Progress made on area backyard

Here are a few photos of the small improvements we've made to the back yard this year-- bamboo screening, a new compost bin and stepping stones.

It might not look like much in the photos-- the green doesn't show up and it's hard to tell that there is a tree canopy above-- but we really enjoy watching birds in our tiny backyard woodland-garden, and fixing some of the more unsightly bits makes it a little easier on the eyes and more peaceful.

Before:


After this year's improvements:

FANCY NEW COMPOST BIN: I tried for 4 years to grow enough holly to hide the compost pile, but since that hasn't worked (and it was so difficult to turn the pile that we'd get behind and tree roots would grow up through it), I gave up and installed a better looking and MUCH more functional compost bin that I won't even try to hide. It should weather to the same color as the fence.

The old compost pile:

New double-bin with removable cedar slats in front:

BAMBOO SCREEN: I'm really excited to have the neighbor's ugly privacy-screen covered up with a more natural-looking material! We used a roll of tiki-bar-looking bamboo fencing and attached it to the neighbor's chain link fence with tiny zip ties. It should weather to the same color as the fence, as well.

Area husband helping to install bamboo screen:

Stay tuned for photos of our next big project-- attempting to re-create the missing built-in cabinets between our living and dining room...

Area yard gradually improves

Here's a picture post of some of my obsessive gardening this year:

This is my attempt at a kitchen/herb garden-- let's hope the elaborate series of wire cages succeeds in keeping the groundhogs and deer out!


Thanks to area husband carrying many many rocks across the street and up the hill, the back yard has a new (sort of) raised bed and a sunken rain garden (an attempt to keep standing water off the lawn)


Someone is still pitchforking up the lawn and planting new grass seed as it gets dark... (We'll have to cover every inch of the newly seeded area with a lightweight crop cover sheet or the squirrels will immediately dig it all up-- nothing else works to keep them off. Grrrr).



I think the obsessive gardening is starting to pay off-- the boxwoods in the front yard that were barely clinging to life when we moved in are getting big!

Here's the front yard 3 years ago for comparison-- I guess I need to update my blog icon. :)

And here are a couple photos of my lucky holiday weekend craigslist finds!


After all these years of waiting I finally found a buffet/hutch to fit in my dining room alcove. It's not the style I was hoping for but the price was right and it sure beats boxes piled against the wall!


I found this funky rug for the family room. it's fun to add some color-- we're still hoping to get the walls in this room painted sometime this summer :)

Area July Blogged Belatedly

Oops, I can't believe how long I've managed to neglect the blog! Here's the first of several catch-up posts, (I hope). First, here's what happened with the floor repairs and the garden:

In July I used a birthday gift-card to buy plants for the back yard!



We got a Japanese maple (near the center) and a lot of ferns and perennials (that don't show up so well in the photo). This area was long-neglected and filled in with invasive honeysuckle and garlic mustard when we moved in. Tom cleared the worst weeds and I've hauled countless bags of peat and mulch up the hill and into the back garden, so hopefully the soil is on its way towards being a little less cement-like, and by next year when these plants fluff up it might start looking like something. :)

Also in July I finished adding new flooring and sub-flooring to repair the hole in the dining room.



We tried out a couple shades of finish for the floor on some scrap pieces of flooring, and the tinted shellac layers (covered by water-based polyurethane) look like they will do a pretty good job of hidinig the differences in grain between the brand new unfinished oak boards and the 80 year old boards. (Here's the test strip sitting on top of the repaired area. The top two rows are new boards and the bottom rows are old. The left side has 3 coats of walnut-tinted garnet dewaxed shellac, and the right side has 2-- I think we're going to end up going with just 2).



However.... I decided the rest of the floor repairs and refinishing are just going to have to wait until I see the overall condition of the living room floors (i.e., liberate them from underneath all that green paint), and see how many of the original floorboards I can salvage for patching the holes. My method of feathering the new floorboards in with the old in the dining room was successful enough, but WAY too tedious and time-consuming to ever use again! (And coming from me, that's saying a lot!)