The gravel and sand base layer, all tamped down. Lunch time.
We chose to tint the cement and I'm very happy with how it turned out.
Mud wrestling, anyone? 'Cause we've got the mother of all mud pits going on in the backyard today.
It rained (and thundered and lightninged) all night long, so there was no chance of pouring the cement today. Jim, our landscape guy, did show up to haul away the old deck and map out where the cement will go.
This gives you a good idea of what we're doing. We're doubling the amount of ground that we have to plant in and will have greenery all the way around. The bottom left corner, just out of the frame, is where the decking will extend from the back door, two steps down to the cement walkway. On the left is a section for the grill. The right section is for seating (and a table down the road.) Then the walkway to the garage.
The upper left corner will have an evergreen tree, some perennial grasses, including the moor grass (currently in the big pot) and probably a smoke bush. On the right, will be the serviceberry tree and some astilbe. Continuing clockwise, along the fence, behind the seating area, will be a climbing hydrangea. The lower right-hand corner will have another evergreen, a couple of small lilac shrubs and the fountain. In the lower left, will be another lilac and a small plot for herbs. And behind the grill will possibly be a crab apple tree, espaliered on the fence.
Fingers crossed that we're done with the rain for a while and Monday is the day for cement.
Seriously, I pulled up a chair, sat at the window and enjoyed the show.
All gone!
What emerged under the deck wasn't as nightmarish as I'd envisioned. A great number of plastic toys, a very old soccer ball, some caution tape, more plastic tarp, and lots of black, sludge that looks like dried tar.
Today, in the hot sun, the yard looked pretty trashed. The coneflower, a few black-eyed susan and the false lupine were temporarily replanted where they won't be in the way.
Apparently, it takes a major illness for this household to make any major home improvements. Allow me to explain.
In 2006, as we were making plans for a major home renovation, Jen was diagnosed with breast cancer. It didn't take us very long to come to the decision that we should go ahead with our plans, working and living through the renovation as Jen was living and working through her chemotherapy and radiation treatments. It turned out to be a very good decision. The project was a terrific diversion for us both and helped to put a positive spin on what could have been a very negative time.
Four years later, after years of talking about it, we decided this was the summer we'd rip out the horrid deck that dominates the yard, fix the grading and amend the soil, and completely redo the backyard--and my diagnosis of breast cancer wasn't about to stand in our way.
We've been talking with a landscape architect and have come up with a plan. We're at the plant selection/pricing stage. Jen and I spent a few hours last weekend scoping out plants that are in contention to be included in the final plan. For years, I've been secretly making lists of plants I'd want to include in my own dream backyard, so to walk through the garden center with real intention was great fun.
Here are some of the ideas we're kicking around.
Smokebush: I love the color of the smokebush leaves, green to dark purple in summer and then changing bright red in the fall. And the blooms that give this plant its smokey name are fantastic, wispy and beautiful in the breeze. The entire plant is a wonderful contrast element. I was leery to incorporate this plant, until I learned that you can cut it way down every three years and have it come back in flower again without it getting out of control.
Prairie dropseed grass: I love grasses that flower, and this one in mass plantings will be a great low level, drought-tolerant ground cover. I currently have a purple moor grass that has fantastic, tall plumes that are starting to bloom now and will last well into winter. It will be replanted in the new garden.
Serviceberry Tree: I can't wait to finally put a tree in our backyard. The yard isn't huge and, stuck as it is between the house and the garage, the roughly 15'x25' space can't support just any sized tree. For years, I've gone back and forth about what tree I'd like to have, but the service berry has always been in the top three. My requirements for a tree are simple, I want it all: spring flowers, attractive branch structure, good fall color, berries for the birds, and winter interest. Serviceberry fits the bill, but is usually found in a multi-stem variety, which is nice but might prove too wide for the spot we've chosen in the yard.
Recently I discovered this tree variety of the serviceberry and when I learned the it's called Robin Hill, I felt it was horticultural destiny. (Robin Hill is a direct reference to one of my favorite books, The Forsyte Saga.)
Echinacea: I already have a bunch of purple coneflower that will be reincorporated in the new plan. I'd never seen this new "tomato soup" variety and when I did, it blew me away. Wow, what color. I love the vibrant red combined with the shape of the echinacea flower.
Other plants that are in contention for the final plan include a dwarf variety of lilac, hydrangea (including a climbing hydrangea on the fence), velvet boxwood, Japanese loose cap yew, astilbe, and perhaps a prairie fire crab apple as an espalier on one of the fences.
I've been spending the past week preparing for my immediate life after surgery, doing things like straightening up my room and washing all the bed linen (including the bedspread and comforter.) I decided there was no better time than now to finally finish up a project I've been intending to get to for about two years now.
A while ago, I snapped and removed the folding door that had been on my closet. The door was doubly irritating--I was constantly wrestling with it and it was made of floor-to-ceiling mirrors, a lame attempt to make a small room seem bigger. Because of the way the room is set up, it meant that I could stare at myself in bed not to mention every time I'd leave the room or put something in the closet. It felt great the day I ripped the door down and chucked it out into the alley.
