Category Archives: Outdoor Living Spaces

House and Home Outdoor Living Spaces

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s A Porch!

June 23, 2012 – 12:32 am

The dumpster and lumber for our addition showed up in the driveway today, so excuse me while I squeal with delight but also because I know it’s catch up time on the blog. There are going to be a lot of different projects going on at once so I’ll be updating them as they get worked on. I am absolutely positive tomorrow is going to be crazy. Why? Andy told his brother to go to bed because he has to be up early tomorrow. Before the mayhem happens let’s play catch up!

Last weekend while Casey and I were ripping boards off the walls in the living room I happened to glance out the window, and I caught my husband standing in our dirt driveway and looking at the house. Except, I knew he wasn’t looking at the house, he was picturing the porch. Meanwhile, I was just excited our living room looked a little more like this.

The next morning Andy told me he needed the cement mixer from the farm to pour the footings for the porch, and before I knew it I heard the tractor coming down the street with a loud clacking noise behind it. The cement mixer is very old, and looks like it should be at a fair. In other words—it’s pretty cool.

Before anything could be mixed though, it was time to mark out the spots for the sonotubes which are used for the footers. Sonotubes are concrete forms used to make the footers. After the concrete is dry, the forms are removed.

After taking some careful measurements, Andy started stringing up his points just to make sure he dug in the correct spots.

There was some geometry involved in the measurements, and I didn’t want to forget what number he told me so I grabbed the nearest marker and wrote it down. On my hand. Paper? Over rated.

Once all of the measurements were taken, Andy placed the base to the sonotubes down and marked the dig line around them. I asked Andy if the bases were necessary and he said no, but that they helped a lot.

After he completed marking the footings, it was time to dig! You never know what you’ll find around here, including a rusty heavy duty cable.

Time for a test fit.

After spending a while measuring, digging, etc. he finally placing them all in. I didn’t get a photo of the sonotube bases in there before he back filled the holes with dirt. I know, I’m really on top of things. Sidebar: Can you spot the dogs? Can you also spot that they are sneakily eating the rest of the popcorn we left on the steps? Trouble makers.

If you look close in the photo above, you’ll notice there’s a gap in the center where there should be a fifth sonotube. After laying them out, Andy realized he needed another base and sonotube. Because the bases weren’t necessary we decided to use a large square piece of concrete we already had left over from another project. To make the sonotube, and I am not kidding, he cut the extra off the tops of all the other tubes (which I’ll show in a moment) and then adhered and braced them together. That might sound wonky, but I swear it will not compromise the structural integrity of our porch in anyway. Mainer ingenuity at work.

Guilty popcorn eating dog at work.

“Who, me?”

After we shooed the dogs inside, it was time to start mixing the cement into concrete.

Casey pulled out only his best for this activity, including his risky business sunglasses—hence his nickname of Tom Cruise.

The boys tried pouring the concrete from the mixer into the sonotubes, which should have worked. However, it didn’t. They just couldn’t tip it far enough to get all of the concrete out. Instead they put it in the wheel barrel and hand shoveled each tube.

Once they were all complete, Andy finally took a break after hours and hours of working straight. These might look all over the place in terms of height, but I promise they are exactly dead on and correct.

After a short break, Andy graded out around the sonotubes so everything was more or less flat again.

I’ll be back soon with another post on the progress of the actual addition itself, since you can tell in the post above part of the siding is missing!

xo,

Heather

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Addition House and Home Outdoor Living Spaces

A Little Perspective

June 20, 2012 – 9:27 pm

Tonight Andy said the magic words. We’re renovating. We are officially going forward!  Andy showed me the digital renderings of our home! Now this is the perspective I like!

First, some of the details are off. We’ll have a steel roof on the house not your typical shingles. The siding will be in a farmhouse board style, but it won’t be that color. We’ll likely have a green house with a red door (our garage is green and the barn door is green). It might be too traditional for some people, but we kind of like taking traditional and then making it a little more fun. Either that, or our door is going to stay beautiful douglas fir.

