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Thinking about planting things

Sunday, August 9th, 2009

We were planning to put the waterproof paper on the roof this morning, but the wind started blowing enough to make it too difficult.

Instead, we worked on the greenhouse (which has been lagging since so much has been going on with the house). We now have three of the four sides screened in and a door frame built. The screen goes down about 8″ into the ground so that animals can’t tunnel in. (Stay tuned to see how that works out.) We also filled the trenches with small rocks.

All we have to do now is finish the last side, put in the door, run drip irrigation (Brad has already brought a water line to the greenhouse), and plant some things!

On a totally unrelated note, I got a giant bag of Anaheim chiles in town on Friday and am going to make a giant batch of chile rellenos tonight.

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Playing with mud – part 1

Sunday, May 3rd, 2009

We’ve started work in earnest on the greenhouse. The great thing about the cement work on this is that it is the same process we’ll be using on the exterior of the houses. This gives us a chance to practice techniques and also an opportunity to try out colors, etc. before committing on the house.

Here is a column before we started:

The first step was to prime the cement block that was there. (This is a part I’m very good at.)

Then comes mixing the cement. Another part I’m good at. (It’s hard work though. I couldn’t help thinking how useful a couple big teenage boys would be.)

Then we spread the cement on. I’m very bad at this and find it extremely frustrating. Brad tells me I’ll get better at it. When I think of doing this over two whole houses, I want to cry.

Then you float the surface and finish the corners. I can see getting good at this.

The last step will be a finish coat stucco. We’re looking at colors now.

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Floor colors and a greenhouse

Monday, April 6th, 2009

This weekend (after spending hours of watching videos on YouTube — this really is the best thing that’s happened to the DIY world since Lowe’s) we did stain samples on the slab. We tried Desert Mountain and Espresso and really liked both.

One thing we learned was that we won’t have to etch the slab first. (In the event that anyone else can use this information, the issue is slab porosity. Because the stain has to permeate the concrete, the surface must be porous. You can tell the porosity by misting water onto the surface. On ours, it immediately soaked right in, indicated a porous slab.)

We have also made a decision about what to do with that odd cabana that is already on our property. We are going to make it into a greenhouse!

To prepare for that, we began digging a ditch around the perimeter (more practice for my backup career). We’ll bury screened fencing a foot r so deep to keep animals from digging in (hopefully). We’re going to plaster the corner posts, which will give us some practice on plastering for the houses. since Stay tuned for more on this project.

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