I'd long intended to hang a curtain in place of the door and after a few years of staring at my open closet (preferable to staring at the mirror) I hit on the idea of hiding the closet behind a large swag of lace we'd previously used to cover the blinding fluorescent light that was the first thing to go when we remodeled the kitchen.
As I thought about being stuck in my room for a few days straight next week recuperating from surgery, it was enough to snap me into action and finally hang the closet curtain. Considering the rod and hooks cost me all of $18 from Target, I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. And just coincidentally, the pale sage color of the curtain perfectly matches with the sage on my bedspread, purchased about six years and independently apart. I love it when that happens.
We finally put the Christmas stuff away (as opposed to just shoving it into a corner of the basement) and in reorganizing some of the stuff on the shelves, I came across the boat-load of color samples we'd accumulated during the year we agonized over which shade of bluish-greenish-sagey-moss to paint the first floor.
Half a shelf space was gained when I pitched out about ten pounds of painted poster board. It represented countless trips to various paint stores and hours of painting samples, hanging them on the walls, moving them around, living with them, pondering over them, and never coming any closer to picking a color scheme.
It got to a point where I completely gave up and another year had passed when a flier arrived from our painter-of-choice offering one hour of free color consultation. I jumped at it. In less than fifteen minutes, the designer had chosen an awesomely perfect duo of colors and I just had to laugh at all the time we'd spent getting to this quick fifteen minutes.
Throwing out these paint samples felt really good.
I got tired of boiling water in a pot.
NaBloPoMo, Day 1
It's November (November!!?!) and masochistic bloggers know what that means--it's National Blog Posting Month!
Oh, heck, why not? But I'll blog every day just for one month, got it? That's it. And I'm warning you now, this month may be a little heavy on the photograph posts, since I'm up to my neck in digital images. Every free moment this weekend has been spent consolidating my digital image library onto one large external hard drive. It's a project that will carry me well into the week, as I transfer, organize and tag nearly 10,000 images dating back to 2006. If I really want to kill myself, I could drag out the CDs I have with images dating back another few years, shots taken with my very first digital camera, a 3 megapixel Sony Powershot. I just might do that; there are some photos from the Tetons I wouldn't mind seeing again and improving upon with some more advanced digital darkroom techniques.
The weekend was good, the high point of which was my good friend Annie's 50th birthday celebration. A dozen of us gathered at one long table in the private upstairs room at the always delicious Campagnola; an interesting and diverse collection of friends representing all five decades of Annie's life. She's the first of my close band of friends to make the leap into the next half century and I can safely say, if every celebration is this fun and filled with this much laughter, I look forward to us all hitting the mark.
And finally, to the real subject of this post, what I was doing at 3 o'clock yesterday afternoon--hanging pictures. Yep, whacking nails into the freshly painted walls. Nothing acts as a better impetus to clean your house than the sudden prospect of friends coming over for a pre-birthday gathering. And that major task I've been putting off--hanging the art back up on the walls--what better time to do that too?
This finishing touch to our home redo project really sets off the color in the room. The walls and the artwork (mostly photographs) look great together. The wall color really sets off the art and the art now pops off the wall, as opposed to getting lost in the drab white of before. I'm thrilled with the way it looks. A few pieces returned to their original locations, most everything else we changed up and I'm really happy with the way everything seemed to come together and fall into place.
Megan, you asked who we used to paint our place, and rather than email you the info, I thought I'd post it as a blog entry because I'd love to recommend our painters to everyone. We used Heffernan Painting Services in Evanston; the same painters we used eleven years ago (!!) when we first moved in and painted the bedrooms upstairs.
Heffernan and company are great. Their work is first-rate, with super attention to detail. They were prompt, finished the job in less time than originally thought possible (a good thing, since we were going into a holiday weekend), and they left the place in great condition (no mess). In fact they cleaned up considerably at the end of each day, so I was living with as little mess as possible throughout the process.
In this photos, there are actually two colors: the tan color heading up the stairway to the second floor hallway and the green, as an accent wall in the dining area. The green is also in the kitchen and around the column that divides the kitchen and entry hall from the rest of the first floor.
You can see the two colors better in the photo on the right. The white on the bookcase that we built out under the pass-through counter to the kitchen really pops now and sets off the stone on the countertop. We had them seal the stair rail with a natural stain. The gray carpet on the stairs and second floor doesn't look nearly as bad now and I think I can most definitely live with it for another ten years before we finally get around to ripping it all up and replacing it with hard wood floor.
I'm taking my time moving back in, doing a thorough cleaning, de-cluttering and reorganization. I have to admit, I've kind of enjoyed living in a very stripped down, clean and open space this past week. The place seems so much bigger and I feel calmer when there's not a lot of crap everywhere.
(P.S. Megan, if Heffernan sounds familiar, yes, it's that Heffernan, from the video store oh-so-long ago.)
Getting half as much done in twice the time.
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