Out in the North Forty

Holy cow, I can’t believe it’s been a month since my last post! With lingering colds, Mark's various night meetings, Halloween activities, and all the other little life interruptions, progress has kind of slowed on the house. Mark is picking up the pace now and bought a big load of boards last night to continue his framing of the study and to start the framing of the hallway, half bath and my studio (I’ll post some progress pictures in my next entry). He had a cathartic experience taking a sledge hammer to the bathtub in the downstairs bathroom, and highly recommends it to anyone who needs to take out their anger or frustrations. I really wish I’d taken some pictures of this event because Mark informed me he smashed up most of the tub after work one night in his work clothes! What better way to take out the day’s frustrations?

I’ve been going over to the house at least once a week and working on the area I call the North 40. It’s technically the South 40 as it’s in the far south area of the yard between the garage and the back fence. We plan to make this the garden in the future and thought we’d better start raking some of the mess up. We have two green waste bins from the city, so it’s our goal to try to fill them both every week with big stuff that we don’t want to compost.

This is a before picture of part of the area.

As I began raking up all the debris in this area, I discovered that underneath about six inches of composted leaves, rotted fruit, etc. there were big sections of bricked patios that we had no idea existed. It looks like the Theobald’s, who I mentioned in a previous post were the owners of the house in the 70's and who did brick masonry as a hobby, may have intended to brick the entire world, or at least their entire yard. Two sections next to the garage and the west fence are big slabs of concrete or cement, but the other areas are filled in with red brick pavers.This is a before picture of back part of the area next to the garage.

This after picture of the same area (or nearly the same area) shows the concrete slabs I unearthed (literally). The tree in the corner is a pear tree and the concrete slabs go right around it.
This is the huge pile of compost I ended up with after clearing off the concrete slabs (it actually looks more impressive in person). Mark wants me to sift it all so we can use it around the yard. I'm sure it's great compost, and it would cost us a pretty penny to buy that much compost, but man it's going to take a while to sift all of that!
Another find in this area was more on the creepy side, and I hesitated to photograph it because it was a large clump of hair - human hair! We found one big clump, which we promptly threw in the garbage, then I found this smaller clump a few days later, which I of course photographed!

Thankfully, it appears to be synthetic hair, but I still get creeped out back there sometimes thinking I’m going to unearth some human bones next!

Another interesting find, but on the less creepy side was this huge tank, likely some sort of fuel tank.

We’d seen the larger hose sticking up out of the ground, but never really thought anything of it until Mark started poking around with the rake back there one day and hit something metal. This, like everything else was covered in six inches of compost, and as we started uncovering it, we were nervous that we’d found a coffin (this was after the hair incident). We’re thinking we’ll put this out during clean-up next spring in hopes that someone will come and take it for salvage.

And the last of my interesting finds in this area is a bottle that I discovered while raking some of the junk off the corrugated roof of the lean-to. It appears to be some sort of liquor bottle. Someone must have been having a good time, and wanted to hide the evidence!

I mentioned in past posts that there’s a sad, old apple tree growing back in this area with grapes growing all through it. About the second week of October the grapes were perfectly ripe, so Bella and I went over on one of the days she had off for UEA and picked a bucket of them. They’re concord grapes, and they smelled sooo delicious! I got ambitious and decided I’d make grape jelly out of them. I’ve made grape jelly once before out of grapes from my dad’s yard, and it was a pretty disastrous experience that ended up in a jammed up garbage disposal (don’t ask, and don’t bring it up with Mark…it’s still a sore subject). Anyway, I though I’d give it a go again and did more research and preparation this time. The results were much better, but I’m telling you, it’s a loooong process!

Once you clean and remove the grapes from the stems, you cook them for about 15 minutes to soften them up.

At this point you’re supposed to mash them up with a potato masher, which surprisingly I do not have. I started mashing them in small batches with a spoon and a fine strainer, but quickly decided that was not the way to go and got out my trusty food processor.

When I finally finished mashing all of the grapes and straining them, I was left with one bowl of skins and seeds and one bowl of delicious smelling juice.

The juice went into the fridge overnight so the crystals could separate. This is something I didn’t do the first time I made grape jelly, and the jelly ended up with little sugar crystals. Not a huge deal, but most people don’t really care for crunchy jelly! I passed the juice through a jelly bag to get all of the crystals out, and we were finally ready to make jelly!

We only ended up with 7 small jars of jelly, but it’s quite delicious, and I dare say worth the time it took to make it. I used the lower sugar pectin because the grapes were so sweet, and the jelly has a really good grapey flavor.

