A Haircut and Three Pallets of Flagstones Later

After leaving my beloved hairstylist in SD, and a torturous search for a new, qualified, stylist, I found one! She was conveniently located less than 10 minutes from home, (BONUS!!) then she moved ☹️ (points taken away,) so she’s now 20+ mins from home. On my last visit James drove me and figured he’d just make a trip over to Habitat For Humanity which is right around the corner to just peruse, because you never know, and to kill time. Well. In our quest for an outside oasis, we’d conjured up a concept of landscaping some pathways in the front and backyards, carved out with flagstones and accenting with mulch. Much preferred over a slab of concrete sidewalk. Future plans to grow grass in the surrounding areas, maybe a raised bed for veggies and a sparkle of ground coverings when fall brings the rain that summer did not.
Now. Lets backtrack to the day before my haircut. On this day I was in my PJ’s watching Ellen and was not in the “Let’s go to the Depot” mood, but James wanted to go price out some flagstones, knowing he’d be heading to H4H tomorrow while I’m getting my haircut, and again, you never know!! TaDa! H4H had just received a pallet of flagstones, littered with bits and pieces the Depot didn’t possess 👍🏻. So he took some pics for me to see if they were something I liked and my response was, “Babe, why didn’t you just buy them?” By now we are on our way to lunch, then home so he figures he’d just head over in the morning, hoping they’ll still be there and, YAY! BUT. Two more pallets had arrived that morning! That’s a double yay my friends. 👍🏻👍🏻 So he bought all three. I’d say it was about 2 tons worth of stone, you could say a plethora of stones, that we unloaded, super fun, and piled them in the side yard for our next project. Now it’s time to move these little, and big, shits throughout the front and backyard. This was the greatest jigsaw puzzle I’ve ever created, and the heaviest damn pieces for such a puzzle, I’ve ever had to move around.

James spent the next morning using the roto-tiller to clear the paths, ridding them of all the dried out grass, weeds and dust that had taken over this dry ass summer. Filled them in with sand and tamped it down, (tamping is some serious shit, I recommend it for all your upper body needs,) to level them out and in comes me.
Now, this is not a puzzle that the pieces are made to fit together, in anyway, they are just that, pieces. Lots. Of. Pieces. Different, very different sizes and colors, and they are beautiful! I Spent hours spreading them out, randomly putting them along the edges, then moving, then moving again, and yes, again. In my mind I didn’t want any two of the same “color” together, didn’t want any “sizes” next to each other making it look like an organized path. I’m sure my neighbors thought I was crazy as I’d lay a row of stones, then walk up and down it to see how the flow felt under my feet. Then move or add as needed, and repeat. It was more fun than I thought it would be. It was a great creative and physical, (remember the 2 tons part,) project. Now that I’m finally pleased with the placement and ease of the paths, time to do it all over in the backyard.
Priority one was the fire pit, wanting to ensure we had enough flagstones. Hard to determine how far a pile of random size pieces can stretch with an organic concept. Starting with the inner circle I picked through the pile to find any that had the slightest resemblance of a curve, luckily I found enough to make it work. And continued outward. The size of our fire ring was satisfactory and we had, hopefully, enough left over to carve a pathway from the porch to the back gate. I took caution and spaced the pieces out farther with hopes to be able to fill more in as it came down to the wire, and we barely made it.
Our finishing touches was to mulch around the stones in the pathways and fill in the the stones with pebbles around the fire pit. Just needs a few chairs and a fire, which we for sure did right after we finished!
With such a great resource as H4H and never knowing what you might find, there might be a diamond in the rough that didn’t work for somebody else but may find a good home, seems this visit worked out for this home. From us pricing retail first, and there isn’t nearly the array of personalities and designs as an option, James figures we saved around $1,000. It pays to shop used first, reduces waste and saves money!

