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. 

Look at this garden

It's huge!

Seriously, those zucchini leaves are bigger than my head (on the left)

and we have two new beds with lettuce, radish, and basil coming up nicely.

Its been pretty awesome, I have to say. I even made pickles the other day. And we've got a ton of tomatoes about to burst so there are canning plans in my future, for sure :)

A couple odd jobs

So a while back, Matt noticed something funny about our garage door. Mainly that the support holding the track wasn't really quite as sturdy as one would hope. In fact, the track is attached to a 2x6 which is attached to the beam at the top of the garage. Now, because of this set up, and because the 2x6 is only really supported about halfway up, there's been quite a bit of pressure for probably many years on it, and well, it just couldn't take it anymore and cracked. 

Here you can see Matt pointing out the crack.

And here you can see that not only was it cracked, it was actually split right through. Not ideal, when you consider it was holding up the very heavy garage door over our rather important cars...

So, Matt replaced it. Turns out it was actually pretty difficult and required him to shave off a bit of the face of the 2x6 that he replaced the old board with. But, being the rockstar he is, he got it done and up.(that's a shadow, not a crack, I promise)

And here it is, good as new.

The next night, he finished up a project that we started quite some time ago. Like, seriously long ago. But that's ok, at least we are getting back to it. On the up side, it went pretty quick this time because, well, for one, we've done it before, and two, I cut the piece when we did the first project so we didn't have to do any measuring or anything. And, I'm saying we, but honestly, Matt did the whole thing while I made dinner. The only thing I did was hold the piece in place while he put in the first nails.

Yay matching windows with matching flashing!

Mowing is hard enough

Especially when you have a double lot and a bunch of trees. Now we've done a pretty good job raising the canopy around the yard, but, at my request, we've been holding out on trimming the cedar and the pine on the west side of the house. Mostly this is because we have a storage unit on that side and the branches help to hide it. (Personally, I think the storage unit is an excellent neighbor. Quiet, unassuming, and no one is ever there except occasionally during the day on the weekend. Pretty great, actually. But I'm aware that the people that might want to buy our house might not feel the same, so I've been trying to keep the branches until we come up with another plan, like bushes or a fence or something)/

However, because Matt is totally awesome, he's the one that mows the grass (seriously, I've only done it 2-3 times and we have been having to mow almost every week this summer) and last week, having to duck and weave around the branches just got to be too much, too often. So, we got out the chainsaw and went to work. 

Here's Matt, contemplating the havoc he's about to wreak. 

And here he is mid swing

Halfway

And done!

You can see the storage unit a little more clearly now, but mowing doesn't make Matt nearly as angry, so I think it was a good trade.

One thing every day

So Matt and I have been trying an experiment in which every day we try to do at least one thing on the house. Its been going pretty well and I thought I'd do a mini homage to the small things in life. 

First, we rearranged the laundry room. It was fine before, but see that structure we lovingly call the bomb shelter (we made it ourselves, and it probably could survive a bomb. I mean, look at all those 2x4s...) Well,  we've been using it mostly as storage for cat stuff but the problem is that once we put the door back on the laundry room, it sort of blocks the bomb shelter all the time, making it far less useful that it really could be. 

So, we decided to do some rearranging and moved it next to the dryer where I can now easily get to all the kitty supplies and use is as a table for folding clothes.

As a bonus, now the kitty litter is behind the door, which is a much better thing to be hidden behind the door all the time.

Next, while we were cleaning the garage I found the shades for the kitchen windows, which, to be honest, I had totally forgot existed. Its a pretty subtle change, but if you look at the top of the windows you can see that in the second pic we now have lovely pull down shades so that at night we can have some privacy again.

We also found the cover for the light. Granted, its a pretty crappy light, but no one likes bare fluorescent bulbs staring them in the eye all the time. 

So, not amazing, but better, for sure.