But what about the backyard?

Everything needs a plan.  But first, the survey:

This was actually part of a larger project/gift for Mother’ Day.  Page Two was documenting (somewhat New Yorker-style, the other existing bits to the backyard):

Page Three: my future version, and Page Four (not shown) was a blank version for “Now You Try”.  But, here’s my collection of ideas for a perhaps 10-year plan (or, maybe it’s the 25-year plan for daughter’s wedding…):

Renovating the Basement

Unfortunately, I didn’t take a true “before” picture showing the overall true ugliness.  The walls (and ceiling, I might add) were all painted the same realtor’s beige, and the floor completely covered in cheap (and chipping), cold, ceramic tile (any alliteration unintentional).  The picture below shows the furniture moved, shoe mold removed, and the beginning of the cork flooring.

About the cork:  engineered, non-glue down (“floating”), approximately 12×36, $3.80/sf from Lumber Liquidators.  It takes a bit of careful tapping with a hammer to get each tile into place, but overall installation went fairly quickly because of the big tiles.  LL did discontinue one line of cork mid-project (it’s a slightly different pattern, dimension, and shade of brown), and with their decidedly ungenerous return policy, we’ll install the mismatch in a less prominent room that will likely be covered in area rugs.   Apparently, there is no official repair for gouges, but this is one floor which is most forgiving for that kind of thing.  And yes, it literally warms up the basement, making it so much more inviting, which was our goal!

About the paint: Benjamin Moore Poolside Blue, Aura, eggshell finish.  Love BM’s Aura – pretty close to a one-coat paint + primer, as advertised.  Pricey, but worth it!  ($80/gallon, as I recall.)  I was looking for a Mad Men/50s vintage color, to go along with the era of our house.  One funny thing is that it’s the perfect backdrop to our aquarium against the wall (upper picture, on the right)!

Next goal for this room: repair the chimney, and getting it working for next winter.

Other goals: paint the brick, replace the lighting, get a big flat panel tv (we did just get Roku, and love it!), and eventually paint the ceiling white (instead of beige).

Scout pinewood derby: a real entry, the younger brother’s, and one for the “leader’s race”*

* The Leader’s Race was listed only as “time permitting.”  According to the day-long schedule for some 140 cub scouts to compete, there are multiple heats for intra-den races, then all dens within the same year, then for Pack glory – and then only if there’s time do the adults get to compete.

OK, if you hadn’t guessed already, the real scout’s entry is top left, the younger brother’s is top right, and mine is in the foreground.  All were given to Uncle to carve from the standard-issue block of wood, but based upon sketches given to him. Of course, I couldn’t submit just any ordinary design!  Its form is based loosely on a recent trend in architecture (now passe, I’m sure!), only made possible through available new digital technologies, generally known as “blobism” or “blob architecture.”  I was thinking that after the races, I might repurpose it as a door handle…

Follow-up: the Scout’s car came in #3 in his Den of 7. The younger brother’s wheel came off, but taped back on still was able to go down the test track multiple times.  The “leader’s race,” renamed “family & friends” came in 7th of 14.

Yea IKEA (again)! Design solution on the cheap!

We needed more bookshelves, especially out of reach of a certain 2-year-old.  After considering custom shelves, and various configurations of Ikea’s Expedit shelving units, this is what we settled on.  $400 total, and a perfect fit!  We added 4″ legs to be able to clean below (and get things that fall behind); the legs also have the added benefit of visually splitting the remaining height difference so that there’s only about 2″ at the very top against the ceiling.  While not a true Ikea “hack” (the practice where products, or even parts of products, are repurposed), we’re pretty happy with the modular combination.

Pumpkin “carving” at Scout campout

At the annual fall Cub Scout campout, each den carves a pumpkin to be voted on.  In previous years, our Wolf Scout’s den never got very far in the vocal voting, because we’re both few and younger.  This year, we were carving for pride, but having brought my brother and knowing the system, I had secret hopes we’d do better.  We did – out of maybe 13 entries, we got to the final round of 3 before the winner was declared.  Ours, though, was an original design, and had significant youth participation.  I won’t show the others, but trust me, they weren’t as cool!

Design: stopping in at a parking lot pumpkin stand, I just had to figure out something to do with the blue pumpkin and weird gourds.  Solution: a diarama of a UFO mother ship and space aliens!  The interpretation is up to the viewer – are the odd ones going in and being transformed into Orwellian conformance, or vice versa?

Final product:

Some calligraphy

I was surprised when an older woman in my church commissioned me to do calligraphy for the wedding of our pastor’s daughter.  As far as I know, she didn’t know that it was a hobby from many years past, and that I’ve been a huge lifelong fan of types, fonts (has everybody seen the documentary, “Helvetica”?), and handwriting in general.  It’s sparked me to pull out my old ArtBins of india ink and nibs, and I’ve even delved a little into my kids’ homeschool art supplies for watercolor tubes.  Three weddings this summer/fall, three gifts (one, a diptych).

A new shed

This is our old shed.  If you want to see what daylight looks like through rotting plywood filtered by ivy, come visit soon because the opportunity won’t last much longer!