Fork! ✔️

Paint Us into Our Oasis

When we bought our first home in SD it had been decided that when we got our shit sort of put together (complete rehab) a hot tub was very soon to follow. We laid the concrete slab, installed the electrical (thanks dad!) and built a deck around it. We had that beautiful baby within 8 months. (If you’d seen that home, you’d be impressed by how quickly it came to fruition.) Fast forward to us viewing this new prospect and, wadyaknow, there was already a back deck AND a hot tub! 👍🏻🍻 But to be quite honest, we really only gave it a 10-20% chance of working, with minimal repairs 🤞🏻Since the house was on the market through winter all pipes had been winterized, so even turning it on until the weather improved made no sense and all of our focus was putting the inside in order anyway. Alas, the weather warmed and we had a comfortable grip on the house so James hopped in that baby, gave her a good scrub down (I’m glad I don’t have pics of what it looked like) filled her up and BAM! We have a fucking hot tub! We’ve since had one leak, (and seriously, that’s all we’ve had!) but, we bought this expanding foam shit that we’d used once on our other tub, and haven’t had an issue since.
Well, now that we have an up and running hot tub, time to spruce this deck up. Not sure how long it’s been here or when the last time it was painted but there is natural wear and tear, a few boards that needed replacing and the simple effect of the elements. The paint department at the Depot recommended Deck Over, a paint about twice as thick as anything we’ve used before, made to help, not just cover, the wood, but fill in the split and damaged areas as well. And this paint, Not.Fun.To.Work.With!! It’s, again, thick and heavy, hard to spread, and oh yeah, not fun! But, I can see why it was the recommended choice.And now it’s time to finish our fence. Long pause………Because…..Ugh. When we closed, our first order was to do whatever we could to simply make sure the animals couldn’t escape the grounds. Not exaggerating, we did whatever we could before our POD of belongings, (containing all tools necessary) arrived. Then, unsurprisingly, one “Doesn’t Give a Shit” cat, and one “I Have No Idea what I Just Did,” dog, found some holes. That’s it, time to rebuild the fence. James is well versed in this area thanks to a previous job, so he tackled that sumbitch in 3 days. All by himself! (I had to leave town or else I would’ve for sure helped) Seriously! No. Seriously! He fully replaced 3 sides of our yard, including three gates. The fourth side of the fence was intact, enough, so we saved it for a later day. Well, this was back in February and we left it it’s natural unpainted wood, cuz, for whatever reason, it seems no one paints their fences here. Huh? After thinking on it a few months James decided he wanted to paint, making it last years longer, so now the time to build the last piece had come. We’d had our color palette picked out for when we repaint the house and our accent color is a beautiful blue so we played off that for the fence. We painted that last/new side white, the color the homeowner requested, and since we didn’t need to replace the whole side of the fence and the intact part was already white, it really wasn’t too much skin off our backs. Play nice with the neighbors and they’ll play nice with you.  6/21/17I love me a nail gun!!! As for the rest, James thought it’d be more aesthetically pleasing, (which, aesthetisc and color, are more my thing but, I guess he can have this one,) to leave the rails and posts their natural wood color, and he totally nailed it! We used an airless spray gun, as we will not go through another episode of hand painting an entire fence! I just won’t! Insert personal nightmare here. Attempting something this delicate took some crafty thinking, and again, James nailed it! He took the fence off in sections, laid them on a tarp, made this little “cover” for the rails using two 1.5″x 1.5″ L-drip edge, (in laymen’s, my, terms, two long aluminum edge pieces,) taped them together with blue painters tape and simply laid them over the rails and sprayed them down.Now, it really wasn’t as easy as that, I mean, he basically made himself a jigsaw puzzle to take apart and rebuild. But, the outcome, I know you agree, was spot on!

So now we are beautifully secure in our backyard.

Cold beer and a dunk in the tub anyone?

Backyard Oasis Take One.

