The Summer Lull

With summer finally here, I am finding myself short on completed projects, with less time, more yard work, and other random distractions, and lots of sailing.

For indoor projects this summer I am planning three.  June will be a shoe rack, this one is started and I am very excited to get the next piece of the entry way squared away.  Then I have a shelf to make for the half bath and one for the full bathroom.

the half bath shelf will go behind the toilet.

Outside I also have work to be done, I want to put in a patio, and a permanent composting .... site, it will be a patio floor with two u shaped beds for year to year rotation.  

This is the future site of a patio

Oh then there has been the composting conundrum, the barrel on is no good, it is less than half full and it has collapsed the legs making it difficult/unable to rotate. So for now the compost is going in a pile between the two pallets. The new site is to the right where there is dirt.

I have more planting to do and although it is a bit late I have some plants I want to grow from seed to go in the front yard and between the grape vines.

This past Monday, Dad and I traveled to White Water to look at apartments for Rachel.  It is an interesting experience to go look at a place and then have your sister and brother-in-law have to decide if they are going to rent it.  They plan on renting for a year before buying a house so that they have time to get a lay of the land, and figure out where Nik job is going to be.  Can you imagine sending someone else to look at an apartment, see a few pictures and then decide to move in?

I mentioned this to a senior engineer that I work with and he said that he had done this with his brother, but they were buying a house together.  It was before digital photos so he had to get the picture printed, presumably at a one-hour photo, and then mail them to his brother.

The garden is growing, so far I have only harvested greens and herbs.  I read an article that talked about keeping track of how much produce you harvest out of the garden and compare that to the cost in the grocery store.  I like this idea and am considering building something into the side bar, but I don't know how and I'm not sure if anyone else would think that impressive, or even interesting.

Catching Rabbits (with my bare hands)

Last night I was doing some more planting, the garden is not full and I just keep buying more plants. I was pulling out some weeds when I felt something move.  Then I saw what I at first thought was a mouse.  I went to chase it but it stopped. So I picked it up, and found it to be a cottontail.

I was able to collect three of, maybe, five.

Which explains why the rabbit kept hanging around. 

See Nik- Peter had friends, and I caught Floppsy, Moppsy and Cotton tail. They are ridiculously cute its hard to believe how much damage they could cause to my garden. 

Built in Drawers Update

Last night I got rained out of yard work but I was able to get the last handle on the drawers.

See the rest of the project here.

Self Watering Planters

Last year I made pallet planters but most of the greens ended up dying because they dried out when I left for a few days.  So this year I wanted to have self watering planters for the greens as to not disrupt my sailing schedule.

The basic idea is similar to commercial products, where water sits at the bottom and is wicked to the soil.  Water is added through a full length tube shown on the left, and soil is contained using a liner.

I used the tops of the bins as the divide and set them on PVC pipe to allow for the water reservoir.  These are only for greens and herbs so I went with the shallow container.  The hardest part was finding a #5 bin (which is deemed food safe) because most of the bins I found they were not marked.  I finally found labeled storage bins at the Home Depot.

I cut the lids to size using a hack saw and tin snip.  Then drilled many small holes and put in one large hole in the center. 

 Here are the tops cut, with the PVC pipes attached using kitchen/bath silicone. 

I pushed the liner into the center hole so that some of the soil was in contact with the water to create the wick affect.

Then I planted some starters and some seeds.

The cedar box should keep the rabbit out.

The Simple Installation of a Wireless Door Bell

The house came with a door bell that has never worked.  The cut wire is visible in the basement, the paint covered chime was still in the kitchen when I arrived. That was removed quite a while ago.  But the old door bell remained.  As you are aware I am terrible at before pictures so here is the trim next to the front door after the old door bell was removed.

The new wireless door bell went on with double sided taped, as supplied by the manufacturer.  I was sure to clean the surface before attaching to try to increase the likely hood of it staying attached.

Here is Dad ringing the door bell. 

This is the new chime:

I haven't attached it to a wall yet.  Maybe I will once I determine the best place, but for now it is just tucked away in a corner.

The doorbell got used on Monday night! Unfortunately, I wasn't home to answer it.

Installing a Storm Door

Last fall Dad and I replaced the back door. The new door was great to have in the winter, as the old one was falling apart and not at all weather tight.  But I was left without a screen door to have air flow in the summer. 

Luckily storm doors are very easy to install.  The whole project took about 3 hours, which includes going to get the door.  I went with the brown door, one they had the correct size and Rachel tells me I can paint it later if I really want to because I miss the purple.

The soft close came with the door, Dad also encouraged me to pick up a wind chain, I happily agreed.  

My neighbor has an issue with her door when the wind caught it and slammed it into the railing.  So now her door is bent and can't close.  On winding nights I can hear it banging around, then I have to go make sure that the banging isn't coming from anything on the outside of my house, which is rather inconvenient for me.  

With the damper the door can't open far enough to need the wind chain. So we skipped that step.

It was great to have the storm door for grilling last night.