Things get ugly...

     We are now the trashy neighbors. Not that we throw beer cans in the yard and let our gutters fall down. No, we are still trying to have a decent home but our latest idea doesn't start out looking all that beautiful.  We have decided to make our whole side yard into a garden. It was going to be a bark chipped play area for our dog but he only likes to fetch at the dog park and we could really use the food. 
     It is not a large space but compared to the two 4x8 raised beds we have in the front it will be huge. One section is roughly 20x6 feet and the other is about 10x6.  So there will be a lot more tomatoes next year along with leeks, peas, broccoli and whatever else we can shove in there.  But the first step is to kill the grass. Which involves large black plastic tarps on the ground held down by chunks of cement wall rubble.  It is pretty ugly.

     The dirt in the foreground was covered for most of the summer and we just moved the plastic to extend the area. After the grass is dead we will rent a rototiller and till the dirt up while also putting in some compost, probably early next spring. We will have to put up a small fence to keep the dog out as he has recently become a digger. If only his powers of destruction could be harnessed for good.
     When taking this photo my back was up against the back of the garage. My plan for that is to plant an apple tree next to it and create a beautiful espalier.

This is what I have:

And this is what I want:

     Should be pretty easy, right?  I would also love to rip up the old walkway and put down a lovely stone or brick path but I may be getting ahead of myself.  After all, the closet still is not done.

     Now that the weather is cool and I am not spending as much time in the garden I can do things like organize my pin boards on pinterest. Before I was putting everything on my "For the Home" board but I have now created a "Garden" board for all my outdoor wishes.  If you would like to see them just go here http://pinterest.com/selbygunter/garden/. Feel free to browse my other boards as well. There is a Holiday Wish List board if anyone feels like getting me a gift. 

Learning to can and eat

  In the last post I talked about learning to make and can plum jam.  I enjoyed it so much we now have 40 jars of jam sitting in our pantry.  Spiced plum jam, ginger plum jam, nectarine plum jam, and raspberry plum jam are all sitting there waiting to be enjoyed.

  On the bottom shelf is also some ketchup that Matt made with our tomatoes. It is way better than regular store bought ketchup but I may be biased because I don't actually like ketchup.  So our little panty is getting some use.  Next up, pumpkin and apple butter.  And if I can get my hands on some persimmons or quince then we will have even more jam.

  One really nice thing about having the garden is the ability to walk outside, grab some stuff, and make dinner.  The above photo is a frozen cheese pizza made amazing buy our onions, tomatoes and basil. Super fast and tasted great. So even if you don't have time to slave over a hot stove you can still enjoy your garden's bounty.

  Not much else has been going on recently. The weekends are our home improvement time but since we have had people visiting or canning to do the last month or so not much has gotten done. We still haven't finished the closet that you may remember from an earlier post. But I have been sure to pin every idea I see on pinterest so you can be sure there will be lots of stuff to be done around the house. Stay tuned!

Plum Jam

    We are very lucky to have four plum trees growing along our back fence. They are pretty, provide shade and privacy and are abundant with plums.  The actual fruit however is not the tasty, juicy type sold in stores. I think they are what prunes are made of. Not to say you can't eat these plums, they just aren't wonderful. So what do you do with a backyard filled with plums? Make them into jam, right?

    This is what I started with.  It is about a third of what is on the trees right now but of course not everything is ripe all at once.  Some of these plums are super ripe, others are still a little hard and the rest are somewhere in between. But when you chop them all up and boil them with sugar it will all even out.

    I ended up with about 5.5lbs of chopped plums.  The recipe I found on youtube only called for 4lbs before everything was chopped up but I am really bad at estimating how much things weigh.  So I did two batches because my pot was not big enough.  I used less sugar than the recipe said and added cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cardamon to give it a little more flavor.

    Here is the mixture boiling away happily on the stove while the jars it is about to go into are being sanitized in a pot of water next to it. It smelled soooooo good.  Leave out the pectin and you could just heap it onto ice cream and be happy.

