Flower Power

I decided to take a bit of a break from working on the house projects to play in my gardens. They are immense. In fact, there is more garden here than the size of my entire previous lot, I think. This makes for a lot of weeds, but also makes for a lot of flowers. Part of last summer I spent trying to identify what exactly I had in my gardens. Mostly weeds, but a few nice flowering plants.

Here are some that have bloomed quite nicely this year.

Daffodils
(much earlier than this, but they fit nicely in this post)
Bachelor's Buttons (aka Cornflower)

Bleeding Heart

Bearded Iris (Purple)

Johnny-Jump-Ups
(which I didn't know were perennials here)

Peonies
(I have both pink and white, but only have the pink in the picture)

Climbing Roses

Giant Allium

Lots of Stripping

For the last few weeks, I've been working on the stair project. As it was my idea to take the carpet off the stairs, it's my job to get them looking nice. I started out stripping the glue off with wood stripper. Normally it only takes a few minutes for the finish to get soft. This glue is so thick that it takes a minimum of 4 hours for the stripper to work. And even then I think I'm going to have to go over everything again.

The challenge in this project is to keep the stairs usable at all times, as we really do want to use our new upstairs. I'm stripping both the treads and the risers to hopefully get them to a stainable condition.

Here is the pile of old finish and glue from just 3 of the stair steps. I can't imagine how much I'll have at the end.


Meanwhile, Nate has been working on stripping and refinishing the window trim in our bedroom. He'd like to have curtains back on again, rather than multiple layers of poly film. I can't imagine why.

As he was working away, he discovered that the name of the manufacturer was still stamped on the bottom of the sill. Kind of neat to find it still there after all of these years. I guess you don't look at the bottom of a window sill that often.

A sign of spring!

Today we a great day to be outside, nice weather, nice temperature, and things are very green. Additionally, it is always interesting to see what the other creatures in our yard are doing with such nice weather. We have several families of birds located near us, which makes me a bit nervous, seeing as there are quite a few neighborhood cats around. I guess it will be survival of the fittest.

Today our entertainment was provided by a young robin just out of the nest. He couldn't fly yet, but hopped all over our yard. We were able to get some fairly close up pictures, as apparently his mother hasn't told him to stay away from strangers.

First, he hopped around the yard.

Checked out the compost heap.

Then, he investigated our fire pit.

And then finally decided to see what was in our garage.

He checked out the lawn mower, the bicycles, and the random pieces of plywood before leaving. This made me a bit nervous, as I didnt' want to accidentally shut him in with no food.

Sweaters Galore!

Here's a picture of all of the sweaters that I have in my possession that have been knit by my grandmother over the years. My mom is making a scrapbook of all of the sweaters that they can find that she's knit up for various people, so I got mine together to take a picture.

I guess I have a ways to go to catch up.

House update: We are now the proud owners of yet another new toilet, as when the original toilet was being retro-fitted with a new handle, someone tightened it too much and cracked the tank. Oh well, this one is much more water efficient.

Our "new" den and the stairs revealed

Finally, with all of the major activities getting finished upstairs, we were able to finally get the den primed and painted. It went from a rather sickly pea green to a nice denim blue. We actually managed to get everything painted in one coat, so now we have a leftover gallon of blue paint.

Anyone want something painted denim blue?

This also allowed us to move the first floor furniture back into its proper places, in effect doubling the size of our rooms. All in just 20 minutes!

I also decided to start pulling the carpeting off of our staircase. It was shiny, shimmery blue and very dirty from this project. It also the only installed carpeting left in the house. Things started off well. I pulled the carpet up from the landing and found the maple hardwood flooring still intact and in decent shape. It should only need a bit of sanding and some new finish to look nice again.Then I pulled the carpet off the stairs. And pulled, and pulled some more. Then pulled the carpet padding off also. And what did I find?? Staples, lots and lots of staples. I think whomever put in this carpet used the entire store's supply of staples. Who needs this many staples to hold down a piece of carpet?!? I mean really. Leave some for someone else. I also found glue on the stair treads. A few different types in fact. This will need to be either stripped with wood stripper, or sanded, or both. We will see how this project goes.

