Home Project

Home Project - Subscribe to the Home Project

The Instant Gratification of Laying Down Sod

When you plant seed AND put down sod in two different areas side by side it's really a good way to measure how much instant satisfaction you really need in your life. The verdict? Quite a bit. Instant satisfaction is way better in the short run, which I guess is the definition of the concept.

In other words, grass seeds just take too long to grow, especially when you want it to be done growing so you can just have your lawn. Sod is thick and lush and... instant.

For the Love of Bricks 2 - Making Borders

Our backyard is shaping up nicely. Latest thing? The same bricks we used to build the wall were used to make borders for our little gravel pathways. Bricks are the best, I wonder where else we could put them...

A Fence Garden - What Do You Do With All That Dirt?

dirt

If you attempt to put a patio in prepare to dig down about 7 inches or so. In our case we dug down 7 inches for a total of 100 sqft, that makes it about 2.16 cubic yards of dirt to deal with. The amount of dirt you end up with when you do landscaping work wasn't something I had really reflected on before, but if you dig and do stuff, you'll find yourself with more than you'll know what to do with. And in terms of projects that generate dirt, laying a patio is one very effective way of getting a lot of it piled up! Unless you pay someone to come and pick it up, you have to put it somewhere. The question is where?

Well, in order to get rid of it, and also to utilize the empty East-facing back area of our fence, we decided to build garden boxes.

For the Love of Bricks - Building a Seat Wall

There is something special about bricks, something lasting and substantial. In a world where everyone seems to settle for quick and easy and concrete, clay bricks are just so appealing. And when you find cheap reclaimed wall bricks at Habitat for Humanity, and you're still in brick laying mood from doing a patio, why not do more.

This little project: a six feet half wall / seat required quite a bit of patience and I guess nothing is ever quite as easy as you think it's going to be before you get started. It really gave us a strong appreciation for skilled bricklayers! But I absolutely love the end result and I wouldn't mind at all to put little half wall seats pretty much everywhere in our backyard to separate and provide seating.

Corvallis Saturday Morning Walk

Saturday in Corvallis is Farmers Market day, so me and Darwin took a walk down with the camera and enjoyed the scenery. This is the best little town.

A Clay Brick Patio

bricks

After way too many home-improvement-center trips back and forth, a lot of digging, a ton of dirt, a lot of gravel, a bunch of sand, a nice pile of clay bricks and some patient bricklaying work later, we have our little patio all done.

Dividing a Backyard up In Zones

A backyard that is small almost needs zones to feel larger. As if chopping it up in smaller compartments will somehow enlarge it, or at the very least make it more useful. Nowadays, if you live in a town or an urban area, chances are you don't have a big backyard. Or maybe you do. But a lot of us don't - we don't and I'm almost happy that's the way it is. Because then you get the chance to really utilize every square foot of your garden and not have any dead space. But in order to really make the backyard a livable space, a comfortable area that flows seamlessly from the indoor area, it's important to have sections. To have one area next to another, separated. To make the outside space much like the inside of a house, with different areas for different tasks and different moods.

Size is such a relative thing. Before we bought this house we were looking at another property that was actually a lot smaller, even if the house was about the same size. Even though the backyard was small I thought it was so cozy, so perfect with its small patio and lawn and plants so it didn't feel that small to me. Only recently when I saw that space again, now with our own backyard in mind did I realize how incredibly tight that property was. And our backyard, which really isn't that big, felt absolutely massive in comparison.

Building a Wall with Used Bricks

We just built a small patio and now want to include a small sitting wall. We went to our local Habitat for Humanity and bought 11¼ inch bricks for 35¢ each. So for $20 you can get enough bricks to build a small sitting wall.

Backyard Dirt & Gravel Work

Just a few pictures to show some of the work that's been going on in the backyard lately. There's a ton to catch up on here because a lot of progress has been made there. Dirt has been dug, gravel has been moved; pretty much our whole backyard has gone through, or is undergoing a transformation.

backyard digging

First up, a look at the gravel area in front of the little house that we've been cleaning up a bit.

backyard digging

Happy Birthday Darwin!

My little puppy is turning 1 today, it's rather hard to believe. Wasn't he cute and cuddly and clumpsy at 10 weeks! Now he's quite the big boy. The first video was August last year, quite a big difference in the backyard too....

April Activity - Cooking, Siding, Fabrics, Concrete

When the weather turns from cold and dreary to utter summer-like temperatures and sunshine, life comes back to you. Suddenly there is a reason to get your hands dirty, pick up that paint brush and start to tackle one project after another that you simply were too uninspired to do before. It happens every year it seems, but this year we actually have a whole lot of stuff to tackle so it's more fun. Working on the little house, attempting some sort of gardening, cutting the grass, cleaning up. I feel so spoiled to have summer in April. The weather lately has been beautiful and I'm not quite believing it's actually this nice, this early.

I've been - finding my way back to the kitchen and preparing real food. Potato salads, pastas with vegetables, sandwiches. I'm itching to make a huge batch of falafel and perhaps even get back to baking sourdough, although I know that keeping that up requires more energy than I ever think before I get started.

april

Read more...