    Here I proudly display my newly found domesticity in my green pantry from a previous post. I ended up with 12 jars.  The recipe said the jam would last a year.  Guess I get one jar a month until next plum season.  If you have some plums and want to try canning just go here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFIPGpiS9bM. Next weekend I think I am going to try tomato sauce.

Tomato time

   Our little garden has started yielding tasty treats. Although we ate some radishes, lettuce and sugar snap peas earlier in the season what I have really been waiting for are the tomatoes. I never liked tomatoes growing up.  Always thought they were disgusting until my parents started growing little cherry tomatoes. They were sweet and juicy and weren't like the bland balls of acid in the grocery store.  So when we got a garden, real home grown tomatoes were the first thing I wanted and that is exactly what we are getting.  This is just over a pound of sun gold tomatoes. Yum!

   There is usually one night a week when we are just too tired to cook a proper dinner so we eat frozen pizza. But this week we made the normally rather bland pizza super scrumptious with our own home grown ingredients.  The first ripe tomatoes, a handful of basil and half an onion contributed to making some of the best pizza we have ever had. It tasted so much better knowing we had a hand in growing some of the ingredients. 

   Some of this latest batch of tomatoes will go to our new neighbors as a welcome gift.  They moved in last weekend and we are super happy to have them. That house has not had the best history but we think they will make great additions to our block.  And I was super happy to hear from them that they liked our little garden (which is in the front yard) and hope to grow their own.  To me this means that even though we only started the garden to feed ourselves it ended up showing everyone that we care and it may have helped land us some nice new neighbors. 
   Little things show that you care. So even if you can't afford to paint your house and build the porch of your dreams you can do little things that will improve your house. A new mailbox, unique house numbers or a special plants can bring some life to your house.  So here is my challenge to you: Do one *small* thing this weekend to jazz up your house. It could be anything you like as long as it can be done in a matter of hours and costs less than $50.  Send pictures when you are done and maybe I'll send you some tomatoes.

A little project gets big

     Although we are trying to keep our projects small and manageable that is just not always the way it turns out. Take my bathroom closet for example.  It is small and a ghastly pink with shelves that don't fit properly.  I thought it would be pretty simple to take out the shelves, put in new ones and paint it. This is the pathetic little closet once the shelves were removed.

But after taking out the shelves we realized how shotty the back wall of the closet was made which separates it from the closet in the office. (You can see the light coming through in the upper right hand corner of the closet.) So that had to go as well. And if that was going then we might as well take out all the parts of the closet in the office that suck too and finish it all at the same time. End result, a gaping hole where two closets use to be...

We also found that the bathroom closet didn't have a proper floor as the previous remodeler had just laid one of the shelves on the ground. So now you can see into the bathroom from the office when the bathroom closet door is open.

And then there is the inside of the office closet. Nothing matches up properly and there is a section where they didn't even put drywall. Instead they taped up cardboard and painted over it. So after we took all the crap out it looked like this.

But the drywall they used way back when is no longer sold. It is thicker today than the stuff we have so we can't just add a slice of drywall. We had to cut out all the drywall from that side of the closet and put in entirely knew stuff.  Needless to say we have not yet finished this project as it has gotten a lot bigger than planned.  And there is still the garden to tend and other more pressing work to be done.  But I did do one simple project that was fun and useful.

I saw on pinterest that you can make your own chalkboard paint by mixing two tablespoons of unsanded tile grout with a cup of paint. So I went to Lowe's and got a sample size of gray paint and the aforementioned grout. I could have done any color but I do have traditionalist tendencies. I chose the column in the kitchen next to the fridge as a useful place to put my chalkboard and just painted a rectangle. I used painters tape to get nice lines and did two thick coats. 

This section only used about a fourth of my cup so I also painted a board to hang next to our dartboard to keep score with and part of a wall in my studio.  And I still have some paint left so a little really does go a long way.  In total I think all the supplies cost about 4 dollars. Now, if only building a new closet was that cheap and easy.

First Harvest

   Today I harvested some broccoli and radishes.  Each has a slightly sad story. But first, a photo of the bounty!

