House Made

For my mother, who only wants to see her grand-chickens. But first she must admire my handiwork.

In our fair city of Oakland, homeowners are allowed to own up to four hens (no roosters!) as long as the chickens’ enclosure is twenty feet from any residence. Here’s my fabulous Garden Coop. It’s about 6′ x 10′, and please note the salvaged tree guard as welcome mat.

This was my first foray into building any sort of structure, and it was nice to practice on something that could go slowly and didn’t have to be fit for humans. The design was really easy to follow, and Merideth ended up being jealous of the chickens as it went up. There may have been some attempted bargaining to make the structure her new office. I only made a few modifications to the design, the main one being that our door swings out instead of in. I was a little concerned about one sweet dog who has been known to push doors open with her dome head.

Here’s inside the coop with their sleeping perch. (The larger structure with the sand bottom is called a run, and the little house where the chickens sleep and lay eggs is the coop.)

Another shot inside the coop. This shows the egg door so that we can reach into the coop without going into the run to collect eggs.

Alright. I know why you’re really here. Here are the babies. From left to right, Violet, Doralee, and Judy. (Named for the women of “9 to 5.”) They’re about ten weeks now and their voices are just starting to change from peeps to clucks. They’ll start laying two to eight weeks from now. Happily, they don’t object TOO much to being held and loved a little as long as the holder is not the dog.

A close-up of chicken eyes (Violet and Judy). If they weren’t the dumbest animals ever, one would think they’re plotting something. Merideth jokes that the three of them together have half the smarts of the cat. And our cat’s not that bright. Sweet, though.

As all animals are in our home, the chickens are mutts. They’re a cross-breed called “Red Star” or “Red Sex-Link” because the females and males have distinctive coloring when hatched which makes it easier to separate and sell them with a certainty your little hen won’t grow into a rooster. Here’s a picture of Violet when they arrived three weeks ago. I can’t believe how much they’ve grown in just that short time.

But enough about them. Here’s one more shot of the run with the new berm that was created by digging out their run. It’s possible this whole project was a ruse so that I could have another bed to plant.

Beth here.

At House Made, we are very protective of our tomatoes.  If other vegetables encroach upon the Designated Tomato Area, they are ruthlessly chopped back, or, in extreme cases, yanked out altogether.  During the summer, the dog is put on squirrel and mouse patrol to keep them out of the garden (a job she has taken to with vigor and a surprising amount of understanding).  And now, due to some scrap lumber, remedial carpentry skills, and a few nice weekend afternoons, our tomatoes have some cold frames to get them off to a great start.

This is my first real building project.  Usually I am the brawn and measuring behind a project and Merideth does all the cutting and putting together.  This is because she has difficulty with anything approaching math, and I have difficulty with all saws outside of the reciprocating family.  But for this project, I did it all as I figured straight lines weren’t imperative.  While the tomatoes like to be protected from cold, they are not as concerned with aesthetics.

A key goal for me in this project was minimal storage.  We have a one-car garage for storage, and Christmas takes up half of it.  Now, we could cut down on the ornaments, but who’s going to tell Tiny Tim?  Is it you? Later in the summer, I’m not going to want these cold frames in the garden anymore and I needed to get them out without damaging plants, so all four sides separate from one another and will be able to be stacked flat against a wall.

I used all wood from other projects around the house, only needing to buy hardware to get these up.  Note my use of a gate lock to hold up the lid when I need to get to the plants.  I’m especially proud of that.

My tomato seedlings ship at the end of March.  I can’t wait.

 Beth here.

Almost three years ago (Three years, you guys!  It seems like yesterday.), I seeded our back yard with much expectation for a beautiful green lawn, and ended up with what looked like a vacant lot with a few grassy weeds covered with birds, who apparently love seed.  I learned many valuable lessons from the experiences of seeding a lawn and blogging about it:

1. People (namely male people) take lawns very, very seriously.  If you even hint that you want the tiniest bit of grass advice, you will get it in spades and vehemently.  
2.  People (namely crazy people) are very defensive of Lisa LaPorta.  And really, who can fault them?  She’s adorable and can do a lot of home remodel with a couple thousand bucks, even if I do question at length where she can find some of her products/services at insanely low prices.
3. If you seed a lawn that is on a slope, you will get a lot of beautiful grass…at the bottom of the slope.
4. If you ignore the problem for three years, the lawn does not magically fill in.
5. Seeding is not so much for me.

