So close

Well, we had a busy weekend and we got a lot done, despite the weather's best . We put up the bottom of the fence (except for one piece, stupid rain). You can see the one tiny stretch between the stump and corner.

It was a little harder to put up than the upper portion of the fence, mostly because we wanted it to sink down 6 inches and then jut out, so we had to sort of finesse it into place. Also, stapling at that angle is pretty tough. Well, at least I assume it is, Matt did all the stapling cause my tiny little hands can't handle the pressure. My job was to stretch the chicken wire tight so that we can iron out the kinks later. We work pretty well as a team :)

Then, we dug out the second bed. Now if you saw the first bed post, you know we are going for the woody bed garden style. The problem is that we ran out of wood from our old apple tree after the first bed. So, we've been watching Craigslist and thankfully scored some free willow wood just in the nick of time this weekend. Here it is in the truck.

And here it is in the bed. Sort of like a big puzzle really. 

That was about where we ended today because, well, Wisconsin hasn't gotten the memo that it is spring and instead of being 75 and sunny, it was 60 and drizzling. Cold wet drizzle plus a pile of fresh compost plus a pile of freshly dug soil equals, that's right, multi-colored mud. 

I felt a little like Dennis the Menace because we left muddy trails wherever we went. The mud combined with the cold meant we didn't  get as far as we had planned, but we still got a lot done. We even made it to Menards to get the boards to go across the middle and top of the fence. 

Even Leroy felt the need to snuggle down.

And more gardening

Continuing on, you might be wondering why we are going to so much trouble with all these posts and the like. Well, the answer is: bunnies! Granted, bunnies are one of my favorite animals, but they are killer on the garden. And we've got tons of them. We've got babies:

And of course, good old Mr. Bighead.

So the fence to keep those suckers out is pretty important. So important that we've (and when I say we I mean mostly Matt) dug 4 ft deep holes for 7 4x4s and 8 2x4s.

Why 4 feet you ask, well, so we can get below the frost level and the posts won't slowly raise up from the ground during each freeze/thaw session. 

 In addition, becase we are putting in a gate, we put the two gate posts in concrete. We had a small debate about whether it was easier to get the poles square and straight by adding dirt and tamping it down or harder to mix and pour the concrete. I think we decided it was a wash. Concrete is harder to prep but easier to get the pole set, dirt is less up front prep, but takes longer and is more finicky.

 We also made our lives a little more interesting by putting the fence right next to the old apple tree stump. I was pretty worried that it would be very difficult to get the post square and true, but it went pretty quick actually. We screwed a smaller 2x4 to the stump and got that one all squared away and then the post went on easy.

We are still in the process of putting chicken wire up. You can see we've got about three pieces up at the moment and since we started with the top only a very energetic bunny that only tries to get into the garden by hopping 2-4 feet in the air on two sides of the garden will be thwarted in thier efforts, but hey, we are working on it. 

And I finally got to plant some plants. One of the squash has flowers, so at least we can count on getting something. 

So much gardening

Ok, full confession, there's more building than gardening going on at the moment, but we are making progress. Who knew that a garden could be such a project? i mean, given the way we work, I suppose I should have guess, but I didn't, and now it's too late to go back. So bravely forward my friends, here's what we've been up to the last couple weeks (as a side note, sorry for the tardiness of my posts, I think this is the longest I've ever gone!)

I think where we left off last time was that we were starting to put up the posts that would hold up the chicken wire fence. And in the middle of that, well, we also needed to dig the beds to actually plant the plants. So, while we were gone on a mini vacation to lake arrowhead with my family, james was kind enought to get us started by diggeng out the 4' x 10' x 1 ft deep bed.

The next step was to fill it with wood. According to our gardening expert, the wood will decay creating a rich base for the plants and will help retain moisture.

After that, we layered in the sod we dug up with compost we got from a compost site. 10 bucks for a whole truckbedfull of it. (the place was wicked hard to find and we got there about 10 minutes before it closed, but we made it!)

Here we are back up to ground level

 And here's the truck bed, empty and the pile of dirt that was left. We thought that we'd get at least two beds out of the one truckload, but it took more compost than we thought and we'll have to get more for the next bed. Not that at 10 bucks a pop, its a real problem.

The finish bed

And the lovely lawn job

Garden

Well, I'm not sure we needed another project, but we got one anyway. Sunday we started on the garden with the help of James and Zach. After talking with some people about gardens, we decided that eventually we'll want six 4x10 ft beds. With some space between them for walking and such, that made our garden come out to 27x16 ft. So, we staked it out and painted some orange guidelines.

