Here’s the post on the Master Suite.

Here’s the post on the Mud Room.

In the end, I placed it next to the new driveway at the far side of the veggie garden. It was one of the few open areas left without a lot of tree roots, but close enough to the driveway that I knew I wouldn’t put veggies there. It’s still pretty shaded in that spot – gets maybe 4 hours of sun – but we expect to be cutting down some of the trees that are currently shading it, so it won’t be so shady forever.

Digging the hole was really hard – trying to get it deep enough in the right spots took forever. If I ever do this again, I’ll use a piece of flexible liner rather than a pre-formed liner.

Eventually I got the hole dug, then backfilled and put compost around the edges so I could plant some chamomile and clover seeds. Filled it with water and added a variegated sweet flag, a mint, and some water hyacinth. The mint was just a typical mint plant, not a water mint, and it didn’t do very well. Eventually I moved the plants from the water barrel garden — blue corkscrew rush (Juncus inflexus ‘Afro’), lizard’s tail (Saururus cernuus), and chameleon plant (Houttuynia cordata) — over to the pond, since they’ll be happier there over the winter (actually, I think I have to bury one or two of them). I also found a floating solar water fountain on eBay, which has a battery and a light at night that’s quite nice. The solar panel is as much in the light as I can get it for now. The fountain only runs for a few hours a day, but hopefully that will be enough to keep the water from being too stagnant.

Haven’t seen any frogs yet, but the birds and squirrels seem to like it! Next year I plan to add some cattails and American lotus, and maybe some arrowhead.

I’ve been wanting to make a water feature for a while now, but being a thrifty soul, I was looking for an inexpensive method. Here’s what I ended up doing.

First, I took a plastic half-barrel planter that someone gave me for free a few years ago, and measured the drainage holes that were in the bottom. I picked up some rubber hole plugs from the hardware store (something like these) for about 75 cents each, and pounded them into the holes. One of the holes was leaking a bit, so I used silicone sealant around that one.

Then I made sure that the barrel held water by filling it up and letting it sit for a week. I added 1/4 of a mosquito dunk to keep the skeeters from breeding there.

Today, I visited New England Nurseries and got a few water plants. The barrel is now planted with three perennial aquatics and an annual water hyacinth…

The copper piece is a rain chain that my mother gave me a couple of years ago and that I absolutely love. Unfortunately, the welding is really crappy and it keeps falling apart, which is appalling considering how much it cost. Mark keeps soldering it back together for me, but I’m getting pretty fed up with the whole thing. I’m thinking about trying a different system to connect the lily pieces…

PS This site has some other ideas for half-barrel water features.

• Winter heating and the woodstove. I mentioned in the last entry that we were regretting having switched to natural gas. Well, we switched back to oil last year, with the help of our pal from the oil company (our neighbor to the rear). Then a couple of months ago the boiler broke, and we replaced that, too. Mark would like to replace the entire heating system with a geothermal radiant floor system, but that’s a project for after we win the lottery, I think. We upgraded our woodstove last year, too, and it seems to be doing its job well. This winter was very mild until January, but I think the stove has saved us some money on heating bills. Mark worked out a deal to get free uncut lumber from a landscaping guy he knows, and he and a friend spent much of the fall chopping up and splitting logs. We probably had 4 cords of wood starting out this winter, and we’ve gone through at least a cord. I get tired of constantly tending the stove, but it’s really nice to have it when the weather gets nasty.
• The upstairs hallway. We finally got all the trim back up in December! Woo-hoo!
• The outdoor projects… last summer I was away for the entire month of July and part of August, so I didn’t plant anything or enjoy the garden much. This year, I’m going nuts with new vegetables: spinach, sugar snap peas, edamame soybeans, cilantro, and peppers — and, of course, tomatoes. I got a bunch (60+) of old canning jars for free from a neighbor last weekend, and have plans to make and can lots of tomatoes and salsa this year. We also picked up a used chest freezer earlier this year, so I have lots of room to store my garden goodies.
• The workshop. The driveway to the workshop is finished, and the workshop itself is mostly finished. You can see pictures of the building process here.
• The front porch. We still have to finish the steps! But the rest of the porch is pretty much done.

We sat down a few weekends ago and actually made a list of just about every single remaining project. We have 16 remaining high-level priority projects. Here they are in order from highest to lowest priority:

1. Kitchen cabinets – all the drawers and doors and shelves, plus an additional wall cabinet, floor cabinet, and spice rack/corner cabinet.
2. Mudroom – the room needs to be painted and the sliding glass door needs to be installed.
3. Fence yard – we have the chain-link fence materials — we just need to install it. We have to do this before we can get a dog/dogs, and Mark wants to get it done this spring.
4. Back deck – build it!
5. Second floor cosmetics – two bedrooms left to fix up (strip the wallpaper, repair the plaster, then paint).
6. Workshop exterior – siding
7. Workshop interior – insulation, electrical work, etc.
8. Porch carpentry – those darned stairs.
9. Refinishing rest of floors – need some spare cash for this!
10. Exterior paint – would love to do this now, but we need to save our pennies.
11. Tree work – both planting new (fruit trees) and taking down old (catalpa and weed maples).
12. Heating system – completely redo (see above).
13. Basement refinish – demolish floors, excavate and install new concrete floor, repoint foundation, maybe put up some drywall, replace windows, etc.
14. Roof – we need a new one… and maybe we’ll install solar panels!
15. Replacement windows – would be great to replace all our double-hung, inefficient, warped old windows. Probably not going to happen for a while, if ever.
16. Master suite – my dream is to demolish the wall between our two remaining bedrooms, build a connecting walk-through closet, and install a full master bath. Probably not going to happen unless we win the lottery.