It's quite yummy on toast!

I had a little bit of the grape juice left over from making the jelly, so we poured it into a glass and drank it straight – no sugar added. It was super sweet and delicious!

I’m hoping that now that we’re giving this area of the yard some attention and that the grapes will likely get care and water on a regular basis that they won’t totally suck next year. What if they’re so sweet and flavorful because they’re neglected and get just enough water to make them super sweet? I think some grape growing research is in order!

Well, I thought I'd leave you with an image of fall from the house. We're lucky to have a lot of beautiful, mature trees in the yard, all of which are displaying their gorgeous fall colors right now. What's not to love about fall, especially when you can enjoy colors like these. Happy Autumn!

You've Been Framed

In my last entry I posted a picture of our little load of boards and mentioned that it was going to be used to begin framing one of the rooms. Well, framing has begun and the lucky room is (drum roll please)....Mark's study, aka the front bedroom! Here is the progression so far:

We were only able to get one photo of the room before the previous owner had moved out, and it had to be taken from the hallway because there was so much junk in there that we weren't able to get in any closer for a photo.
Same corner of the room post move out, pre demo. The room may be empty of all the junk, but it's still such a depressing room with the light purple painted paneling, drop ceiling, ugly curtains, dust webs all over, etc.

Teeny, tiny corner closet. If you look really closely you can see the SOLD sign on the for sale sign out front.

East and south walls and door out to the hallway.

Horrible drop ceiling.

Demolition begins! Purple paneling gone!

The south wall now has a view of the bathroom!

Drop ceiling gone.

Demo complete. The ceiling is down to the beams and the pile of rubble is gone!

When Mark was tearing out the ceiling, he found several layers of insulation, including this terrible vermiculite stuff, which he said is similar to cat liter. Unfortunately, after some Internet research, he found that it likely contains asbestos. He was careful to wear a mask when he removed it, but he didn't when he was sweeping it up afterward. This is obviously extremely concerning to us, and Mark plans to take some extra precautions when removing the rest of it.

The east and south wall down to the lath and plaster.

Framed!

Mark tore out the teeny tiny corner closet (you can see the outline of where it used to be on the floor and appreciate the smallness of it). He's going to frame that little space on the east wall into a niche for his printer and some file drawers. The rest of the wall will be cut out for French doors that will open into the living room. The original doorway on the south wall will be closed in and that whole wall will be bookshelves for our hundreds of books or at least some of them!

While tearing out the teeny tiny closet, some rolled up papers dropped out, one of which was this Mighty Ram poster. Maybe we'll keep it for when the kids go to Highland!

The other rolled up papers were these drawings, which appear to be plans for a plane. We remembered that one of the cards that fell out when Mark was tearing down the ceiling in this room (see the Fun Finds post) was the kid's I.D. card from the Anchorage International Airport. It appears he worked there in '78 in "equipment service" - maybe a summer job while he was going to college. Apparently he was into airplanes.
So that's the progress on the room so far. Since I took the pictures of the framing, Mark has actually made even more progress installing the some insulation and running some of the electrical wires. He keeps plugging away at it each night, and hopefully soon we'll have some pictures of another complete or near complete room!

And lastly...now that it's October, it's time to get out the Halloween decorations. Good thing I found this down in one of the crawl spaces in the basement.

I actually really love this little pumpkin decoration, and once Halloween's over, I think I'll try to scan it, touch it up a little and print a couple copies of it on card stock to use next year!
Happy October everyone!

Puttering Around the Yard

Anyone who knows Mark well knows that he's an avid gardener. Gardening is one of his passions, so you couldn't expect him to spend all of his time working on the inside of the house while the weather is so nice and totally ignore the outside! The big yard is one of the main things that attracted us to this house, and I'm pretty sure Mark had a complete plan drawn up for the yard before he even had the plans for the inside figured out!

So far he's made a valiant effort to restore the front lawn back to grass rather than a weed patch of morning glory, dandelions and some obnoxious stickery weeds that are so old that their roots are as thick as or thicker than a pencil.

