• I'm 34 and still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. That simple fact is enough to induce panic. 
• Though I never really had a firm picture of who or what I wanted to become, when I was in college I thought I'd be someone else somewhere else at this stage in my life.  More cosmopolitan (too much Mary Tyler Moore in my formative years?) maybe a little more Door Sixteen or Little Paper Planes or something. 
• I have panic attacks and anxiety. They are one reason I rarely slam the pharmaceutical industry: medicine got me through some of the toughest times of my life. I also have a history of lock-myself-in-a-dark-room-and-cry depression. 

That's the short list of faults, mind you, not the deepest secrets I hold, by far, but an introductory mess. I think it's important to present a little bit of real, a little bit of well-edited. All of these things aside, I'm happier than I've ever been.  Half completed projects and all, it's exciting to be part of a relatively new internetosphere landscape. It's amazing to see the world anew through the eyes of a toddler, marriage in suburbia is...normal, and normal is far less scary than I'd pictured it when I was a teenager.

In fact, it's a rather lovely place to be!