Stone Path

For the past couple of weeks, Alyssa has been building a small stone path behind the playhouse. She found all the stones someone in our yard.  She and Alistair added the two closest stones.  Alistair did the second stone all by himself.   To the right of the path will one day be the fairy garden.

Prepping for the Playhouse Roof

Spring is finally here, so it is time to get out and work on the playhouse.  This morning Alistair helped Colin paint the ceiling of the playhouse.

After the ceiling paint dried, it was time to put the sheets up on the roof.

Alistair supervised while Colin attached the sheets to the roof.

Organizer

Colin has been working on what will be an organizer in the hallway at the top of the stairs.  We hope it is an aesthetic transition between wainscoting and plain wall as well as a good use of space.  When the house was still two units, we installed wainscoting in the hallway and stairway, but we decided not to continue the wainscoting in the upstairs hall..  Removing the wall at the top of the stairs (and the door to the upstairs unit) made the wall a bit of a mess.  We hope this solves both issues.  It is a little fiddly because the floor slopes down, but after a coat of paint, no one will notice.  We plan on putting hooks on the horizontal board that is just above the height of the wainscoting and a pinboard in the large space above.

Doors and Trim Upstairs

While we have been playing in the snow, Colin has been working hard upstairs.  He has now installed all of the doors we ordered in September, he has put up nearly all the casing and headers for those doors, and has been installing trim.  The most difficult thing he has been working on is Alistair's closet doors.  It was quite a pain to get the doors to line up properly and for the doors to stay put once you've opened then.  The upstairs walls and floors and ceilings are by no means straight, so it has been a challenge.  But they look great and Charlotte likes to play in the closet.

Headers and Baseboards

I know it has been a while since we've posted anything, but it has been a while since we have done anything worst posting.  I won't bore you with details of Colin's work/travel schedule, but instead post photos of some of the headers he worked on this weekend.  He finished the two windows in the blue room, the window in Charlotte's room, and the two windows in Alistair's room.  He also built and completed the headers on five doors/doorways.  We still need to do the header returns, fill, caulk, and paint the headers, but lets not think of that now.  We are admiring the headers.

Colin also put in the baseboard on the north side of the blue room (photo above) and in the hallway.

Playhouse Roof Framing

The mosquitoes are finally gone so Colin did not get bitten to pieces as he worked on the roof framing today.  He also put the fascia on, so we are ready for the plywood to go on the roof.

New Steps

Here is Charlotte, modeling our new back step and path. We look forward to planting the bed either side in the spring.

New Stairs and Path

We took the off the old porch stairs (that we reattached temporarily) when Colin built the small retaining wall this summer.  Despite our barrier of a plant pot and a toy stove, the kids climbed up and jumped off the back porch.  We needed some new stairs.  Today stonemasons Jesse and Mark installed our new step and a small landing.  Charlotte was very interested in what was going on.  She sat on the porch and watched for a while, and then later watched from inside, standing on a stool so she could watch through the back door window.

 

 

A couple of months ago we spotted a reclaimed granite step at Longacres. Not only did the eight foot stone have the aged patina that we were looking for, but it was also half the price of a new stone.  Jesse and Mark picked the stone up and another one they had that was five feet long.  They used the truck to slide it into place.  Here Jesse is sitting on the stone as Mark tips the truck bed to slide it off.

 

The landing is made up of four large stones.  Mark and Jesse chiseled the edges so that they fit close together. Calvin and Alistair were eager to help with putting down the manufactured sand.

Alistair also wanted to help Mark put the sand in the joints.  The guys were great with the kids.

 

I will post a photo of the finished layout soon.

Dry Stream Bed

During the torrential rain we had in June, I noticed that we had a little stream appear in our backyard.  The water flowed out between those two big rocks in the photo above.  Inspiration hit, and I decided to make a dry river bed that followed that stream.  It would make a great focal point in an area of our yard that is currently very unattractive.  The previous owner had built a small berm on our property line, and added to it when he was fixing the drainage at his shed.  It is just a pile of broken concrete blocks, dirt and weeds.  I can't do too much about the weeds since they are not in our yard.  Hopefully an attractive little garden will distract your attention from our neighbor's weeds.

The first step was to pull up the ferns and weeds that were in my way.  Then I started to build the wall.  I dug out whole bunch of concrete blocks (and left some for slope stability).  I used rocks from our old rock wall by the porch and found a couple up in the woods.  I planted shade loving plants on the lower terrace (maidenhair ferns, a hosta, hellebore, pulmonaria, and European wild ginger) and a rhododenron and Komodo Dragon hosta on the upper terrace.  Unfortunately the pictures below don't do the landscaping justice.  The plants have already begun to go dormant and the leaves are covering everything.  I'll have to post another photo in the spring.

 

Once the most of the plants were in the ground, I added the smooth river stone we picked up from the street after the flood and added gravel in between.  Again, difficult to see in the photo, but you can tell that this area of the garden looks much better than it did before.  Looking forward to seeing water flow in the spring.

Playhouse Walls

Colin finished framing the playhouse walls this afternoon. We think it is more square than the back part of our house.

 

Charlotte loves it.  She calls is "My house" and likes to lay down on the floor and pretend she is sleeping.  She was helping Colin by handing him screws.