Everybody Needs a Wife

It's not easy for a girl in her twenties or thirties today to build a good life. The world is against her in more ways than one. She needs an education, she needs a job, she needs a decent guy (or girl), she needs to perform and she needs to do it quickly, before she gets too old, and then maybe, just maybe she can have a family too. Most likely it won't be very relaxed though, and I'm wondering what does she have to care for and protect in this situation? What will fulfill her destiny?

Over these past years I've been reading about a lot of women in biographies, autobiographies and stories. I didn't set out to find these people, but I must have unconsciously been looking for them because they're speaking to me in a way that few modern people are. Only recently did I realized how these women are all so similar.

Who am I talking about? Well there is Isabella Bird, Marie Curie, Abigail Adams, Alva Myrdal, Anne Ellis, Anne La Bastille and Elinore Pruitt Stewart to mention a few (not all of which are very well known, but all are highly interesting). They are pioneer women, homemakers, scientists, thinkers and free spirits. They all have a streak of independence; they're capable, they're reliable. Some of them were skillful wives and mothers, others were on their own. I've read about these people and I've admired them and their attitudes towards life and family immensely, some more than others, but in general I found their elegant and simple lives enviable.

Dreamsequence: Wouldn't It Be Nice…

Wouldn't it be nice to hide away from this world, away somewhere in the woods. Out on a property where we could build and create and live. Doesn't this world of today tire you? The hustle and loudness and crudeness of people. Wouldn't it be nice to see green and fields and distances quite wide between you and your neighbor?

We could build quite the little world out there, you and I. Let's not go outwards, let's go inwards. And write and talk and create. Create interesting writing that nobody will really read, gather and collect information, paint all sorts of things and maps and charts. Sew quilts and clothes and a million small little things. Make it a world you never want to leave.

I want to build! I know you want to build too. I want to build a house full of soul. A house full of details and nooks and crannies and places for privacy. But I need to have somewhere to go during the day, so I won't go crazy pacing the same floors over and over. Let's build cottages on this lovely property of dreams. An artist cabin for me, an office and workshop for you. Let's build a guest cabin, a pergola, and a few more just for good measure. We can connect them with adorable pathways that light up at night. Like our own permanent resort.

Happy Spring & Easter!

Happy Easter! This year it really snuck up on me, and I haven't done anything Easter-like. No painting of eggs, no decorating, no picking branches and putting feathers in them. It just came too quickly...

spring

The closest I came to doing anything Easter related was to bake quiche; my mom always made at least one quiche that was part of the Easter meal along with herring, salmon, eggs and vegetables. But I didn't bake four quiches for Easter, we'll just have one for that. No, I've been a bit obsessed lately about cooking ahead of time, stocking up. Slices of quiche hold up beautifully frozen if packaged well and then you can reheat them in the toaster oven or microwave for an easy meal. Below are ham and cheddar, ham and brie and two with kale and feta.

spring

Creating an Elegant Drainage Solution

The following is more like an internal dialog rather than a How-To, and even though there are some numbers thrown about don't mistake it for specific instruction. The only intention here is to look back on our work last year and take it apart mentally to see if we were applying techniques that were not to our own internal standard.

It is one's own internal standard that matters here and ours is realizing we are continually in a contest between the easy and the hard. It is difficult to stop ourselves and realize why we should not take the easy way out, even when all our religion, literature and physicians tell us otherwise. Sometimes it is really difficult to know even when we are taking the easy way out of something.

Last summer we started dealing with our drainage issues in the backyard.

Read more...

Tips for Being a More Interesting Person

When the time comes to be either guest, host or friend it doesn't hurt to be interesting. Hopefully everyone can score a few of the following.

Favorite Projects

Kitchen Remodel Before & After

The kitchen, I believe we can declare is more or less done. It took us a few weeks of hard work and we certainly gave it a major overhaul. When we started, the whole kitchen was very green; it had a green linoleum floor, green walls and green ceiling...

Custom Built in Bookcases around Window

One thing that really gives a house heart and soul is books. However most bookcases are quite short and if you want something that goes all the way up to the ceiling, you better make it yourself...

Vintage maps in custom made frames

To go from having nothing up on the walls to suddenly having them decorated makes such a huge difference. I thought we had come pretty far in terms of the remodel and decoration of our little house...

Refinishing Wood Floor Process

The first project we tackled when we moved into the house was to refinish the floors. As a matter of fact, we started buying tools and ripping out carpet the day we closed since we wanted to finish the floors before moving in. Somehow the idea of living in a cloud of sawdust...

Making a Coffee Table by Hand

To start our adventures in custom furniture making we decided to make a coffee table. The first thoughts regarding this table were related to the marble we had left over from the kitchen floor. We thought, wouldn't it be nice to use this marble on top of a coffee table...

Installing a Black and White Checkerboard Floor

Our house had beautiful oak wooden floors in every room, except the kitchen, adjacent utility room and bathroom. If the hardwood floors had extended into the kitchen, then I believe we would have just refinished those as we did the rest of the floors, and called it a day...