Every house has its story. What's yours?

Between the heat wave we experienced a couple of weeks ago and the rain of this past week, our fruit plants and trees have really popped.    » read more »

Many families can be identified by their favorite foods and dishes. Ours is no different, except that ours is a drink. We're a smoothie family. Each one of us loves our smoothies in the morning, afternoon or evening. Unfortunately, our family has been suffering for awhile since the youngest in the family broke the knob off our beloved blender a couple of months ago. That should be an easy fix we thought, but, try as I might, there was no easy fix.    » read more »

Following the renovation the living room we had some extra boards and paint plus with all of the tools still upstairs we decided to go ahead with giving the hallway a facelift. Initially we though a new coat of paint would do the trick, but we had one of our usual conversations that tend to result in more work. This time we came to the conclusion that it could be nice to do some of the corner frame moulding like we did in the living room but with thinner boards as the hallway is much smaller.    » read more »

So my neighbor made the plunge and bought himself a hot tub. Not one of those fancy ones with jets, but a rustic fire-heated hot tub that looks like a large wooden barrel. We gave it a test run the other night before he gets it positioned up on the hill where there is more of a view to enjoy (and mosquitoes to be had).    » read more »

The wife and I had the idea that good project to tackle this past winter was to oil the hardwood floor in the upstairs living room. Of course, to do such a thing require one (me) to remove all the furniture. Once that was sorted we had look around the room and decided the yellow/beige wallpaper wasn't our style and since we had done most of the rest of our house to our liking maybe some new wallpaper or a coat of paint would do the trick.    » read more »

My latest creation/addition to the backyard is a 2 bin compost to replace the now rotten one made decades ago and since taken over by nettles, thistles and other aggressive weeds. I went with a 2 bin system to allow for periodic rotation of the vegetative matter in addition to the weekly stirring.

     » read more »

Despite some misgivings and the scary warnings on the packaging the wife and I bought our kids a 14' trampoline as an early birthday present for them.

Since I set it up last Sunday the kids have been on it more or less non-stop. They've also invented a ton of games to which I have given up trying to remember the rules (oddly enough, many of them do not involve any form of bouncing as the netting is good for various ball games).    » read more »

My wife and I decided yesterday would be a good day to do something with the big pile of dirt we had by the back of our house before winter arrives, which it does suddenely here in Sweden.

I'd been busy the last couple of weeks shoveling the pile down to backfill where we had just put in drainage around the house. Whilst backfilling I kept in mind that there would be settling over the winter and I anticipate that I'll have room for about 6 inches of sand so I can maneuver the slate around how I want it.    » read more »

An update post on what has taken place around the ol' homestead.

My final task in the ongoing house drainage saga was to figure out a way to raise the height, top of the old water drain, which would house the underground connections for two separate downspouts as well as the new pipe for the foundation drainage, about 2 feet. Good fun, since I was informed by all that I knew there wasn't an actual set of fittings nor a special pipe available to suit my needs. When that's the case I guess you just rollup the sleeves and do it...so I did.    » read more »

Well, another Summer project is nearing completion. This time I've dug out around the portion of my house that is the most susceptible to moisture/pressure from the mountain upon which our house sits. It's a hill actually, but, for whatever strange reason, they call it a mountain.    » read more »