Now that we’ve cleared out all the nonsense that existed in the back yard it’s time to start creating a beautifully landscaped oasis. We’ll start with some fruit trees, as they take a bit longer to produce. Went in with intent to buy 3-4 and decided for sure on an apple and pear. Now, there are so many damn varieties and we hoped we could find a Honeycrisp apple tree. Yumm! No dice. So we asked for a recommendation and the employees response was, “Dude! You gotta get the Arkansas Black Spur!” So of course with that response we had to. Then, they mention the pollination issue, something we’d never taken into account. They found us trees that were pollinating buddies and we ended up with 2 pear and 2 apple. Three of the four I’m not familiar with, but their confidence left me happy. We may have a handful of adolescent fruit next year, but I assure us all that when it becomes mature, we will not be shy of sharing. I see cobblers and pies and anything your heart desires!🍐🍎 Now, before we planted said trees we must confront our weed problem. If you recall in my last post, there was zero shit given to this property for X amount of time. First we must till and amend the soil. Then till again. Just when I think there are no more tools we could possibly need, I am sorely proven wrong! (My Dad assures me there is no such thing as enough, and thinking of my kitchen, I suppose he’s right, and James wasn’t too terribly bummed about buying a new toy!) And buy he did. I do however, recommend one if you plan any further endeavors of yard work. Rent vs Buy, worth every penny! This would’ve been painfully painful and, time consuming to do manually. ​

​We went a direction we’d learned on our SD home. Sheet Mulching. LOVED the concept. Using cardboard boxes, sans any tape or glossy labels, and luckily we had a shit ton from our move, (also smart on us we didn’t just throw them away,) any-who, it consists of covering the grounds with cardboard then adding a layer about 4-6 inches of a beautiful healthy mulch. This creates a heat that essentially stifles and burns the weeds, while also breaking down the cardboard to become part of your soil. Chemical free, self composting, weed killing beauty. A much better way to enjoy your home grown fruits and veggies. Now let’s add a little ground cover plants, and watch them all grow. Time to add some fun backyard additions.👍🏻 Someday, when we have grass, I’m getting a fucking slip-n-slide! For now, fire pit. We’re talking the real-deal-bonfire-grill-steel-fire-ring! Nestled in a beautiful Pavestone surrounding, built by James.  🔥When James went through that painful lopping, chopping, chainsaw-ing and stump grinding the damn yard, there was one tree that, as an afterthought, he decided he wanted it gone. However, revisiting that dreaded stump grinder again was, Out.Of.The.Question. So it simply became a large stump. Just need to sand the top to make it level, add a nice layer of lacquer and viola! It’ll be a proper captains chair to man the fire. Equipped with a swivel grill grate for your changing wants of a mesmerizing fire or some kick ass steaks and kabobs on the grill🍻✔️

Looking forward to some clear cool nights after this hot, dry summer.✨

Where the Willows Meet the Stump Grinder.

Now that the inside of the house is pretty much squared away it’s time to turn our attention to the outside. I could spend time telling you how un-kept this property was before we purchased it, but you really need visual aids. I’ll first add that in these before and after pics, you’ll notice quite a difference in the ground color so keep in mind that the befores were taken in Dec/Jan and the afters are during one of the driest summers we’ve had in years. We’ll tackle that lawn issue sometime soon, but as you’ll see, the overgrowth of trees and left behind stumps HAS to come first! We took a few cuttings of the branches to our local nursery and their best guess at the species was a sort of Willow tree, or tree-ezz. They have a very invasive root system and they had been having a fucking party in the backyard when no one was paying attention! Our neighbor told us that the city had came in after it was foreclosed on and cut down a slew of trees, just close enough above ground that if you don’t look down while walking there is an inevitable occurrence of profanity from whatever injuries or pissed off toe that transpires.

For this fun-time removal project we started from top to bottom. Smaller pieces, quicker clean up and less chance for crazy shit to happen. James started with his telescoping loppers, then came the chainsaw, then the dreaded stump grinder. There was a good 30 stumps that needed grinding and that’s about 30 more than you’ll ever want to have to use that beast of a machine on. Here’s something you won’t hear James say, “That beat the shit out of me!”​There was an added small handful of stumps and about 3 trees/bushes in the front yard we took down too, but I think you’ve got the gist of what we’re dealing with. 🌲 (I don’t know why the video isn’t playing with sound, I’m not very tech-y, but imagine a very intimidating/scary movie/chainsaw sound)⚙️😵

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​This happened for about 8 hours. 8 hours!! Followed by a couple truck loads to the dump of yard waste later, we can get on that landscaping!Remember kids, we’ll work on that dreaded brown ground later, but for now, the view of the clear blue sky just got better.