  As you will notice in the above photo there seems to be two different kinds of broccoli. Alas, they are the same kind but the bottom one was allowed to get too big.  So, apparently you are suppose to chop the broccoli off when it looks like it does at the top of the photo before yellow flowers start to form. Never having grown broccoli before I had no idea and thought eventually it would fill out or something like that. But the youtube video I watched said once it gets the yellow flowers it starts to get bitter. So that was a but of a fail. However, the good news is that once you cut that off other smaller heads will start to grow so you can still get more out of the plant. Yay! I will keep you updated on that. Now the radishes...

  Someone seems to have been munching on our radishes before we did.  We did not see the culprits but we assume rats as we live in a city and have a fence around to keep out larger animals. When the radishes grow nice and big the stops start to pop out of the ground and only on that exposed area is there bite marks.  I pulled out some of the ready ones and covered the rest with as much dirt as I could to help dissuade the munchers. I just washed the radishes good and cut off the chomped bits and will go ahead and eat them.  If I never post again you will know I died of some wired radish transmitted disease.

  In the end we got just over half a pound of veggies. I've already eaten two radishes but luckily there will be more.  I plan to weigh every harvest so I can get an idea of how much our little plots can produce and then see if I can increase it the next year.  Already the lettuce is thriving, tomato plants have flowers, pea plants have shot to the moon and our prized cherries are ripening.

   We have two dwarf cherry tree in the back that we planted last year.  I didn't really expect them fruit but low and behold they have! We each had one the other day and although not the biggest or the sweetest cherry we were very proud they were ours. I don't think we will even get enough to make a jar of jam but they will be eaten and greatly enjoyed. They are only about 4ft high and 2ft wide at the moment. We have plans to some day have a row of them along our south fence.  Our own mini orchard.

Good eating all!

Green and Blue

  In our last post we talked about our fledgling garden and all the wonderful things that we hope to get from it.  My goal this summer is to learn how to can so we can enjoy our bounty (as well as farmer's market bought fruit and veggie) all year long.  In, perhaps overly optimistic, anticipation of my soon to arrive cans and jars of amazing, my attention fell upon our little used 'panty'.

  There are only a few places I fear to tread in my house and this is one of them.  So far we have been using it as storage for odds and ends since it was too gross to store food in. A previous owner decided that fake wood grain sticky paper over the actual wood shelves was a good idea. And I think there are mouse droppings with hanta virus somewhere in there but I digress.  The width and height of the shelves seem perfectly suited to store canned goods. Which makes sense because our house was built in 1909, back in the old days when canning was a normal household activity. 

  So step one was to strip the really nasty shelving paper off and then put down a base coat.  Stripping off the paper took a couple hours as it did not peel off very easily.  Parts I had to pick off with my nails and everything was really dirty.  But painting went a lot faster although getting in the cracks and edges was a little tough. I ended up with paint in my hair but whatever.  I used a base coat called Gripper but you can also use stuff called Kilz. These are both products that keep stuff from bleeding through. What stuff? I have no idea. All I know is that when I don't use it (and even sometimes when I do) dark brown spots bleed through the paint. If you know what it is, please let me know.

  After the base coat the green paint went on.  I chose green because I painted the inside of my other cabinets green.  Why? I don't know. I guess I thought white and green were nice retro and bright colors.  Add a funky yellow counter and you have a very bright and cheery kitchen. At least I think so.

  And voila! The perfect place to store homemade cherry jam and pickled cauliflower. I finished the shelves off with clear shelving plastic so you can see the paint but it is still easy to clean. Someone else will have to pull it off in 20 years but that is the cycle of home improvements.   Total cost for this project: $0. I already had the paint and shelf lining so it was just a matter of time.  But if you did have to buy supplies I would estimate the cost at anywhere from $20 to $50 depending on the quality and quantity of supplies you buy.

  Now, onto the blue bucket. We are always trying to find ways to save money and if at all possible help the environment.  Many many years ago on some tv show someone said that they have a bucket in their shower that collect the water that gets wasted while you are waiting for it to warm up.  I randomly remembered that they other day and picked up a little blue bucket at Lowe's for $3 of something like that.