So I guess that’s enough for now.

Anyway, things are still progressing as far as renovations go. We spent a long time last fall getting the house more weather-proofed: we put in a woodstove and all new storm windows. The woodstove hearth was a fun project. We built the platform with steel and concrete, and tiled the thing in blue slate. It turned out really nicely. Our experience with the woodstove was not that great last winter – we were hoping it would really take some of the burden off of the furnace, but that did not happen. We converted to natural gas a few years ago, and now with the price of natural gas even higher than heating oil, we’re kind of regretting it. I’m not looking forward to this winter – we may end up keeping the thermostat at 60 all season, if the prices remain high.

We’ve spent over a year trying to finish the upstairs hallway. We took down almost all the trim and sent it out to a place that had a dip tank to strip off the paint. That was last summer, and the trim still isn’t back up. We did get the floors refinished and Mark did a fantastic job with the stair banister, and the hallway walls are painted now. We also bought a really nice chandelier for the ceiling above the stairs. Eventually we’ll sand and finish all the woodwork and put it back up. Mark did a beautiful job on the front door, too – it is now natural wood, and he put a couple of coats of spar varnish on it.

My outdoor projects this year were building raised beds, putting in asparagus and blueberries, and tackling my irrigation problems. I bought and installed two rain barrels and laid a lot of soaker hose this year. The asparagus (var. Jersey Knight) have been fun to watch – they seem to be doing well. The blueberries (var. Bluecrop, Blueray, and Jersey) seem happy, too. I also grew lettuce (var. Buttercrunch) this year, for the first time, and it was a big success. My tomatoes this year were very early – I bought plants that were already in bloom from a local grower, and my first ripe tomato was in July! I grew Sweet Million (too prone to splitting), Early Girl (very prolific, on the small side but nicely-shaped), Better Boy (so heavy the plant fell over, even with multiple stakes and cages), and Jet Star (seemed weak at first, but has done okay).

We attacked the brush pile that had been building up for four years with a rented hydraulic 5′ chipper. I got some great mulch out of it, but it was a lot of work. Mark’s been clearing more trees, trying to figure out siting for the barn/garage/workshop he wants to build. He’s been busy looking at plans and even bought a small tractor to do some of the site prep. We started putting down a gravel driveway along the east side of our property to the barn site, but the tractor broke, so work on that has been stopped for a couple of weeks.

The last project to document is our front porch. We’ve had temporary stairs for almost two years, so this summer I insisted that we finish the porch and install the other two sets of stairs on either side. We are almost done with that project – probably in the next two weekends, we’ll be able to finish that up and then I can finally add another photo to the front page of this site!

The first floor is pretty close to done — parlor, great room and dining room are about 95%, but kitchen and mudroom are next. Upstairs we’ve done two of the bedrooms and the sitting room, but the bathroom, our bedroom, and maid’s bedroom/study are still incomplete. Outdoors, I’ve not planted any veggies yet but the flower beds are looking quite pretty. Bought some Jacob’s Ladder and a new delphinium last weekend. Earlier this spring I went absolutely bonkers for pansies and bought a ton (almost 100 plants). My newest thinking is to put an asparagus patch in rather than bothering with annual veggies. I also want to put in blueberries and maybe a kiwi. Or a paw-paw!

Anyway, the strawberries a friend gave me last year are overtaking that patch. Quite fun! We put up a fence to try to keep at bay whatever ate them all last year. We shall see…

I don’t think I ever told that story: Mark and a friend painted the living room and dining room one night in Wednesday while I was at rehearsal. Problem was, they painted them the wrong colors. I had picked out a green for the dining room, and a blue for the living room, but when I came home I had a green living room and a blue dining room. So that weekend I painted the living room blue, but I never got around to repainting the dining room. I kind of want to do that before Thanksgiving…

We’re doing Thanksgiving this year, for Mark’s family. Mark found some caterer’s serving pieces at a yard sale not long ago, so I think we’ll do it buffet style this year. It will help when we get a bunch of new furniture, including a hutch. Mark’s mother down in Florida is moving from a house to a furnished double-wide trailer, so she’s sending us all the stuff that won’t fit. We’re getting two full bedroom sets (with king-sized beds! Woo!) and a bunch of other stuff. Thank god we have a big house.