Without further ado – the house! This isn’t entirely finalized, so items are subject to change but it’s still fantastic! If you need a clear reminder of what our house looks like now please feel free to look back here for a video house tour.

This is the deck side. You know, this deck. Feel free to click on the photos to make them a bit bigger!

On this side, you see a few details which might look awkward, but it’s because we have to still work with what we have. There are two chimneys because one is the current chimney which comes up from the basement. Because of the placement of our wood stove in the basement we are going to keep the original chimney from this stove. The chimney further to the right will be in the new living room and run up through the bedroom upstairs. We may also put in a window between the kitchen (three windows) and the bathroom (single window on the left). In between those two is, as of now, going to be a walk in linen closet but we still might give it a window just to balance things out. Who knows.

For both of us this is the more exciting side. Oh that porch. It’s going to be 40×9 and I am in awe of it. Here, there isn’t too much wonkyness (again this isn’t the finalized plans) except the space between the door and the window on the right because of a staircase, which would look really weird with a window. I think it would be a pretty place for…I don’t know, something big and pretty.

The other part of this post on perspective has to do with how we live. Since I will be in between jobs at the end of the summer we’re going to be pincing pennies, which has only increased my homesteading plans. I already knew it needed to happen and this was the kick/light under my butt I needed. Clearly, I love this and it’s an unexpected and super awesome side effect. Things we  will be doing (most are once other products we have are used up):

  • Once my shampoo is used up I’m going back to using my Little Bebe Bottom soap I make. My hair loves it. I’ll splurge on conditioner, but I’ll use coupons and use it only a few times a week.
  • I’ve been making my own liquid laundry detergent by boiling soap nuts and I will continue to. This can also be used mixed with water and vinegar as a cleaner for anything else. I’m using Dr. Bronners (bought on sale) for dishes, cleaning the kitchen, a boost to laundry, and potentially shampoo? I’m pretty much limiting the types of cleaners I buy and maximizing the usefulness of the ones I do buy.  I haven’t bought laundry detergent in months and months, I love it.
  • We’re going to build a cold frame hoop house out of materials we have around the house, with a few cheaper items from home depot that we don’t have. This will hopefully help us extend our growing season for greens here in Maine, to help feed our family longer. I’m researching specific ways to grow food in winter in our cold climate and thankfully already have a great book  on the topic called The Winter Harvest Handbook by Elliot Coleman.
  • Make foods you would normally buy. By this I mean buy dried beans for pennies on the dollar compared to canned beans. Not only are you not dealing with the leaching cans can cause into food, but it’s cheaper, the beans taste better and it only takes a little more prep.
  • Go grocery shopping only when we need to. No more little trips here and there. Lists and lists only, and go right after a meal and take the time to use coupons. Shop unit price-Andy always saves tons of money by shopping unit price (normally about 25%) and it’s amazing.
  • Finally, and this is more a “still feel like ourselves” but – we’re still going to allow ourselves little things here and there, just little and less. For instance, we go out to dinner once in a while. Now instead of dinner (which we rarely do in the summer because nothing beats our garden), we’ll go get a small ice cream. Or go across the street and pick blackberries and turn them into icy smoothies and sit on the porch.

I’m sure there will be other things as well, but for now that’s what I can think of.

A little perspective never hurt anyone, and there is always, always ALWAYS a silver lining. Heck, sometimes when you stop squinting you realize that those clouds aren’t so dark and gray. In fact, they might actually be a little fluffy.

xo,

Heather

 

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Addition Bathroom Bedroom common room House and Home kitchen Laundry LivingRoom Office Outdoor Living Spaces

House Tour {The Before}

June 16, 2012 – 5:33 pm

These renovations are going way faster than I thought since we unexpectedly started on Thursday, so I need to stay on it so I don’t fall behind!