At least the risers are still in good shape, and are actually rather pretty. They will need ridding of their staples, but should also be pretty salvageable.

In another interesting bit, we found out that someone had also put at least 10 screws in the tread of each stair step, in effect permanently making the stairs squeaky. Nate removed all the screws one night, and the stairs creaked and groaned for a half an hour while they settled back into place to match up with the house again. So even though the stairs should be louder without the carpet, they are actually quieter due to less squeaking.

Gotta love the rain.

This weekend, we took another short break and had visitors. These were visitors with a purpose. These visitors were friends of ours who had signed up to run a race with us. The Crazylegs Classic. We signed up for the 5mile run. This run starts at the State Capitol, goes through the University campus, and ends at the football stadium, where you have the option of rehydrating with either water or beer.

It has been a bit cold here, so that we were expecting. What we were NOT expecting was the deluge of water that poured from the sky. We ate our pre-race breakfast thinking, maybe the rain will stop. We drove downtown and parked, thinking, maybe the rain will stop. We walked about 6 blocks to the Capitol, thinking, maybe the rain will stop.

Nope. It even added thunder and lightening during this process. We decided to hang out in the Capitol to get a bit of warmth before the race started. Three of us started in wave ll, that's double-L, as the waves started at A and then continued on right past Z to start over again. We weren't last, however, as the waves did end at nn. One of our party started in wave S. (One other actually was supposed to start in wave P, but was nice and decided to "run" with us girls back in wave ll.)
He headed into line, while the deluge poured from the skies. We stood under a roof canopy trying to stay dry. From the time the gun went off to the time we crossed the starting line, it was almost 45 minutes, and we were thoroughly soaked. Our shoes went squish, our noses were dripping, and there was no thermal insulation left in our pants. Luckily we had raincoats to help with the water from the sky. We had nothing to help with the splashing up from the ground.

Our goal was to finish in under 1hour. At first it seemed like the race was going to go on forever. But, soon we got into a rhythm and off we went. Down the street, up the giant hill, and through the campus we ran. At least there were thousands of people (about 19,000) running, and many more cheering along the route. I sort of trained for the race by running up and down our stairs many many times. The training was proving to be ok.

(We are the two in blue in the picture.)

After 4.75 miles, the end was in sight. We could see the stadium and hear the cheering, and our stride sped up to match the energy level around us. Finally we crossed the finish line, completely drenched and exhausted, but under the 1hr time limit we had set. Yay!

Time for a beer, warm food, and dry clothes. At least I got one race out of the way this year. It remains to be seen if there will be more - I'm aiming for a few more at least.

A Shiny Blue Tub

For days now, I've been eagerly awaiting the return of the cast iron clawfoot tub. After my stint with the angle grinder, we sent it off to be sandblasted and painted. As so much of Bath Two is white, I thought that painting the tub a pretty color would make a nice statement. So off it went to the Auto Body Shop with a piece of the blue tile as a companion. I wanted the outside of the tub to be a shiny cobalt blue, and the feet of the tub to be shiny white.

After I'd done this, of course, I was a bit nervous to see the results. Luckily, it turned out even better than I'd imagined. It is Very Blue and unbelievably shiny. The shop used the same clear coat finish that they do on cars, so it will only get harder with time. Great for not having the paint chip and flake off as it does on every other clawfoot I've seen.

First the tub went from the truck into my kitchen where it hung out for a while, until a few things got moved and the plumber got organized. Then up the tub went on the stairs. We'd left the carpeting on in order to be able to slide heavy things up and down during the construction. At the top of the stairs, we put it on wheels and maneuvered it into place.

Additionally, the ductwork for the cold air return and the heating/cooling got done this week, making it that much closer to having heat upstairs again. Seeing as it's been a bit colder than normal, I can't wait!