Siding

We spent many hours trying to decide what color to paint the wood siding on the ranchburger. I downloaded the Sherwin Williams app that lets you use a photo of your house and "paint" it with various colors to help make a choice.  We had so many factors/finishes/colors to consider:  red brick; limestone; and not-so-attractive roof color.  At some point Dan just started stripping the red paint from the wood and what revealed itself?  Clear redwood. In 1960 they used clear redwood and painted it.  Here are before and after pics.

Oh yeah, note the new windows and front door too.

The West Deck

After the kitchen was finished Dan built a deck out the door from the laundry room.  His buddy and partner in building, Brian, moved to Colorado, so Dan had to build this one by himself.

Kitchen Photos -- Finally

The kitchen was finished this summer.  Some photos.

For fun -- almost the same perspective as the "gutted" 
shot below right.

Looking east. 

Looking west -- laundry room at at the end

And almost the same perspective as the shot below.....

Tile in the Pink Bathroom

This is the tile floor in what we call the pink bathroom.  (It does still have a pink sink and bathtub -- future project).  

The other day I was looking at the tile and it dawned on me that the pink tiles look like little buttocks.  Now all I can see when I look at the floor is sea of little butts. 

The Packing Paper Finally Put to Rest

This may be my favorite house story of the year.  

When we moved from Ithaca to Chicago the movers used that rectangular newsprint-like packing paper -- and a lot of it. When we got to Chicago -- because we expected to buy a house there and move again soon -- we smoothed out each piece of paper, stacked and stored it in boxes. We used it for packing when we moved to the rental in Oxford, and once again smoothed out each sheet, stacked and stored it. When we moved to our ranchburger I couldn't bring myself to part with the paper, so again, smooth, stack and store. I should add that a couple of people who helped us unpack in various locations might have thought we were a wee bit crazy with the paper thing.

This summer we needed to make a BIG planting bed around some newly installed trees and shrubs to help mark the edge of our property and prepare for what will someday be a natural border visual screen. We learned from making an earlier bed what backbreaking work it is to dig up sod, shake the soil back into the bed, and get rid of the grass and roots. I read about a way to make garden beds by putting down newspaper and topping with mulch. The grass dies, the newspaper composts, and you don't lose any precious topsoil in the process.  

So...... out came the packing paper. We marked the bed and put down the paper seven or eight sheets thick and overlapped by several inches, and topped it paper with about four inches of mulch. 

It just seemed so right. 

Kitchen in the Works

I've been a bad blogger!  We now have the kitchen gutted, and a temp kitchen that is working really well.  Here are some pics.

Our sweet temp kitchen, in the original kitchen (the one with the
brick gas grill) pictured in an earlier post.

View of gutted kitchen from dining room

Gutted -- same view as below.  Note the ceiling height (and fancy temp insulation).  Door out to screened porch will be where window was

Before gutting

The Fence

We have a 1/2 acre lot with the ranchburger.  It's really a pretty nice lot with woods on the north and west sides and a big grassy area between us and the closest neighbor.  We also have a dog, Jax, who needs a fence so that he can go out and play.

Shortly after moving in we talked with reps from three fence companies, and told them some ideas we had about a fence made from wood and "hogwire" or wire mesh.  We had seen some pics on the Houzz website, and were pretty excited about having something interesting and different.

The fence guys thought we were nuts.  Their suggestion was to have either split rail or Kentucky board fence with wire stapled on back so the dog wouldn't escape.  One guy told Dan we should find a carpenter to make the fence we were talking about.  So Dan decided to do it himself.

He ordered eastern red cedar from a local sawmill and 2"x2" welded wire mesh with black PVC coating from a company in Cincinnati.  He and Brian designed and built this fence and created what we now call our "outdoor room" over the course of a few weeks in the fall of 2013.

Getting started -- first two panels

Fence complete -- looking East

Looking North