Back Steps Gone!
Tag: Under Construction
Expect the Unexpected
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| digging up the yard in preparation for retaining walls and new porch |
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| gee, I hope it doesn’t rain! |
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| a surprise find, and no, it isn’t buried treasure |
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| what’s under the hatch??? |
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| down the hole: rocks, water, and… is that Oliver hair? |
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| now we just wait to see what we can do about it… |
Rocks and Cement = Sidewalks
Last August, for my birthday, I got a letter from our town. A lot of people around got these letters. Mine came with a black and white printer copy of a photo of my sidewalk. More specifically, the big corner chunk that was coming loose (from where the town’s snow plow hit it two winters ago). Residents had ten months to make the appropriate repairs, or the town will do it for you, charge you the cost, plus 10%, plus fine you. Nice. Well, what can you do? It is what it is, I guess. Oh, yeah, there’s also a $15 construction permit either way.
Most people weren’t prepared to make the repairs last fall, and of course you can’t do this kind of job during the winter, so over the past couple of weeks there has been a lot of this sort of thing going on around town:
Yup. That’s my little slice of construction.
Mom’s boyfriend John and his neighbor Bart are going to help with this, as they have both been laid off recently. John is very handy in general and Bart worked for years for a company that does paving in the summer, snow clearing in the winter.
On Tuesday Bart cut the broken sections away from the rest of the sidewalk and the street, then John took a sledgehammer to the sidewalk.
On Wednesday John and Lewis loaded the largest pieces onto the trailer that John left for us. Then Mom and I took over and we dug the rest of the smaller pieces out of the pit. That’s what I’m calling it now. The pit.
As it turns out, there was a big layer of field rocks just below the cement layer. Most of them have come completely loose from the cement. Mom and I picked them out of the rubble and have piled them onto my crescent flowerbed. (Poor violets, they didn’t stand a chance.) I’m not quite sure what I want to do with them yet, but I have many options. More on that later.
Now, I’m not saying my sidewalk is in great shape. It certainly is not. There are only two sections that don’t have cracks. I would have liked to do the whole thing at once, and if I could have put this project off for a couple more years, maybe we would have been able to do that. But right now money is so tight that I don’t even know how I am going to pay for the supplies to finish this project. So thank you, town, for forcing this on the homeowners during the worst recession many of us have ever seen.
Now, I’m not saying my sidewalk is in great shape. It certainly is not. There are only two sections that don’t have cracks. I would have liked to do the whole thing at once, and if I could have put this project off for a couple more years, maybe we would have been able to do that. But right now money is so tight that I don’t even know how I am going to pay for the supplies to finish this project. So thank you, town, for forcing this on the homeowners during the worst recession many of us have ever seen.Oliver enjoyed watching us for a while, but once I gave him a chewy he didn’t care what was going on anywhere in the neighborhood. That’s it, buddy. Get rid of that nasty tartar and plaque.
For Bill and Jack
Staples! Yes, the wood bubbled, and they tacked it down with staples. Ordinary staples, nothing industrial, thankfully.
More on this project soon…
Kitchen details
Well, we replaced the trailer window with a nice boxy garden window. I love it. In the winter it is full of houseplants. They really thrive there. And now I get tons of natural light in the kitchen, and great ventilation.
I have six spots of recessed lighting in the ceiling, one pretty fixture over the sink, and small halogen spots under the cabinets. I kind of wish I had known more about LED lighting when we were choosing lighting. I have halogen or incandescent everywhere, absolutely no fluorescent. I realize that fluorescent is far more energy efficient, and I am all for that, but fluorescent lighting is a migraine trigger for me. So it was strictly forbidden.
When we tore the laminate off the walls we found several layers of wall covering. I’m not sure I even remember all of them, I think I’ve blocked it from my memory. My favourite was the genuine linoleum wall covering. I wish I had taken a picture, but later I recognized it in Jane Powell’s book Linoleum. It was pink, made to look like square tiles, and it had neat shiny gold flecks. Not that I’d want a whole kitchen like that.
When we got down to the plaster, we realized it was pretty beat. It wasn’t falling away from the lath, but it was just in bad shape. So, we decided to cover it with new beadboard. I don’t know if this kitchen ever had beadboard walls, but I don’t care. I like it, and I think it looks appropriate for a 1930 bungalow.
I’ve always loved beadboard. White bead board walls. But that wouldn’t look right with the white cabinets. And I didn’t want to commit the cabinets to a color I would grow tired of. I wanted a green kitchen. Depression green. Grandma’s kitchen green. But I knew I didn’t want green cabinets. So, I thought maybe we’d paint or do a green stain on the beadboard walls, something that will show the grain. Nobody else liked the idea. Well, I let the guys talk me out of it. I’m glad they did, I’m pretty pleased with the way it turned out, and I’m not married to any one color.
I’ve got a nice piece of crown to top the beadboard, and a plate rail runs the length of the kitchen. I decided I wanted to have the crown at the same level as the crown piece on the doorways would be. Nearly all the wood trim in the kitchen had to be replicated, the original, if it was ever there in the first place, was long gone. We used all pine for the kitchen, and it was stained much more red than the rest of the house. I like the more red tone to the wood.
The grey counter was chosen and ordered when I thought I was painting the beadboard walls green. I think it would look better now if I had chosen a green. Maybe someday. It is only laminate. I really wanted soapstone, but it just wasn’t in the budget.
My stepmother, Kathy, kindly thought of me when her own daughter was moving out of an apartment where she had her own practically new (one year) appliances to an apartment that already had them. And while almond wasn’t my first color choice, I’m so grateful to have them: they are far more energy efficient than the stuff left behind by the previous owners, plus they were free.
Green Bungalow Craftworks 