Before I get into the other stuff in later posts – let’s house tour it up. This house tour is long overdue, and I did it right in the nick of time. I actually wasn’t intending for this to be the house tour because I had wanted to get the laundry taken care of, our bedroom furniture moved downstairs and the current master bedroom vacuumed, once empty, before I did it. On Thursday however, Andy came home and started tearing down some of the molding in the living room just to get an idea of what was behind it (don’t get me wrong, I was on board—more like jumping up and down). While he was out getting something else done, I decided to take a video of the excitement and then somehow it all got put into a regular old house tour. The only room I missed was the basement. I’ll try and remember to get that the next time I do a tour. Thankfully I had vacuumed when I got home, but I didn’t prep in anyway for the video so you’re in for quite a treat.

By treat I mean laundry, dinner items all over the counter, a messy pantry, some dishes and a super dirty window because of dog noses pressing up against it.

A few notes before the video:

  • The outside of the house tour was done before we fixed the deck in May and the inside of the house tour was just done last Thursday so it’s a bit of a mish mash.
  • When I went into the bathroom originally the seat was up so I cut to another part of it. It’s right outside the office/brother in laws bedroom though, which you see when I turn back around. It’s a really messed up transition in the video, so I apologize. I didn’t realize it until after it was completed and exported.
  • For some reason I call the patio set “the porch”. Nope, the porch will be on the other side of the house, though, it may have a patio set on it too.
  • It’s hard to hear me outside because that day was crazy windy, sorry.
  • I talk with my hands – even on video, when I’m holding it. Hence all the “let me point everything out” for you.

You love it, admit it. Or so I choose to believe this is your reaction.

Poor Winnie did start to get the basketball (that’s why her head was in her toy basket), but then I distracted her by walking around and ignoring her so she just left it. We did get  got in a big walk up to the farm right after all of this hullabaloo. While up there I took a video of the cows, with the intention of making a post about it–and then I got a straight shot of a steer unsuccessfully attempting to mount a heifer while at full *ahem* attention. So I most likely won’t be posting that video.

I will however be posting a video of the demolition work we’ve already done later on.

Drinking game: How many times can I use the word exciting in this blog or in my videos to reference the demolition? Nix that, you’ll all be drunk.

xo,

Heather

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House and Home Outdoor Living Spaces

All Hands On Deck – To Party, You Know, Because We’re Done.

June 9, 2012 – 1:48 pm

Grab your wine and ice, margaritas, iced tea, lemonade—whatever it is you prefer because the deck is officially done. I mean done done. Not “but we still have to do this..” mostly done. Not, “but we still need furniture” done. I mean 100% complete and damn it feels good done.

First, a quick blast from the past to remember it used to look like this. Cripes.

Now it’s looking a little more like this:

Since the last post (chronicled here, here, here and here) Andy added balusters, and then we stained everything, so let me back up and explain what we did.

For baluster installation, I wish I could tell you how Andy did it. The fact is though, he finished the balusters up the weekend I was MIA at my friends wedding in the Vineyard. I came home to him installing the last sets.

Because I was gone, unfortunately I missed the assembly of these. I can tell you he made them up in panels before he installed them in each section, and that he somehow made them without a single nail or screw showing. Beyond that your guess is as good as mine how he turns trees into balusters. I don’t even ask at this point, not because I’m not interested but because I have trouble comprehending how he gets from point a to point b in what seems like the snap of his fingers.

After living with the deck in it’s natural state for about a week it was time to look into protecting the wood. We knew we were going to put something on the mahogany rail to protect it from the elements but we were really on the fence about whether to also treat the cedar. It came down to a few options:

  • Don’t treat the cedar and let it naturally gray
  • Use an oil with a translucent color on the cedar to slow the graying and help protect it a little
  • Put a dark stain on it to match the mahogany and then protect with oil

We both really liked how the cedar looked now because the natural light tone was a nice contrast between the mahogany and red/brown decking, but knowing cedar can’t stay that way forever we decided to slow the process down. With option bullet two as our choice, we headed off to Home Depot to get a small can and see how it looked. Andy chose to use Cabot Australian Timber Oil because of it’s high-quality. We went back and forth between a lighter and darker color and pretty quickly settled on testing “natural”. It isn’t low VOC, so I looked a little like this while applying it (we only found out there was a low-voc version of this after we had already done the deck so c’est la vie). We may try the low-VOC version next year since Andy said it should likely be done annually.

