This morning it looks like this:

I took some photos yesterday evening to try and document what the house looks like pre-2nd floor. The truck with the trusses is there now. I wish I were there to see it, but rest assured, photo documentation is going on!

Here's how it looked late yesterday/early today:

Front of house, looking southwest. Garage on right (cut off).

Back of house, looking Northeast. Livingrm slider opening on right.

Side of house, with office doorway and livingroom windows

Garage end of house, with laundry rm window and slider opening

Tonight/tomorrow will be a whole new story, literally!

Garden bounty, and Tuesday will be an exciting day!

Though I go to the new house site nearly every day (it's about 4 miles from where we're living), I keep forgetting my camera! Part of the 2nd floor is up, and tomorrow the trusses come, which will make the house go from it's current 1 story frame to a 2 story! EXCITING!

I'll get out there tonight and take some before photos.

In the meantime, here's a shot of Saturday's harvest from my garden:

Sugar Snap Peas














This winter, I planted a lot of seeds, and with the cool spring we had, the sugar snap peas went crazy. The sweet peas are blooming fiercly, too. These Sugar Snaps are just about finished, and the tomatoes (I planted 13!) are blooming now and I'm hoping they'll set fruit soon.

For tomatoes, I planted Sungolds, Brandywines and Boxcar Willies (chosen for Willie our dog). I also planted (though not from seed) 4 hot peppers, one eggplant, two summer squashes (one's ready to pick today!) and a cucumber. I lost the Ambrosia melon, but have lettuce, parsley, chives, cilantro, basil, arugula and lettuce. And a lot of weeds, which will probably be the end of me. I'm trying to be organic, and the weeds are out of control. I try to keep them weed-whacked and just look the other way. It certainly isn't a magazine photo-worthy garden, but I love it anyway. I can't wait until I get to live where my garden is!

Uh oh, nearly a year

OMG. I knew it had been awhile, but I didn't realize it's been 11 months. I've had grand plans to get back in the swing of things and start documenting the house construction. Though it's been going slowly, I fear I won't be able to catch up.

What's been happening? Well, the teardown is complete, electrical panel (and wiring to pole) has been moved, and the first floor is just about complete. The upper floor joists are going in, and trusses should be delivered in about 2 weeks. WOW! That seems like so much, until I realize that it's taken a year for all that to happen. That's ok. It's the process, right?

It's a good thing I didn't realize when I started this post that I don't even have a recent picture. Sigh. I like to think I'm on top of everything, but maybe not so much . . .

This isn't even close to being up to date (note right hand portion of original house still intact) but the best I can do today. And I'm going to try and be a more frequent guest here. We'll see . . .

Found objects

When we bought the house, it had not been well taken care of, and had been empty for at least a year. We understand that the owners prior to the last had beautiful gardens, and kept up the house nicely. But 10 or so years of neglect, junk accumulation, and non-maintenance plus invasive blackberries, weeks and grapevines = huge corners of the yard that were overgrown. When we bought the house, there was snow on the ground. It was interesting (careful choice of words there) to see, 2 months later, what was under all that accumulation.

We gathered up the junk, cut down hundreds of blackberries, and tried to see what might be salvageable. Into the dump and burn piles went more rotting blue tarps than you can imagine, several wooden garage doors (why were they there?), boxes of rotted holiday ornaments (sad), and various brush, vines and scrap wood (I know I'm forgetting stuff here). Into the save pile went a strange combo of items: a wooden easel, a rusted rototiller (garden art?), a cat carrier (you never know), a bird cage (not sure why), many shovels, picks, hoes, etc and at least 10 hoses. The guy had a thing for hoses and tarps, to be sure.

But my favorite find was the old metal kitchen cabinet, complete with the porcelain sink/drainbord combo. This was completely obscured by about 10 feet of blackberry vines, and would've gone totally unnoticed had I not been on a tear about clearing them out.

We hope to paint or powder coat the base and reassemble it for use as a sink in the laundry room. NEAT!

More tree felling

A couple more photos of the Digger Pine: before, during and after 

tree removal

One of the first things we had to do at the "new" house was to remove some huge trees. We wanted to save the old oak--a beautiful tree, but resting on the garage roof, and according to the tree guy, rotting in the center. So we made the appointment to have it taken down, and at the same time had two other Digger Pines (one huge, one moderately sized) taken down. I didn't get to be there on tree-felling day, but here are some photos.

 

View with trees from the front of the house

 

 And after, post tree felling

More photos in next post (can't get more than 2 or 3 photos to upload).

House

Well, I had great plans to start updating this blog regularly again. So it's been a couple months, but here I am again.

No knitting photos (though just about to finish up a couple more projects) but instead, I think I'll start showing a few house/garden/building projects. This house was originally bought as an investment/flip back in late December, but after 8 months of looking to buy, renovating it seems like the best option for us (nice location, 1/2 acre, we can get what we want). Walls still need to come down before new ones can go up, but we have a vision and are excited. And there's a hope of hosting Thanksgiving, even if we're not 100% complete.

These two are from January shortly after we bought the house. It's pretty scary. And skeevy (see that stained carpet in the second photo--don't ask). But we're working on that. This was before anything was demo'ed. We've already made a lot of progress (but I'll post that another day).