All In All, You're Just Another...

If you've been following our progress at all, you know that Kathy and I love to move bricks back and forth. It's what we do. There's nothing like spending a sunny Sunday afternoon picking up a pair of bricks and moving them 20 feet, before going back for another pair, over and over. We can while away many a happy hour transporting bricks, and often have.

After a few years(!) of this we decided we'd had enough of rearranging piles of bricks and decided to finally build (technically, rebuild) a brick patio out of them. Here it is.

We didn't do it the professional way, of course, but instead worked on it piecemeal as we found time. Once we were certain that all the major plumbing underneath the backyard was solid and reliable, we could start to smooth out the soil and get it level. We eyeballed the dimensions we wanted and made a rough count of the bricks (no problem there). Then we started at one corner, leveling the soil, planting a few bricks, checking with a level, and moving on.

After a few weeks of this we had ourselves a brick patio. The bricks are all dry-set; there's nothing holding them in place except gravity. So we mixed up small batches of concrete and cemented just the outside row of bricks to create a kind of hard ring around the patio that holds everything together.

We're on a bit of a hill, so the backyard slopes a little. That meant we had to design-in some steps, or else slope all the walkways. We chose to put a step into the front (downhill side) of the patio, and we'll probably put a few more steps along the pathways, when we get around to it.

When all the bricks were done and the outside edge was cemented in, we poured polymeric sand into all the gaps. That's special sand mixed with water-activated epoxy. Once you work it into all the cracks, you lightly mist it with water and the sand sets up hard. That should prevent weeds from growing up between all the bricks, and it helps hold the bricks in place. It's not as tough as concrete, but it's more than enough to keep the bricks from shifting around. It's great stuff, but you only have a few minutes to get the water just right. Too little water and it's just dry sand. Too much water and you'll wash away the epoxy and get... dry sand. We went through six 40-lb. buckets of the stuff, so there's exactly 240 pounds of sand in the patio now. And a whole lot of bricks.

Details, Details...

Not every project requires five trips to the hardware store. Most, but not all...

A few weeks ago we finally got around to finishing off a little trim detail we'd been meaning to get to since, oh, about 2011. This post is near the second-floor landing and has some nice scroll work on it, especially near the top. The lower portion, however, is decorated with painted plaster, which was pretty common back in ye olden tymes. The downside is that plaster collects nicks and dings and isn't as durable as wood. The bottom few inches, in particular, had gotten pretty beat up by decades of vacuum cleaners.

So we trimmed out the very bottom, as you can see here. The trim is built up from various pieces of redwood stacked one atop the other, and then all stained and finished as one piece. It matches both the floor and the post pretty well, so it looks like it's always been there. (I considered banging it up a bit to give it a distressed look like everything else, but figured that will happen all on its own. No point in hurrying things.)

Ground O'Fence-Ive

Haven't you always wanted the house with the white picket fence around it? Well, we got close. Kind of.

We finally got tired of misguided people trespassing across our back yard. That, and we got a grand-dog. So we built a fence to keep them out and in, respectively.

Living next door to a popular bed & breakfast inn, we occasionally get people knocking on our front door, suitcases in hand, eagerly looking to check in. "Sorry, wrong house. You want the place next door. The yellow one. The one with the big sign that says 'Bed & Breakfast Inn' and 'Vacancy' right in the front yard." It gets old after a while.

One person even argued with me. "You should have a sign that says, 'private residence'" she huffed.

"First of all, I do. You walked right past it on your way here. Secondly, why should I? Do you have a sign on your house that says, 'this is not my neighbor's house?'"

Over the winter we installed a pair of security cameras to oversee the backyard and promptly caught a handful of confused tourists. It was the same scene every time: They'd confidently walk up our front or back steps; they'd get about halfway into the yard; then they'd stop, look around; realize they were in the wrong place ("this place is a dump!"), and then sheepishly creep out the way they came.

But of course, the cameras don't actually prevent anyone from walking around our house. They only provide entertainment when they do. So we tried discrete signs. That didn't work either because, as we all know, people don't read signs.

So we built the fence. At first, we wanted a white picket fence. Then we considered black wrought iron, which would look a bit more formal and also be more "period correct." We talked to a few companies that make wrought-iron fencing in the right style, but they're expensive! New car expensive. Major vacation expensive. So that idea was off the table.

Instead, we built our own fence out of redwood. We dug the post holes (easy in sandy soil), set the posts, and built the rails, stiles, and panels all from scratch. The only thing we bought were the little round balls that sit atop the fence posts. I would've had to buy a lathe to make them (not that there's anything wrong with that), so buying premade ones seemed a lot easier. We routed some grooves in the posts and rails to add a little bit of style. We made a matching gate, too, and put a little latch on it.

Voila! New fence. And it's dog-tested, so mission accomplished there. However, we didn't lock the new gate, so just a few days ago we got another pair of hopeful B&B guests traipsing up the steps, through the new gate, and into the backyard before they turned around the realized their mistake. So now the gate is locked. Stupid tourists.

Dove Story

It's springtime. Time when a young bird's thoughts turn to... other birds.

We had a pair of doves (okay,  pigeons) build a nest on our upstairs balcony. This is a first. As far as well can tell, birds have never nested there before. Our first tip-off was all the, uh, guano on our front porch. Looking up, we saw a pair of birds perched on the upstairs railing. Day after day, there they were.