He has also cleared out some of the jungle in front of the house, partly so he can get in there to paint, but mainly because it was filled with Oregon Grape, which is not something we were interested in keeping. Below is a before picture of the area:Unfortunately I haven't taken an after picture of the area yet, but I did get a picture of some of the nasty Oregon Grape roots. Mark said these things were a pain to get out!
Since we're not big fans of a lot of lawn, Mark has also started digging out some planting beds in the front yard. We had our ceremonial first planting on Sunday. Mark chose to plant this 'Husker Red' Beardtongue. It's a descendant of one in our Sugarhouse yard that Mark purchased many years ago on one of his Saturday morning nursery outings with his mom. He said it's the plant that first got him interested in gardening, so it has a lot of significance.
Teasing the roots. Max is standing ready with a handful of compost.
Filling in the dirt.
A lone plant in a big bed. No doubt this will be filled in soon with plants and flowers. Mark's been dividing many of our favorite plants from our Sugarhouse yard and has been transporting them up to be planted at the new house. We've also been given a bunch of plants by our new neighbor and others, so Mark plans to start a garden journal that he can use to document where each plant came from.
The cute little ditch that runs in front of our house. We love the soothing sound of the water running down it, but we wonder if it's going to be a source of constant aggravation considering we have one wild boy and one wild dog! We totally expect Max to either be in it all the time or be floating things down it that he probably shouldn't, and we know for a fact that Rosie is going to try to get in it whenever she can! Mark hopes to prevent some of this by digging out some big beds in front of the ditch and planting a bunch of plants and flowers. We'll see how successful it is at deterring the wild ones!
Our Costco sized bags of bulbs. The red and white tulips will be planted in the beds by the ditch and the orange tulips and white daffodils will be planted around the yard.
The back yard has mainly been ignored so far because it's a much bigger project, and will probably be a work in progress for a few years. We're not sure if we can save the lawn back there because it appears to be way more weed than grass. We'll see how it looks in the spring.
The advantage to not focusing on the backyard right now is that we can let the kids and dog go wild back there and not worry about them ruining something. Max has an area back there where he can dig in the dirt with his trucks, and the other day we let the kids turn it into a mud pit. It kept them entertained for a few minutes.
Back in the north 40 we have quite the fruit orchard. There's a pear tree...
and an apple tree that has grapes growing all through it. Unfortunately the apple tree will have to go for sure. It's really old and has been neglected for years. Big branches have fallen off, and it's pretty much a mess. We're not sure if we'll keep the pear tree or not.
We're excited to have a Sycamore tree in the back yard up near the kitchen door. They have such interesting bark, and they're great trees.

And finally I thought I'd end with the lucky 1945 penny Mark found while digging out the bed in the front yard. Crazy to think that the guy who owned the house in the 40's or 50's could have dropped this penny out there. Then again, it could have been dropped in the 70's, 80's or 90's! Let's just hope it brings us luck in finishing this massive project we've undertaken!

Anybody Wanna Stove? And Small Signs of Progress

So we have a wood burning stove down in the basement, and the guy who did our home inspection mentioned that it might be worth listing it for sale on KSL. He said that people are actually looking for these things to buy. I have no idea if it works or any of the specifics on it, so I guess I'd better figure that out before I list it! It's really the least of our worries right now since it's in the basement, which will be the absolute last thing we remodel, but if you hear of anyone that's in the market for a wood burning stove, let me know!


Progress in the Sun Room - this is the little room off of the living room, and it's a pretty tiny room so it's kind of hard to photograph. This is how it looked before the previous owner moved out. She was obviously using it as her computer room. Yes, we ditched the lacy curtains...sorry if any of you wanted them.
This is a view of the room from outside. It's a great little room, with big windows on three of the four walls.
Here is the room after the previous owner moved out. Yes, those walls are pink!
And yes, that's a blue, floral 80's wallpaper border.
This is the light exactly as it was when the owner moved out, no light cover and masking tape around the base from when the room was painted, likely 30 years ago. Notice all of Mark's spackling. He had to do a TON in this room!

Ahhh, a big improvement. Clean, freshly painted walls (Mark said the walls just drank in the paint), windows you can actually see through (Mark cleaned years of dirt off of them, inside and out), no tacky wallpaper border...
and our beautiful new light fixture from Rejuvenation Hardware! Mark said it was a real chore hooking this light up. There are about four layers of different types of insulation in the attic above, and he had a hard time getting to the wiring. He had planned to rewire it, but it was impossible at this time. It's something that he definitely plans to do though.
So this room is the farthest along of anything else in the house. Mark needed to start with a small project that would allow him to see quick progress and keep him motivated. The woodwork and the floor are about all that's left to do in this room.


And lastly....let the framing begin. Yes, it's a pretty wimpy load of boards, but it's enough to get Mark started on the framing in his study (the existing front bedroom) and/or the closet in Bella's room. Stay tuned to find out which!