Part 2: Garage & Basement (It's a Poem)

(I decided that writing about all of the garage & basement improvements would be too long of a post. So I've condensed it into 12 stanzas and a handful of pictures. You're welcome.)

Twas the Night Before Winter
Autumn has left us with the yard finally mowed,
Not a stray grass around, the new trimmer was stowed.

Snowboards were hung from the ceiling with care
In hopes that efficient lighting soon would be there.

The beer fridge door now accessible at last
Awaiting sink installation from kitchens past.

Hooks and racks to hang coats dirty and wet
From wintery sports to a fishing net.

Three shelves line the wall in organizational bliss
And a unit with bins completes our shelving list.

Back to the basement we see a new use
For the large tiled area that seemed so confused

A man cave it shall now be known as
With a bar and TV this new room now has!

And the guest bedroom suite is underway
The last of furniture purchases, we pray.

But let us not forget what started this all
Moving back up the stairway and down the hall

To the fireplace with a face lift so bright
New lamps reflect the mantel's bright white

Chairs and posters finish off the kitchen colors
And quarter-round trim makes this room match the others.

With our rhyme ending sadly this very late nite,
I wish "Happy Winter to All and to All a Good Night!"

Best Saturday Ever

We still continue our ritual of starting projects but not finishing them. But on Saturday, we started something EPIC.

Fact: Aspens are pretty trees, in the mountains.
Fact: the clump at Tonys Grove in Logan Canyon are the largest living organism in the world.
Another fact: aspens don't belong in front yard suburbia. They sneak-forest your lawn.



Taylor was a doll and brought on his mad chain saw slaying skillz at 7:30am. I'm sure our neighbors hate us.

And since Taylor was occupied with our lumber yard, I got to go let out his chickens!









I love chickens! What a wonderful morning, being all lumber jack-y and chicken babysitters.

If anyone asks about our current front yard situation I tell them, with a serious face, that we wanted to go "all out" for Halloween this year.




Corey was a doll and came over to help us get started on electrical stuff. We have all new lighting in the kitchen, including hard wired under cabinet lighting. He did such a great job!



I have to patch the holes in the ceiling from the previous fixtures. Perhaps over fall break...

And garden time is winding down but not before we got some canning in:






And to build anticipation for my next post... I wrote you a poem! We just need to finish a few things so I can get some more pics to properly illustrate it.

Part 1: An epic battle to conquer the underdwellings of our house

Thus far I've been highlighting pretty things like the garden and kitchen. But truth be told we've spent most of our summer battling the not so pretty updates. Enter: basement, garage, and rain gutters.

It all started when we had finally finished enough of the work upstairs that we could start cleaning up and putting away tools which had taken up residency in the dining room. We bundled up the handy helpers and escorted them to the garage...only to find ourselves admitting that we simply could not ignore what a hellhole it was. Shelves were falling off the wall, torn out cabinets stacked to the ceiling, supplies strewn about. It was, quite simply, horrific.

We resolved to put away our tools in an organized garage, where the chances of finding them again were exponentially greater. (Of course this means tools had to live somewhere in the meantime so those were parked in the basement.)

We didn't have an open length of time to fix up the garage all at once so we've been operating in an iterative manner. Mark moved everything away from the south wall and took down shelving one night. Then a few days later I cleaned the empty wall, patched it, sanded it, and painted (a high gloss bright white for optimal light in what can most accurately be described as a cave). Once I finished that over the course of a few days, Mark came back and assembled shelves/whatever and organized the stuff for that wall. And then we repeated that entire cycle for the east wall.

Here's the last wall yet to be fixed (north side):






Here's the shiny new south wall:





Brewing equipment finally organized and in one place! Camping gear within arm's reach! Wonderfulness!

This post has turned into a novel. I'll continue with the basement part later. Enjoy the digital paint fumes as much as I have in real life. Oh & enjoy the jungle garden boxes...I literally can't see into the center of the tomato patch:

How does your garden grow

With lettuce & squash hardly in a row

Sunshine in the city

This weekend was full of sun. Saturday morning we volunteered for National Trails Day at Hidden Valley Park in Draper and worked on a brand new trail. The rest of the weekend was spent in the sunshine in our own backyard.

I gave the garden a spa treatment by putting in stepping paths and adding extra black soil from our raised beds.







Thanks Janice for the stone arrangements and thanks Dad for the sheet metal and thank you Jim for the saws all.

Mark has been a patient man while redesigning the valve system this weekend. But with Jim's help, now all of our irrigation is ready to go!

White out

The good white:







The bad white:



C'mon veggies, you can make it!

Huffing things in cans on ladders

It's been a smelly weekend so far. I stained the valence boxes above the living room windows and I've touched up a lot of walls with paint.




More painting tomorrow and hopefully mantel pictures to follow.