Enter the tax return.

Due to the many, many stairs to our backyard, we hired out this project to a neighborhood landscaper who tore up the backyard on one Saturday…

…and then made it gorgeous on the next Saturday.

(If you’re wondering, that pole in the middle is one half of the hammock-holding system.  It looks much better with hammock.)

We are now watering it like crazy to get it established (the variety itself is drought-resistant, but apparently not on day one), and the dog has been sequestered on the patio and kept occupied with a butcher bone, because she’s not allowed to spend her day playing Keep-That-Squirrel-Away-From-My-Yard-at-All-Costs and other similar games.

*I made up some Latin.

beloved hammock in the spring

This is our hammock. It’s my hammock, really, as I lay in it probably 80% of the available yard-lounging time. I love it. A hammock just says “Hey, quit that working. Bring a book and an adult beverage over to my canvas lap and enjoy the breeze.” Well, after the last wind storm (which I did NOT know was coming) grabbed the hammock and whipped and twisted it around like a big stripey America’s Cup spinnaker, the post on the left got decidedly loose and leany. It had already been a little off 90 degrees due to some initial Quickcrete meets sodden-clay setting issues back when we first installed it but it was nothing we couldn’t live with –  nothing that wouldn’t keep my swinging butt safely suspended.  After the wind storm, though, a suspended butt was no longer in the offing.

Enter Beth! (I should totally write her a little piece of introductory super-hero music for moments like this.) Saturday she came up the back yard steps with bags of concrete, a shovel, and rebar. REBAR–friend of the hammock or swingset lover! She dug out the old post and reset it with re-enforcements. It now stands plumb and EXTRA sturdy (though currently without hammock as it is raining), just waiting for the first warm sunny hour without chores. Beth should really hate the hammock for the way it lures me from her MSWord project lists. Clearly she spoils me.

pressure washed and ready for paint


planted wall

The front retaining walls have not been pretty for awhile. They do however hold back the hillside and since our house sits on top of that hill, I’m gonna go ahead and call that one little heroic set of walls. All that hard wall-work deserved a little pampering so I took the pressure washer (seriously, buy one) and gave it a little spa time, blowing off all the peeling paint and discovering in the process that the side retaining walls and the front ones had been poured at different times and by people with VASTLY different ideas of the definition of “quality work.”

We waffled on what color to paint the walls and ultimately decided on a basic brown, both to hide the inevitable city grime and to kind of downplay the wall altogether. We don’t want to look like a fortified battlement after all.

Once the paint went on, Beth planted the narrow beds between them and the sidewalks with Bay-native and drought-tolerant species. Oh they’re tiny now, but as they fill in they’ll further hide the wall and contribute to the lovely “wild native hillside” thing we have going on.

before



after-ish

I know you think I’ve been slacking. Really, though, I’ve just been blog slacking. Blacking. Sbloking. Sum’in like that.  Because really we’ve been…ok so you know the giant house list? (Ours is in Excel because, well, you just have to know Beth.) Anyway, so we’ve been making our way through it ticking off as many items as possible. This, my friends, does not make for interesting blogging. It makes for entries like “Today I painted the back door. Not suprisingly the black dog’s tail is now white.” or “Beth tightened the door knob in the bedroom. She is master of the…um…screwdriver.” Not exactly thrilling stuff.

But, I have also been working on carrying the saltillo tile we laid on the lower steps and landing up the second set of steps to the patio. It’s this close to finished! My game has been rain-delayed for a few days so now I’m just waiting for a stretch of sun so I can seal and then slip-guard the tile. Then I can officially retitle “Porch Phase I Complete” with an exciting new Roman numeral: II.

What?  You don’t remember that particular diddy about worms circa third grade?  Huh.

Beth here.