The new design:

8'x16' plan @ concrete patio: 10 4x4 posts

Plan thru walls & door, with beams above dashed in

Butterfly roof framing plan

Roof plan (but "skylight" idea was nixed)

Front elevation showing future rain barrel & no door; Side elevation

Construction!

The door:

A castor from Home Depot, disassembled.

The wheel, reconfigured.

Two wheels rolling on a galvanized 1" heavy conduit pipe.

Complete!

Postlogue:

I was visited by our local friendly code enforcement official.  He’d received a complaint (we do live on a major street) that someone thought it was a chicken coop, and that it seemed a bit tall.  Two days later, a sheriff delivered notice that we had 15 days to fix the height (it obviously wasn’t a chicken coop).  My architectural background didn’t help me: although I should have read the code more closely, height for regular buildings is measured differently than sheds in our county.  When a regular building is on a slope, height is measured by the average grade to the mid-point of the roof.  For sheds, it is absolute lowest point to absolute highest point – I was off by 2 feet.  I’d gotten everything else right: under the limit before needing a building permit (plus, no electricity or plumbing); but 8 1/2 feet is the magic number at which you can be anywhere in your side yard.  I certainly wasn’t going to move the shed into the middle of the backyard (away from sideyard height restrictions).  So, the best thing I could do was lop off my butterfly roof.  It was more painful to take down than to put up.  Removing the nails, I was able to reuse the lumber.  I only needed to buy one extra sheet of plywood, and one extra panel of roofing.  The flat roof doesn’t perfectly repel all rain, even with sheets of plastic underneath and lines of caulk between the roofing overlaps, but hey, it’s legal, and it mostly does what a shed needs to do.  I still like the light, and from the inside I didn’t have to touch a thing (even during demolition).  Oh, and it perfectly survived an earthquake and Hurricane Irene!

Garden process

So much of our new house is, well, just plain ugly inside and out.  It was previously a rental house, and the things we love about our place (we’ve been here for just over a year) had nothing to do with its aesthetics: size of the backyard and location.  We have our work cut out for us, or to put it another way: opportunities to make it “ours.”

I said it was ugly inside and out.  This blog post is about our starting to work on the “out” side.

We’re learning to be gardeners!   We have lots of enthusiastic friends who want to help us.  But before doing anything, I needed some kind of master plan to know that whatever efforts we put in wouldn’t be ripped out in a year.  Aside: I’ve since learned something about real gardeners – not only do they like to plant, but they like to divide and replant and stuff like that.

Season Zero would be when we just moved in, when we started off with editing out the most objectionable parts to the front yard.  I wish I had taken pictures!  There was a line of weedy bushes at the sidewalk.  There was an oddly formal march of 6 foot evergreens lining our sidewalk.  And then there was the bizarre 4 foot green metal leaf on a metal post set in concrete which sheltered some religious devotional offering…

The Master Plan

I first heard about a famous contemporary park in Paris called Le Parc de la Villette  in my theory classes because it demonstrated deconstructivist philosophy.  At first wary of the ideas, I became enamored upon visiting the place and finding it quite enjoyable.  A couple of the central ideas in deconstructivist architecture (or, in this case, landscape architecture) are “play” – that both designers can design and interpreters can interpret any way they wish, and “chaos” – that opposing organizational strategies may be layered on top of one another creating odd intersections but more areas for “play.”  Here, I’m kind of trying to do this on a much, much smaller scale.  The “organizational strategies” are 3 arcs and 2 circles.  The first arc is the inherited sidewalk, to which we’ve added the arcs of a stepping stone path, and a rock garden border.  The circle garden we’re keeping from before, but then will be echoed/reinforced in the future with a ring of trees – but of course not the same tree – hopefully different specimens, spiraling in height and volume.

Season One

It’s coming along.  We thank our “garden elves” for starting us out with transplants to the circle.  We’ve learned the tidying effects of $2.75 bags of mulch from Home Depot.  The coolest thing, though, is enjoying this from our kitchen table perch, looking down.

Cool digicam website!

My ulterior motive made known: I’d love to win a camera by blogging about this website: http://snapsort.com/compare

But, I must admit it’s a worthy website worth checking out.  I like to be prepared (shall we say) for what the next digicam I’d get if, say, my current camera were dropped “accidentally” or lost or stolen.  I’m currently drooling over the Canon G12 v. the Samsung TL500.  When I googled the two, I stumbled upon this website, that not only quite succinctly compares the two, but lists how they’re similar and offers suggestions of what might be similar.  You can make quick comparisons, or you can dig deeper pretty readily.  I wish there were hyperlinks for explanations of some of their icons, though: like what is “24p” that gives “real film feel”?  Other than that, pretty neat-o!

Hello world!

OK, this is a little scary.  My wife’s been blogging for over a year, but this is my first go at it!  Mostly, I wanted to post resume/portfolio stuff, which will appear on the “pages.”  Really, my wife is the better documenter of our lives.  Read her blog at: http://supratentorial.wordpress.com/.