Archive for yard work

remodel.

Posted in General with tags , on August 22, 2011 by Missy

CATCHING UP. . .

As many of you know, we’ve done some extensive remodeling to our house.  I wouldn’t recommend remodeling a house while the major participant is going through medical school.  Turns out, remodeling takes a lot of time and TIME is exactly what students, of any kind, have none of.  I felt that because this project consumed the majority of our time, when we had any of it together, that it certainly merited a post.  Enjoy our before and afters.

Front Yard

Before:

After: 

Before (note the walkway to Nowhere):

After:

Chase put in hours of back-breaking labor to move each one of the stones in that terrace, but it made all the difference.

Kitchen

The kitchen was a big project.  It took us four months to complete.

Before:

After

Before:

After:

We washed our dishes in the bathtub and did all our cooking on the grill or in the microwave.

Before (Note the wall to the right of the fridge . . . ):

During:

 
 

After (No more wall!):

(This image taken before finishing touches)

I canned applesauce that year on a piece of sheet-rock that was laid over the cabinets as a temporary counter top.  You know those apple peeler+slicer contraptions?  They don’t clamp onto sheet-rock very well.

Before:

During:

After: I love this kitchen, I think it’s so beautiful.

Dining Room/Mud Room

Seems like a strange combination right?  We had a three-season enclosed room/porch that served us little use except as a refrigeration room in the winter (no heating or insulation).  We knocked out the wall between it and the house, insulated all around (ceiling, floor & walls) to make the dining room.

During:

Yes, that’s our little boy crawling between the floor joists with electrical wire hanging from above.

After:

 This is the only picture we have of the mud room in progress:

Chase had just ridden his bike home in a massive rain storm.  It’s a mud room though, see the umbrella stroller draped on the lumber?  The dining room is on the other side of the left wall.

Bathrooms

Regretfully, we never took any “before” pictures of the bathrooms.  For those of you who’ve been to our house in the early years of our stay in Vermont will appreciate the mighty difference though.  The upper bathroom was originally a half bath.  We turned it into a full bath:

We gutted out the bathroom but were fortunate enough to be able to keep the toilet and most of the drywall.  Porcelain tile replaced the linoleum floor, a 36″ vanity replaced the 22″ one and we added an entire bathtub . . . Chase did the tile work, design strip and all.  This is one of the few showers he can stand upright in and still have the water fall on TOP of his head.  He was sad to have to say goodbye to that.

The lower bathroom was the room that require the least work.  Tile, again, replaced linoleum and a bigger vanity replaced the old one.

     I love what a fresh coat of paint can do to a room!

Basement

Perhaps the larges project in the entire house.  The basement was unfinished; concrete floors, cinder block walls, floor joists visible in the ceiling, etc.  It was cold all year long and was an incredible producer of mold.  Chase spent three to four months finishing the basement to increase the square footage in the house from somewhere around 1500 sqft. to 1980 sqft.  By the time he was working on that, we had the baby and were exhausted with construction so very few pictures were taken during that process.  However, before we locked up the house for the last time, Chase and Enoch took a tour of the whole place.  If you have 15 minutes to spare, enjoy their cinematic artwork.

Inside Tour

Outside Tour

If you’re still reading this, I hope you’ve enjoyed it.  It’s good to see it all put together.  It was four years of work, sprinkled with camping trips, county fairs, birthdays and other fanfare.

Now on to our next adventure!

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garden.

Posted in General with tags on September 25, 2010 by Missy

I’ve never really had a flower garden before, mostly because I kill things.  My dad was a masterful gardener even though his passion for it had wittled away from years of fighting plant fungus and other diseases before I was old enough to appreciate the art.  He still subscribed to gardening magazines and I flipped through them often as the seasons began to change.  I learned the names of many flowers and plants, understood their optimal growing conditions and now receive admired teasing from Chase for how much of it I retained.  However, I’ve never grown my own flower garden.  This fall was our last attempt to make our house look pretty from the outside before we took the picture we’d use for selling it.  Chase called on me to put my dormant skill to use.

 Chase has a great eye for landscaping.  He did all the heavy labor and let me put the frills and color into it.  Once I had my plan all laid out he walked out to see how it was all going.  He proudly wrapped an arm around my shoulders and said something about how much he likes working together on the yard.  The yard has been a long way coming, but looks gorgeous now and I’ll admit, he’s right, its been a very satisfying project.

Here’s the finished product.  Hopefully this bulb arrangment will turn out in the spring and flood the front yard with pinks, yellows and whites.

Our house looks like a home and just in time for us to sell it. 😦  We took about a million pictures all at different times of the day. 

In the end, a video scanning the front of the house was most impressive.

Here’s an extra pic. of Tessa in her cute Sunday dress.  She still has a long way to go before she can start filling out her clothes.

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terrace.