If you’re wondering what the heck that is on my hand—it’s a sock with the foot cut off. I put it over my gloved hand and used it to put the stain on. Because oil is a lot more drippy than other options, and the color takes very fast, you have to be careful about application or you’ll end up with drips and odd coloring. A few tips include:

  • Put a drop cloth under your balusters if you can so it doesn’t drip on your decking even if you’re going to oil the decking too. You’ll have darker drip spots underneath.
  • Wear protective clothing. You don’t need to breath the fumes, or have the oil soak into your skin.
  • Go slow, but not too slow. You want to be precise but not have color settle too much before you finished in the same area. It helps to do the top, baluster and bottom (with the pattern we have) in one area all at the same time.
  • Don’t use too much stain at once or you’ll risk drips

We both really like how the oil looks on the mahogany and I can say it’s held up well in the torrential rain we’ve had lately. It beads up the water nicely.

Looking back, we both agree it takes a very precise hand to make sure all of the balusters get done perfectly, without dripping. As it turns out, cedar also absorbs the color unevenly. I’d say this was less to do with the product and more to do with our unfamiliarity of using it in this setting and on this wood. We could technically sand it all off and fix the couple areas that are a little drippy but a quick scrape helped and honestly, we have bigger fish to fry. Plus, I’m pretty sure most people won’t notice it and it has seemed to mellow out over a couple weeks. As far as color goes mahogany is already so dark it didn’t change the color at all, it just added a level of protection. It gave the cedar a yellow undertone which has mellowed over the last few weeks and we actually like how it all looks with the synthetic decking. Overall the verdict is good. We’re pretty happy with it. If in another year we aren’t happy with how it held up, we’ll just change it when we protect it again, and of course we’ll let you know.

Overall I am so happy with this deck. We recently got a patio set and bench from my Memere and Pepere’s house and we’ve eaten almost every meal out here that we have been able to. Just this morning I was drinking tea and gently rocking in the chair (where I am writing this post now) when Andy said, “so, is this ‘like a cup of tea’?” My response – it sure is.

It feels so incredibly good to have this deck done, and have a nice place to eat outdoors, or just hang out on the bench and read. I love having both seating areas, and I can’t wait to have people over for dinner to enjoy the birds chirping, the cool breeze and the smell of the rich hay growing.

Now onto the addition! A post coming on that soon, we’re just waiting for a few more pieces to fall into place and then it’s go time.

xo,

Heather

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House and Home Outdoor Living Spaces

All Hands On Deck {Part Four}

May 10, 2012 – 1:07 pm

Update: Last night at dinner Andy informed me of two huge mistakes I made in this post. One, I called construction adhesive ‘caulking’ and two I referred to our belt sander as a ‘band saw’ (wtf?). I would like you all to know that if I get a construction term wrong, and it seems to make him look incompetent—it’s totally me. Not him. He knows what he’s doing. Poor guy. I really should have him proof these kinds of posts first.

This post has taken me a while to get up. As an old professor used to say, “As is life”. She also wore bright nail polish all the time because if she was ever upset all she had to do was look at her nails and laugh. She also used the word flummoxed a lot. She was one of my favorites….and so is this new deck.

Last weekend, after a week of rain and general drizzly weather, Saturday and Sunday turned out to be beautifully sunny so we were able to continue progress on our little piece of heaven security.