They accumulated sticks and started building a nest on the balcony. They were right outside an upstairs window, so it was easy to watch them and follow their progress. It seemed like a messy, haphazard nest, but what do we know? Maybe it was their first time.

After awhile, one of the birds -- the female? -- seemed to get fatter. And then she wasn't again. And, lo, there was a tiny little white egg on our porch!

We kept our distance from the window to avoid disturbing our two lovebirds. We could hear them cooing outside the window, and they'd sometimes fly away for an hour or two, probably to find something to eat.

Then the egg wasn't there. The nest was all disturbed, and the birds were gone. It couldn't have hatched after only one or two days, could it? But what else could have happened?

I think we kind of hoped that maybe the birds had just upgraded to a condo across town with better schools, but the reality seemed much grimmer. Lots of other birds are carnivorous, and they need to eat, too.

Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed...

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,

And gather dust and chaff, and call

To what I feel is lord of all,

And faintly trust the larger hope.  -- Tennyson

 

Hanging's Too Good For 'Em!

It was bound to happen eventually. Kathy stripped all the old wallpaper from the ground-floor dining room almost two years ago. Since that time, the walls have been bare. Last weekend, we finally got around to hanging the new wallpaper. 'Bout time.

Here you can see some before-and-after work. The new wallpaper is on the right, with the still-bare wall on the left. The funny-looking horizontal stripe above the door is where the picture rail used to go. We took those down before painting and papering. They'll go back up this week, after a little touch-up.

The little wooden panel halfway up the wall in the corner is the door to the dumbwaiter. If you open that up, you'll be looking into the dumbwaiter shaft and the back of the brick chimney. The shaft now has a modern heating duct in it, bringing blessed heat to the second floor.

The job took most of two days, which is about average for us. Hanging wallpaper isn't really all that hard, but if you've never done it, it's trickier than it looks. For one, you've got to match the pattern, so each sheet has to be aligned with its neighbor and then trimmed at the top and bottom. That wastes a lot of paper and doubles the amount of cutting you have to do.

Then you've got to work around obstacles, like doors and window frames. Again, simple in concept but tricky in practice. What do you do when one sheet of wallpaper comes really close to the door but doesn't quite reach? Cut a really thin strip? The walls are never flat and the corners aren't 90 degrees. Plus, with 10-foot ceilings, wet strips of wallpaper are long, heavy, and awkward. Keeping them straight and plumb when they keep trying to stick to the walls is another nuisance. Whine, whine, whine.

Now that we're done, though, we're quite happy with it. That should be the last of our wallpaper projects, too. No more after this. Time to start on outside chores.

Here's Lunch

This place just pays for itself, I swear.

Every few weeks we take a load of stuff to the dump. Sometimes it's broken-up concrete; sometimes it's plaster or drywall; sometimes it's metal pieces that we can recycle. This was a recycling trip.

As part of the old furnace removal-and-demolition project, we found ourselves with a big ol' pile of rusty furnace just waiting to be turned in for cash. After we heaved it into the back of the truck, we looked around for any loose pieces we might have accumulated over the weeks that also need to go out. This time, that included all the goodies you see here. We've got some galvanized water pipe... the manifold from the old furnace... some heavy cast-iron vent pipe... and this old drain pipe with the bell fitting on one end.

You can see how this pipe is all cracked and broken, held together by its own rust. We got about $24 for this load, which was enough to buy ourselves lunch. I even ordered the large fries with mine. Life is good.

Mommy... I Stained the Bathroom Floor!

We're about done with the ladies' room downstairs, so it was time to start on the gents'.

It's quite a bit smaller -- about the size of a generous phone booth -- but even more work. We're not sure what this room was originally, but it wasn't a bathroom. It appears to have been a "butler's pantry" or some sort of anteroom or pass-through between the dining room and the kitchen. For such a small room, it had two large doors in it, and not much else. At any rate, it's been the men's room for the last several decades.

The work started with the floor. When we stripped away the kitchen's old vinyl flooring and underlayment, we discovered an old oak floor in here, but nowhere else. Rather than tear it out, we saved it. I know, I know... wooden flooring in a public restroom seems like a terrible idea. And it probably is, but we're sticking with it anyway.

The oak was in bad shape, buried under layers of glue and nails. But we stripped off the adhesive residue, patched the holes, and sanded the bejeesus out of it until it was comparatively smooth. Then we rubbed in a coat of stain (left over from the 2010 floor project) and applied several layers of clear polyurethane. My hope is that the clear poly will waterproof the floor enough to keep it relatively sanitary.

The stain soaked in very unevenly, which I attribute to the aged and damaged condition of the wood, not my incompetence. We've agreed that it lends a charming, rustic look to the floor. Hey, it's a bathroom, not a ballroom, and I doubt many visitors to this space will comment on it.

We added a bead board wainscot around the walls, which Kathy painted gloss black. It looks really good, and pretty soon we'll add the floor molding and top molding, and probably a picture rail and some crown molding up high. The room is nearly twice as high as it is wide (10' x 6' x 3'), so we're trying to break up the vertical space to make it seem less like an upended shoebox.

Plumbing fixtures have arrived, and those go in once the floor has completely dried. Probably tomorrow.