More work on the garage and what I've been up to in the kitchen

This weekend Matt and I put our heads together and really got moving on the garage. As you may remember, we are regrading the side next to our neighbor, Mike, because, well, it's currently graded really stupidly (i.e. so the water runs into the garage). Matt's been busy already painting the boards and this weekend we started to put them up.

Here's the first board going up:

And a close up of the mitre cut corner (this was necessary, as you will see later, to putting the aluminum corners back up over the new board)

From the first board, we just kept working our way down. The real challenge was hitting the studs from the outside. Since the end of the garage outside and the inside of the garage don't exactly line up, we had to drill a couple of holes through the walls and do some hard thinking (and math) to figure out where exactly to drill. After a couple missteps on the first board, I'm proud to say we hit every stud after that. 

Here's the last board we put up over the weekend, the small corner pice between the garage proper and the workshop (which we think was added on at some point)

Then Matt went back and caulked the top, to keep water from wicking down the seam.

Doesn't the corner look great?

After that he wood puttied the holes and the next day (today) he came back to sand them down.

And put up the aluminum corners that those mitre cuts were so key for:

He also painted, but it got too dark to take a picture once he was done, so you'll have to enjoy this action shot of him getting started and I'll post a finished product pic soon, I promise.

And what was I up to while Matt was finishing up sanding and painting (I helped put the boards up, don't you worry). Why, I was in the kitchen, of course. Testing out my new toy, a vegetable and fruit strainer attachment for the KitchenAid. Now, you might wonder why this purchase was made, since Matt and I are pinching pennies a bit here. Well, I had been peeling and coring the apples by hand, and actually I made three batches of apple butter that way. Then, this weekend, Matt offered to help. And at about the second apple, he asked "Isn't there a better way?" To which I replied that this food strainer would allow us to cut out the peeling and coring process and voila, three days later, here it is.

 I gotta say, its pretty great. No peeling, no coring, and not only did I make apple sauce tonight, I also took some of our first tomatoes and made tomato sauce. Turned out pretty great despite the fact that beefsteak tomatoes aren't really the ideal tomato for sauce.

 As a recap, so far this season I've made and canned (from the left) apple sauce, apple butter, caramel sauce, and pickles. Ok, so the caramel sauce did not come from the garden, but I did make it to dip apples in and it turned out AMAZING. Its a little intense to make, but with only four ingredients, not very complicated and I would certainly make it again.

Next culinary adventure? Tomato sauce, and lots of it given the 8 bursting tomato plants in our garden. 

garden and garage and swing

In keeping with our "do one thing each day theme" we did a couple little things each day this weekend. First, Matt painted the boards for the garage grading project that is in the works (don't you just loooove that peach color? Full disclosure, I don't but I don't dislike it enough to paint the entire house right now).

Next, Matt tackled the posts in the garden. If you remember, when we sunk them they ended up being differnet heights (which we expected, with the plan that we would cut them down later). Well, later is now and he got through 5 of them.

Here's an in process shot:

Before (notice the really tall pole second from the left):

And after!

Next we turned our attention to our lovely swing. Because we adore it and want it to be around forever, we want to be sure we are protecting it. Enter Thomson's Waterseal to help keep the water and the mildew out and the wood looking lovely. Before we did this I did some prep work last weekend to bleach out any of the mildew that had formed already and then gave it a good sand this weekend to make sure everything was nice and smooth.

 Here's a before

Matt getting the top

Halfway through (you can really see the difference here)

And after

We'll have to do this every year going forward to protect it from the wind and weather, but it'll be well worth it to keep it around and in mint condition through the lovely Wisconsin winters.

grading the garage

No, not like A vs. F, we're talking about soil here. See the side of the garage is not quite graded appropriately.  And while we don't much care about how it looks, we do care about the water that tends to wind its way into our garage during heavy rains. So with the help of Mike, our neighbor, we are going to be making some changes.

First we dug a ditch along the side of the garage

And along the back of the garage (before and after)

And then we though about it some more, and decided the ditch should be wider.

Next we bough some some pressure treated 2x12s. The plan is to sister these to the bottom piece of siding so that we can build the grade up against it without causing problems. To protect the boards even further, Matt primed them:

 But before we can put them up, we wanted to make sure the siding that is already up is tight. So we sunk screws into it to secure it to the 2x4s in the frame. Then, just to really be sure, Matt caulked the seam between the siding and the concrete.

He's only halfway, and it doesn't look fun, but we think it's worth it.