After owning a Wriggly Ranch for about two years (obtained via our waste company), I finally located some red worms (via eBay) and gave them a happy home in our basement.  I’ve been feeding them our fruit and veggie leftovers once a week since February, and am happy to report that we had our first worm poo harvest last weekend.  The little guys had created enough to fertilize all of the plants in the vegetable garden.

Best of all?  Unlike the friendly chicken and cow, the worm supplies poo that doesn’t stink us all out of the yard or invite the dog to roll in it.

If you want more information on the art of raising worms, aka Vermicompost, see the Wiki article.

new sidewalk for FREE

Good times never seem so good. Except when they seem awesome. Like when you get that free sidewalk from the city. Here it is in all its smooth, uncured glory. The city workers will be back to pour the asphalt transition when the concrete dries.

The beautifully smooth and uncracked work does have the (expected) effect, though, of making the driveway look even worse. We may move that project up in the to-do hierarchy. Our neighbor is trying to talk us in to putting down brick. He wants us to try it out as a test case on our short driveway before he commits to the idea on his loonng driveway. I admit I’m intrigued by the idea.

Oh, and note to “Jasmine,” whoever you are: I successfully wire-brushed your name out of the newly poured concrete in all 3 places you wrote it. Maybe try chalk next time for a less hood-tastic option.

trowel for stuccoing

Ohhh details. Yeah. I completely forgot about those. I got all caught up in the joy of being finished with the project; the heaven of not squatting on a bucket-bottom; the thrill of being able to stand upright and not lean over all monkey-fashion. Sweet, sweet hand lotion. There should be an ode or a sonnet or a country song to you. But anyway.

Here’s what I did. At first, I thought I’d put up a scratch coat and then a finish coat. Then I realized that the a finish coat would have plenty to bond to since the aggregate was thoroughly expposed on the wall’s face. (Metal lathe, which is under all the house’s stucco, was never a consideration for the likes of mere garden walls.) So after I pressure-washed off all the grime, slime, and loose paint, I painted on a concrete bonding agent for a little extra holding power. I mixed up small batches of La Habra base 200 (grey) from Home Depot and troweled on the mix. It took me about 3 batches to find a consistency I liked but then I had the proportions set and things went fairly quickly. Definitely spring for a big flat mixing tray. It’s so much easier to get the stucco out of that than a bucket. I sacrificed a wooden spoon from the kitchen for mixing because it was easier than using my pointing trowel and it was totally worth doing. The pointing trowel was great for stuccoing the tops of the walls though. It was like frosting a cake.

I worked in about 4′ square sections. When I completed 2 sections, I went back and used a rubber float on the first section, which had set up enough to withstand some finessing, to smooth out the trowel marks and bring up the sanded finish. Once that was done, I misted the whole thing lightly with water to keep it from curing too fast and continued to mist once a day for 3 days to get a proper cure.

We could have tinted the stucco mix and avoided painting, but I don’t think we would have gotten the color right in every small batch. The wall would have looked like a Greg Brady patchwork vest.  Then every day when I’d see the wall I’d have to say “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!” Much to Beth’s chagrin.

newly stuccoed wall


old tatty wall

In my other photos, the angle, light, shadows and dog all conspired to downplay the true hideousness of the weathered concrete walls.  This weekend, though, I got before and after pics of the last section. Now you’ll see some stuff.

Overcast days never turned me on, but something about the clouds and this mixed. Finally, you can kind of see the craptastic shape of the concrete vs. the stuccoed finish. And let’s be clear: This little 3′ wide wall, all crumbly and cracked, was in approximately 12 x cube root of pi x a million times better than the 75′ big wall. This little guy has yet to be painted and since it’s raining today, that’ll have to wait until Thursday or Friday. When the paint is finished, Back Yard Stucco 2007 (woo-hoo) will be fully crossed off Beth’s list.

Note that the original title of this project did not include the words “Back yard.” We’ve amended that because we’ve decided to implement Front Yard Stucco 2007 (woo-hoo). We’re so pleased with the change the stucco has made that we’re going to carry it around to the front concrete retaining walls. I have to say the process has been extremely satisfying and I’ve gotten pretty good at it for a lay-person with zero real training. Check it out – I’m even on the calendar to give a lesson to our neighbors.