Getting Ready for the Tree

After a week of installing new trim and painting the walls and some of the trim, the living room was ready for the tree.  We installed new wainscoting and caulked most of it.  It's nearly ready for a final painting.  Alyssa painted the walls, re-caulked the existing crown molding and picture rail and painted it so that it looked nice for the tree.

It's not quite done, but it was wonderful to have the tree and the train layout where it was intended to be.  We'll finish up this side of the room after Christmas.

Living Room Wainscoting

After enjoying our Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, we got to work on the wainscoting on the old dining room side of the living room, the music room, as Charlotte is calling it.  The Christmas tree is supposed to go on that side of the living room and we'd like to get it done before we cut down our tree.

Unfortunately the crown molding was damaged when our contractors removed the crown molding across the beam.  We'll have to fix that.

We moved the doorway three or for inches to the left to allow for a new support column and to allow for trim on the dining room side of the doorway.  Unfortunately this meant that we needed to take down the wainscoting that we had installed 13-14 years ago.  We also have to move an outlet.

A Little Trail Work

It’s late spring now and the ferns and other perennial plants in the woods are nearly full grown. So the trail that Bennet and I would take is now overgrown with ferns and other things. One plant I was worried might be poison ivy but it’s wild sasperilla. 

The only section that really needs work this year is a section that hasn’t traditionally been a path.  I pulled up ferns and sasperilla and cut down a couple Norway maple saplings and a dogwood.  I also raked leaves and moved some branches.  I still need to cut a path in that log though.

It's lovely to see this beautiful striped jack-in-the-pulpit.

Stonework and Gardening

The fence and arbor are finished, so now it's on to landscaping.  The slope up to the arbor and down to the gate are awkward, so the goal is to make more comfortable walking paths.  This involves shaving off some areas and filling others as well as creating a very small retaining wall/garden edging.  It's still a work in progress.  The picture above is from yesterday, and the picture below is from today.   Bennet unfortunately likes to dig too.

Meanwhile, Alyssa bought a few more plants while scoping out stone.  Three heucherella Dayglow Pink and an astilbe named Maggie Daley.  She also moved around a couple of plants.  It's very dry here and the poor contractor soil is not helping.  Despite the drought, most plants that we planted in the ground made it through the winter.  Some left in pots did not.

Stairs in the Woods

The next section along the path after the new section we built last spring (moving a bunch of boulders and creating stone steps), is a short, steep section leading up to a large, flat boulder.  We thought wooden stairs would be best here.  Colin used mostly reclaimed or leftover lumber for this project.

He built it over two weekends. He built most of the steps and hauled dirt to fill the treads.  We used stones on the side to keep the dirt in place.  The next weekend, Colin finished the bottom two steps.  He also moved some more large stones to build a small retaining wall to create a landing at the bottom of the steps.  Evelyn helped Alyssa plant two non-invasive, native ferns, and they transplanted one Christmas fern from elsewhere.

Trail Tour

 Grandpa asked for a tour of our trails, so the girls and I shot a little video of the trails as they are, highlight work that we've done in the past, and talked a little about what work we'd like to do on them in the future.  This is a good time of year to work on the trails because there are no bugs and there are no plants, except for the Christmas ferns and one solitary trillium.

Of course, as soon as we shot the video, it's outdated.  This afternoon Colin and Alistair worked on another section of the trail, replacing a rotten edging log, adding some more edging logs and brining up some more soil to even out the trail.

Trail Work

This time of year is perfect to do work on the trails in the woods.  The temperature is pleasant and there are no bugs.  This section of the trail has always been okay, but we improved it by leveling an uncomfortable cross fall.  We moved some dirt last fall.  We lost a tree a couple of weeks ago in a storm than conveniently landed near the trail.  We cut the top of the tree to use as edging on the downhill side.

The bottom of the tree was blocking the trail up into the woods.  It took some time with our little saw, but we managed to cut it half to clear the trail.

Living Room Paneling

We've been working on our long enough that we've started to demo renovations that we ourselves have done.  In this case, it is we just need to adjust the paneling a little to accommodate the slightly shifted living room doorway.  We made the opening much bigger as well as moved the one west side of the opening to allow for casing on the dining room side of the doorway.

Bennet was curious to what Colin was working on.  Under the paneling, we can see my Dad's notes from when we put the paneling up more than a decade ago.  Thankfully, we only need to remove the paneling on one wall.

Whirlpool Bath

With the kids bathroom mostly done (just the cabinet doors are left), we were ready to try out the whirlpool bath.  After Alyssa tested it out while everyone was out downhill skiing, Evelyn wanted to try it.  She has been begging for days.  She was pretty excited when Alyssa turned on the jets.  

Charlotte joined her, and Alyssa went downstairs to make dinner.  A short while later Alyssa hear screaming and ran upstairs.  They girls were clutching each other and shouting that the jets were getting faster.  Evelyn had accidentally unplugged the bath (probably with her bum) and the waterline was below the jets but not the intake valve.  Water was angrily spraying everywhere.  The girls were crying and saying that they were never taking a bath with the jets again.

Fence and Arbor

Adding a dog to our family lead us to tweak our garden plans.  We've decided to build a fence between the lawn area of our back yard and the side garden.  We also decided to add an arbor with a gate in an attempt to deter Bennet from wandering into our neighbor's yard.

Colin borrowed a post digger to make the holes for the new posts.

The rails are up, ready for pickets.  Thankfully these ones we're not going to paint!