Our New Bedroom!
As anyone who’s seen our house knows, our master bedroom was… well… a bit of a slum. Okay, not living-in-a-box slum, but still, not all that impressive given how nice our house is. Well all that has finally changed! Our new bedroom set has finally arrived!
It was a pretty damn close call, though… the armoire barely made it up our stairs, and the moving guys needed Devin’s and my help to do it. Heck, if we didn’t have the 9’ ceilings or the stub wall beside the staircase, we would have been totally hosed. But, lucky us, it all worked out! So we now have a brand new bed, armoire, mule chest, and two nightstands, all made of solid Alder.
Deck Happenings
Well, we’ve finally started moving on the deck front! I went to Cedar Village this morning, the shop owned by our unbelievably generous family friend Roy Crosty, and did a little bit of deck planning. I’m incredibly excited, as the end product looks absolutely fantastic:
As you can see, we’re planning a two-tier deck. This allows us to build a full-width deck while still preserving the basement window for an additional bedroom. And for those we haven’t told, it’s going to be built from cedar! So. Sweet. Not to mention fragrant! Anyway, the materials have been ordered, so now we’re awaiting delivery, which will likely occur some time in the middle of next week. Once that’s done, it’s deck-buildin’ time!
Of course, one can’t build a deck without some tools, so we headed to Rona and picked up a couple items, specifically:
- 12A 7 1/4” circular saw
- 18V cordless drill
- Level and other random bits
And all for just over $100! Yay for clearance items, and me being not terribly picky about my tools! I figure, in the long run, should they prove insufficient, I can always upgrade later.
Unsurprisingly, though, I’m now itching to play with my new tools! So, tomorrow I’ll probably scavange some wood from various scrap piles nearby and build me a couple saw horses. Once that’s done, I might even attempt to move up to a set of shelves (for the new tools ;)!
To Holiday or Not To Holiday
So the weather is looking pretty darn fine, right now, and tomorrow, in theory, it’s supposed to be 24 and a mix of sun and cloud. It seems like a great day to take off. And yet… I’m torn.
You see, on a day like today (or perhaps tomorrow), my idea of a perfect afternoon is as follows:
- Load up bike with book and blanket.
- Cycle to grocery store and acquire supplies for sandwiches (ham and swiss preferred), along with fruit and beverage.
- Go to local park, say Hermitage, find a nice tree, and bask.
- Eat lunch.
- Read.
- Eventually go home.
That’s basically it. Quiet. Peaceful. A good book and some food. This is a perfect day for me.
The trouble is the weather. You see, a couple weeks ago I tried to execute this plan. I took a Friday off in anticipation of good weather, and was quite excited to get out and enjoy it. You can guess what actually happened. Cloudy. Dreary. Warm, but not fantastic. It was really quite a disappointment.
So the question is, do I tempt fate and try it again tomorrow? I really don’t know… I think I should, but I’m afraid of being disappointed again. Stupid Mother Nature… so fickle…
Yard Work Continued
Well, believe it or not, I achieved all of my necessary goals from yesterday. The garden got staked out, the rhubarb made it into the ground (though slightly the worse for wear, I think…), and the composter is now assembled with a bed of twigs in the bottom, ready to accept it’s first household waste! Which doesn’t sound nearly as awesome when I write it out like that…
Anyway, the rhubarb was probably the biggest challenge. It was previously housed in an old tub that, I believe, was intended to be sunk into the ground and turned into a small pond (thanks, Mom… :). As a result, I had to dig around the outside edge and, eventually, man-handle the thing out of the container, damaging the root ball in the process (which had completely filled the tub, much to my surprise). Fortunately, this plant has already proved itself quite hardy (surviving an artificially induced drought last fall) so I hold out some hope that it will survive unscathed.
The only other tricky bit was deciding where to put the garden. The tree was, thanks to me, unfortunately placed last fall, due to a lack of complete understanding regarding the dimensions of our yard. As a result, I had to take Lenore’s suggestion and extend the garden in behind the tree, in order to use up that dead space… obviously shade-loving plants will need to grow there. You can see the layout in this photo:
In total, the back section is 4’x5’, and the front is 6’x19’, for a total of 134 square feet (I think… :). My goal was to make it possible to divide it up into 2 or 4 square foot sections, rather than doing long rows. We’ll see how that works out.