And  then we got to digging ( and digging and digging and digging). To keep out those persistent woodland creatures (side note, I saw a bunny chasing a squirrel through our yard the other day. We live in a children's book, apparently) we have to put in a pretty serious fence. Not only does it need to be about 4 ft tall, but we are going to sink it 6 inches into the ground and kick it out six inches at a 90 degree angle. That way if anything digs down, it will hit the fence, even if it backs up a bit and tries again. This meant we had to dig a trench around the perimeter.

We're still debating ditching the garden and putting in baby crocodiles instead. Once that was done, we had a lot of holes to dig. Since the fence will be four feet tall, we decided the corner posts should be 4x4s to help keep things square and solid. We stood around and debated for a bit about how deep they needed to go in... 1 ft was the first suggestion, but that seemed too shallow, so then we thought 2 ft, but none of us really knew for sure so we called Mr. Wayne to see if he might know. Turns out, he estimated about 40 inches would be a good depth to keep the freeze/thaw and frost from pushing the post slowly up and out of the ground. Well, that was deeper than we were planning, but we reset our expectations and got to work.

The best technique was to use a breaker bar to loosen the dirt and then the post digger to pull the loose dirt out. Eventually we got all four corners done and the post put in, squared up and the holes filled in. It took quite a bit of time and all 4 of us (one to man the level, one to hold the pole, one to shovel dirt and another to tamp it down) but we made it.

To round out the day we also found a home for the swing and Matt cut the grass while I picked up the branches and pine cones that had fallen during the winter.

And then he changed the oil in both cars. Is he superman? Perhaps yes. And I'm pretty glad he's my man :)

Busy weekend

Well, we were very busy this weekend, Matthew even more than me because I took a quick jaunt to chicago to celebrate Kate's birthday with her and Nate. While I was gone, Matt was very busy. Friday night he finished mudding and taping the master bedroom.

Then, on Saturday, while I was shopping with Kate, Matt and Mark replaced the toilet upstairs so it never overflows on us again

And here's what it looked like underneath. The floor wasn't super strong (especially next to the metal flange) and of course, the floor isn't level.

So, Matt and Mark made a peanut (it mimics the shape of the toilet) out of OSB to add some support. Since this added a little extra height, they had to get a thicker wax ring, but once that was in place they were good to go. 

And there it is, our new commode. Pretty, right? Not only that, because it is a low flow 1.28 gallons we get a 50 dollar rebate from the village of Oregon. And, it flushes better than the last 5 gallon guzzler. Isn't progress great?

Then, on Sunday we decided to start tackling the garden. I think I'll do a separate post for that one. 

Swing on

Roy and Rayanne came over today to drop off their wedding gift, a brand new swing set they made themselves (we have awesome and talented friends)

Since it is easier to move in pieces, there was some assembly required.

First Rayanne laid out the supports so Roy could add the cross piece that holds them in the A shape.

 Once that was done I helped stabilize the top piece and Roy and Rayanne worked on A frame around it.

Then they did the other side.

Next was adding some bracing pieces to support the top post and hung the swing.

 And lastly Roy shaved off the little bits of the A that stuck up above the top post so that everything was neat and tidy.

And voila! We have a swing. We did move it from the driveway but are still debating its permanent home. Swings like a dream though and we are super excited about it. Thanks again to Roy and Rayanne for such an awesome wedding gift!

mud, tape, repeat

With the drywall up, our next moves in the bedroom have been to seal it up good and tight in preparation for painting. In preparation, we watched a couple videos on how to tape and mud, since neither Matt nor I had done it before. To be honest, it didn't look to bad, so we dove right in.

First we removed all the old tape and made sure we had a clean surface to work with.

Then, Matt mixed up a tray full of mud about the consistancy of "runny sour cream" (This was a tip from one of the videos for working with tape, since the tape will absorb some of the moisture)

Then we slathered it on liberally, laid a piece of tape up and squeezed out all the excess. Forgive the lack of "during" pictures... I was helping and got a little covered in mud, which I didn't want to get on the camera. The end results look something like this:

In the corner

At the intersections

Matt also put up the piece of board that we had to take down that it got wet

And patched the small hole we cut to run some wire in a pretty ingenious way. First he measured and then he carefully cut out a piece leaving some of the paper around it. That way when he put it up, he could mud around it and it would stick.

Like so

We'll float some mud around it to smooth it out and then you won't even be able to tell.

As an added bonus, we had to take down a bunch of the trim to get into the corners, which is fine because we were planning to replace it anyway.

And, because he loves us so much, Leroy even got in on the action, he must have sat in it somewhere (don't worry, we cut it out so the little guy wouldn't get it caught it in his throat.

We've still got some to go, but we're working out way through it.