Posted in General with tags , , on June 10, 2010 by Missy

When we moved into our humble abode three years ago, we knew we were going to be putting a lot of work into it.  What on EARTH were we thinking? Remodeling during medical school?  The previous owners had passed away and the house was on the market for nearly a year before we got to it.  The front yard had gone to seed . . . weedy seed and had little to no structure or sequence to it’s “flow.”  The front door opened to a 1′ x 2′ cement pad with a crumbling cement “walkway” that ended in the middle of the front yard.  Midway between the house and the street a three foot slope dropped in a nonsensical manner while gnarled overgrown bushes garnishing the foundation of the house.  We took out the bushes and the walkway to nowhere, built a suitable porch and splurged, buying the fancy kind of stone to build a terrace.  In the mail came a notice saying, “The city of South Burlington has noticed that you appear to be in the process of building a terrace.  We would like to inform you that such structures are not permitted to be built at this time in residential front yards.  Special acceptions can be made with an appeal to the city for an appropriate permit.”  This pleasant surprise in the mail lead to our two year wait for an “appropriate permit,” while sporting over two tons of stone in our dirt, weed-riddled front yard for all our neighbors to behold in its red-neck glory.  These were the only pictures I could find of our front yard pretransformation.

Note the stone pile in the background (though I know it’s hard to draw the eye away from the little boy who dressed himself that day)

Over the last . . . month or so Chase has been working continuously on piecing the stone together like an enormous 3-D puzzle.  Working in the front yard has leant itself to regular neighborly visits with passersby.  In the three years we’ve lived here we’ve never gotten to know our neighbors as well as we have these last couple months.  We watch from our front window as cars slow down to pass our house and notice the passengers peering at our front yard; it seems to have become a project of significant neighborhood interest.  When we’re out in the front the slowing cars casually roll down the windows to call out, “Looks great,” or “Great work!”  Walkers rarely pass  without sharing their positive opinions of the newly built terrace and porch.  The folks we’ve drawn a closer kinship with often stick around offering help or advice. 

We’re very proud of the beautiful stonework in the front, but none should be more proud than Chase himself.  Using his brute strength he moved each stone single-handedly and wore through two pairs of leather gloves.  When my mom came to visit she bought Chase some heavy-duty work gloves, the kind Chase said his dad would let him borrow with the condition that the gloves, “. . . . don’t work you too hard.”  Chase worked holes through the fingers, but at least the thumb sleeve remained attached.  Enoch spent countless hours in the front running back and forth through the dirt or helping Chase with little Go-Fur jobs and each time he watched his dad pick up and move a stone he’d exclaim, “Woah! Dad!  You are strong man!”  He’s right. Chase is a strong man in both his strength and determination.  Thanks for making our front yard look so beautiful Baby, here’s to the next month of growing grass.

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rake.

Posted in General with tags , , , on October 26, 2009 by Missy

Leaves are falling all around,

on my head and on the ground . . .

Today I raked my backyard.  I should preface this statement by explaining that we have an enormous oak tree in our yard that must be at least 100 years old, it’s really really big . . . and broad.  Our neighbors are the lucky beneficiaries of about a quarter of the leaves which fall on the other side of the fence but the rest creates a chore to be reckoned with.  So far I’ve raked 11 bags of leaves and they haven’t all fallen yet.  It makes for cheap entertainment.2009 527

Beautiful Vermont.  Love love love it!

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hunter.

Posted in General with tags , , on September 27, 2009 by Missy

wild rose bushIf plants could be hunters the wild rose bush would be among the fiercest.  Its strategy follows no code of chivalry or ethics.  It gives no warning of its attack and sneaks upon its helpless foe under disguise.  The spider-like tendrils of the fiendish plant arch through the sky to attack from above while her creeping tenticles slyly weave through the ground’s fauna to pounce from beneath.  The only offense to the devil is a pair of hedge clippers, gleaming with that bright hope of knightly armor.  Snapping at each reaching branch the clippers threaten the thorny bush.  However, even at the mercy of the heroic clippers the wicked wild rose fights back to the very end.  With each crushing snap, a long and dangerous extention remains to discard.  Even before its prickly skin reaches the ground, the rose is graspirosethornsng, clinging to every last earthly thing, desparate but fighting.  Once defeated and lying shamefully on the earth, she has still not given up, for with even the lightest step in her direction the spiny thorns pierce the sole of the champion’s shoe; driving deeper and closer to the tender flesh with ever confident step. The wild rose lancets are snipped into small pieces and bagged in paper where they wait quietly, patiently, until let loose. 

A humble gardener collecting mulch for his blossoming tomatoes receives a bitter prick on his finger, the fierce hunter has drawn blood and now may sleep.

The rose is a dangerous woman, a Scarlet in disguise as Dumas’ “Milady.” She lures with her gentle scent and her delicate flowers but will eat the head of those who draw near as a mantis eats the head of her lover.

Perhaps now you have an idea of what I had the pleasure of experienceing yesterday as I tried cleaning up the yard.

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