  You can see the blue bucket in the upper left hand corner of this photo.  For one shower to warm up it fills about half the bucket. If Matt and I both shower in a day then we have a full bucket. I then pour the bucket (get one with a handy pour spout like mine has) into my watering can which holds one bucket full of water.  That will water roughly one garden bed of plants.  I have two beds and some plants in the front so I usually need three watering can trips to get everything. So the blue bucket helps me save one third of my plant watering costs. It way not be that much but every little but helps. Next year I need a rain barrel!

Order in the Garden

   Matt and I have been working very hard over the last few months to get our first veggie garden up and running.  Neither of us have ever really done with before as Matt is from Arizona and I am a nomad.  However, it is looking pretty good!

  First we started by building two raised beds which are 8ft by 4ft.  I read somewhere this was about the biggest you could make it while still being able to reach into the middle and not have to step in it.

   We then covered the area with black plastic to kill the grass underneath.  It took a month or more for the grass to die and then we tilled it all up.

  This process was the least fun but it aerated the soil and helped break up the ground. Our soil is really bad so we had to add bags and bags of compost and top soil to make it good for the plants.

 

  Since it took so long for us to get the beds ready we were not on top of starting everything from seed.  We bought some tomato, onion, broccoli, eggplant and pepper plants just so we knew we would have something.  That is the first bed on the left. We also just added some basil and thyme. It really amazes me how much can grow in such a small space. 

  And this is what it looks like two weeks later. The tomato plants are starting to get big so we had to get supports for them.  We also noticed some cat/raccoon activity on the other bed so Matt put up some green plastic fencing to keep them out. Cross our fingers it works!

  Besides the two beds we made in the front yard I also cleared a little area on the side of the house.  Right now I only have sugar snap peas there.  Again, this is my first attempt at this so I may have done it horribly wrong. They seem to be pretty happy though.

  I did manage to start some plants from seed.  I got the idea from Pinterest to put the seeds in egg cartons so they have their own individual spots. This worked good but getting them out of there can be a bit of a pain.  But over-all I would recommend this as a cheap and environmentally friendly way to start your seeds.

  We are also happy to report that our dwarf cherry trees have tiny green cherries on them!  The two that we planted last year are doing so well we are thinking about putting more along the side fence.  The idea of homemade cherry jam is a huge incentive.

  All-in-all we have no idea how much food we are actually going to get for all this effort.   I can't say this project has made our house any less ugly or increased the value but it has made up happy and excited to see what will grow.

 

Banjo and Mushrooms

As I mentioned in my first post our wonderful dog, Haggis, recently passed away. Although we miss him greatly and he can never be replaced we still had a hole in our hearts and home. This ugly old house just doesn't feel right without a dog so a few weeks ago we adopted Banjo.

  He is a Belgian Shepard / Australian Shepard mix. We found him on petfinder.com and although he has a few social issues I think he will end up being a great dog.  But he is a little more unpredictable than Haggis was so it has renewed our determination to create a solid fence around our house.  There will be another post on our foray into fence building later on.

  Now onto the mushrooms. For the holidays Matt's sister gave us a grow-your-own mushroom kit. Matt loves mushrooms so we were excited to try it.  The first attempt was a failure. We watered it like the instructions said but then we had to go away for a few days and they dried up. Luckily we still had the other side.  The second tried produced the mushrooms in the picture below.

  A couple days after this photo we had a lovely mushroom sauce over pasta for dinner.  After doing some research Matt found out that this kit is filled with coffee grounds and mushroom spoors.  He is playing around with the idea of making a mini mushroom farm on the dark side of our house.  I am not opposed to this idea. But we have lots of other projects doing on right now so that will just have to wait. 

Ideas

If you haven't been on Pinterest you need to get on it now.  If you have you know what I am talking about.  The idea is that you have electronic pinboards where you can post pictures which link to the websites they came from.  This website can be useful for so many things but the main reason I am writing about it here is to share with you how it can help you improve your home.

I have one pinterest board dedicated to things that inspire me or that I could do to my house.  There are a wide variety of things on their from gardening ideas to colors I like or tips and tricks for cleaning.  It can really be anything you want. Most of my "pins" as they call them I get from looking at what other people have already pinned. So what if I am not being super original? I do the same thing when I walk by a person's house and steal their ideas. This way I don't look all creepy walking down the street staring at people's houses!