Since Andy had already finished everything up through the decking (seen here, here and here) it was time to start the cedar posts, and mahogany rails. The first step was measuring and notching out the post itself. Update: I thought we had bought the cedar posts, Andy informed me he actually made all of those.

Then Andy did a test fit, before cutting the decking itself just to make sure it would fit correctly. Test fits are absolute key, since you don’t want to cut into decking that was a.) free and b.) expensive to replace.

And then he repeated it, eight more times.

Once the cedar posts were set, he grabbed the mahogany railings and set them out so we could see where we wanted them, if we wanted to rip them narrower, and where we were going to overlap them. Also, some of the pieces had channels on the bottom, and some were flat and Andy and Casey (Tom Cruise has a real name) went back and forth over whether they should all have channels or not.

Andy won (pst – this railing is not centered where we were actually attaching it).

Once we figured out the placement, and all of the angles (and by we, I clearly mean just Andy while I took photos) it was time to start assembling them. Andy started with the one corner that required a clear 45 degree on each end piece. First he marked it all and then cut the angles on our portable saw.

Once everything was cut, he assembled them using a mix of construction adhesive, biscuits as well as a few screws with the Kreg jig.  Andy doesn’t usually use of the Kreg jig as a primary way to secure two items (though there are times it works, as you’ll see later in this post), but in this case it worked great as a secondary way to secure the railings in conjunction with the biscuits.

He also used this method to secure the joint on the other side where two boards met. It’s a good overall technique for most similar purposes.

Tip: If your caulking/adhesive seems clogged up use a screw, either putting it in by hand or with your screw gun, and then reverse it and pull. It works just about every time.

After everything was attached, Andy then hand made wood plugs out of mahogany for each hole so it would look nice. Once they were dry he cut them off (I don’t have a photo of this..boo).

Side Story: Before the boys secured the rail down they had it sitting on posts and it was too long, so it was across the opening. Guess who walked up the stairs full charge and COMPLETELY missed a giant wide piece of mahogany across the opening? This lady right here. I crashed right into it. Andy just put his hand on his forehead and my brother-in-law laughed at me and made fun of me for a solid five minutes.Then I almost did it. Again. And then one more time just for good measure.

This about did it for the work on Saturday/Sunday, and then the rain came. Again. Last night it finally gave us a break (for a little while) and since Andy took the day off work he got to working on the deck some more. When I got in home all of the posts were cut and he was making the hand rail out of mahogany. The key to the hand rail is that it can’t be as wide as the perimeter railing. It needs to be comfortable and narrow enough to get a grip on if you start to take a digger.

Test fit one.

Success! It was comfortable, narrow enough and looked good. To secure it, Andy used the Kreg Jig  on the bottom side into each post, sans (I think) any other needed adhesive. We joked about face nailing it, but I should point out there are a couple things you shouldn’t do with a deck—secure things with nails, and face nail your wood (unless you really like look of screws everywhere…).

Now, I thought he was done for the day since the rain started sprinkling but then I heard this loud noise and looked outside to find this.

Refinishing the railings with a belt sander? You bet! As good of an idea as this is, please wear a mask. Not your shirt pulled over your face like my husband. Why? Because eventually you will be covered in sawdust and look like this. Oh, and the saw dust is actually shooting in front of his hat, it’s not shooting underneath like it looks below. Trickery of photography.

I love how it looks with that old weird sealant off the top and the fresh wood. Over time the mahogany will darken up again, but at least it will look even.

So much better!

When he was done I asked him to stop for a second so I could take a photo of him to prove how much dust gets everywhere.

As you can note by the photo above, he does not ever stop moving. Blurry Andy it is. I need to keep my shutter speed on a million just to keep up with him.

Well, that’s where this part ends. Hopefully (cross your fingers) the next deck post will be the last. In the mean time, let’s play the “let’s see how many errors we can find in this post” game. The fact is I’ve waited way too long to post this.

So I’m going to, without proof reading it first.

What? I’m a risk taker.

Happy Building (and mask wearing),

Heather

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