So here are a few examples of what I have pinned:

A succulent wall hanging. Apparently you can hang plants on a wall.  I think this look really interesting and cool and for only a few dollars you can make great outdoor art.  Just get an old frame at Goodwill, tightly plant a few small and inexpensive succulent plants in it and hang. Great for a patio.

We have a small yard so any space saving ideas are welcome.  This one not only saves space it also reuses old materials and I am a total hippy in that I love recycling.  We have one area on the north side of our house that is wasted space because we never go back there and there is not a whole lot of sun.  But lettuce and some other veggies do fine in the shade so if I find some old gutters at the reuse store this spring I might have to try this.

There are a lot of great ideas floating around out there but it can take a long time to find them. Using pinterest I don't have to find them because someone else already has!  This is a great idea for a slow release watering system instead of just dumping a bunch of water on top. We have a rather slanted yard so a lot of the water runs off anyway!  This will keep your plants wet longer but it does take up a chunk of space if you are limited in that department.

I usually pin garden things because it is spring and that is my main focus right now. However, we do have an attic that could look a lot like this. I generally try not to dream to big because of my small budget but maybe someday we can finish that space and make it nice. Although I doubt it will every be this nice. 

This last photo is to demonstrate the fact that there is MUCH more on pinterest than just stuff about gardening and home design.  There are good and bad things, funny and sad thing, useful and utterly useless things on pinterest just like the rest of the internet.  It is all about how you chose to use it. I hope this post has inspired you to use pinterest or some other internet website to better your home and/or life. 

Fat Squirrel says "Get going!".

Welcome!

Welcome to This Ugly Old House! A blog about my ugly old house and how I am trying to make it less ugly and how you can make yours less ugly too. 

My goal with this blog is to share my home improvement journey and inspire you on your own path.  Almost a year ago today my husband and I bought our first house in the south end of Seattle. We have done a few projects to improve the place but there are many more to be done.  And although we were lucky enough to get the house we are by no means rolling in money for home improvements. This means we have to be very budget conscious and decide what gives us the most value and function for our home.

I know a lot of you out there are struggling financially as well and while money is tight all around no one wants to live in a house that makes them feel poor and helpless.  Besides, living in a beautiful space improves your mood and the hard work of home improvement can be great exercise.  If you don't believe me just try ripping out a bed of ivy!  Plus, certain easy improvements can add value to your home which we can all use.  But I will stop yapping now and show some pictures.

This is our Ugly Old House. Ok, it really is not that ugly from the front.  But inside it gets a little funky.  This photo was taken the weekend we moved in. Our dog Haggis who passed away recently was already guarding his new home.  At 990 square feet it fits two adults, a cat and a dog very nicely. 

The living room looks sad and small in this photo. We immediately ripped up that nasty carpet and found beautiful hardwood underneath. However, all the other rooms in the house have disgusting, and probably asbestos laden, brown or pink material of some sort glued to the wood. Therefore, even if we wanted to refinish the living room floor there is no way we could afford to make all the other floors match so we decided to buy some do-it-yourself bamboo flooring and just cover the whole house in it.

The living room looks like this today. We chose Zebrano raw bamboo for the flooring which basically means the bamboo was shredded, some of it was charred (creating the darker spots), and then 'glued' back together to from really strong planks with interlocking grooves.  So far this stuff doesn't have a scratch on it even with a 70lb dog running on it and us constantly moving the furniture. It was a big expense at around $3,000 to do the whole house but it will be well worth it when we actually get it all put in. 

We purchased the flooring from Simple Floors in Tukwila, WA and they were really helpful in telling how to install it ourselves. We 'floated' it so as to not damage the the floor underneath.  This is also an environmentally friendly product which is another reason we chose it as well as the fact that it is harder and more durable than traditional hardwoods. And less expensive. 

You can also see from this photo that I painted the wall to the left bright orange and the bookshelf nook white.  In the afternoon when the light comes through the west facing windows the room is really bright and cheery.  For $20 in paint you can change the whole vibe of a room. 

What have you improved on your house lately?