The plot thickens

Garden plot
Originally uploaded by sweetlenny

We planted more in the vegetable plot on Friday afternoon: cilantro, chives, basil, and finally the asparagus bulbs. To get the flickr photo with notes that explain what everything is, just click the pic.

So there is still about half the plot to fill up - so I'm thinking zucchini and butternut squash? I'm not sure how much room all of this is going to take up. I am probably going to have to spread some of it out once the plants get bigger. And there are the irises coming up in the back of the plot closest to the alley that I am probably going to dig up and relocate, but I'll wait until they bloom and see if it's worth the effort.

Digging in the dirt, part 2

On Friday, a group of about 200 employees from Big Advertising Agency took a day to volunteer at a homeless shelter in the West Loop. I was assigned to gardening and landscaping duty, which I was pretty excited about, except for the rainy forecast. For about 6-7 hours we weeded, mowed, turned over garden beds, built a sandbox, planted more flowers, mulched, and generally made the yards of the shelter look 100x better. The rain held off until after lunch, so it wasn't too bad all in all. I was pretty dirty by the time I was done, but it was a good dirty.

I must not have gotten enough of a gardening fix, because today I decided to create the flower beds on the side of the fence. This had been my plan for awhile - it was a pretty boring space where there was quite a bit of potential. This is what it looked like before I started:

I went to Lowes (I'm averaging 2 trips a week these days - I probably should invest in the company) and picked up some nice looking perennials, a few bags of topsoil, some trays of annuals, and a bag of mulch. I had two calla lilies and some calla lilly bulbs, along with some canna lilly rhizomes from Adam's mom. I left an area free of mulch where I planted a bunch of wildflower seeds. Hopefully these will grow...soon. Also bought 3 more hanging baskets and hung up the rest of the brackets. All in all it looks really nice.

Office redesign project finished!

BEFORE:

AFTER:


I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. It's so much lighter than with the dark paneling, and my plants are going to love it. No more crappy, worn, dog-peed carpet. And best of all, the whole project cost less than $400 to complete. I learned quite a few things too:

1. Measure everything BEFORE going to the hardware store. I can't emphasize this enough. I made two pretty crucial mistakes that ended up turning out just fine, but both required multiple, unnecessary trips to the hardware store. First, I didn't order the right amount of quarter-round molding, not even realizing I'd need it for all the way around the room. The quarter-round ended up being the wrong finish, but thankfully I had only ordered one piece of it, thinking I'd need it for the stairs. And it was only about $5. Second, I didn't get the right sized shelves, TWICE! I feel like kind of an idiot but I ended up staggering the shelves and really like the effect.

2. Check EVERYTHING before you bring it home from the hardware store. Several pieces of the laminate had little small flaws in the corner where the material had chipped off. If I had looked at this in the store, or had the energy to bring it back, I probably could have gotten a discount or even been able to re-order the damaged boards. As it turned out, I had already started cutting the boards, and didn't want to hold off completing the project any longer, so I'll probably end up repairing the few with a laminate floor patcher and a marker. Thankfully it's really not that noticeable.

3. When in doubt, use a primer. The step leading into the office is concrete, and as my dad explained, I couldn't really put the laminate on the bottom of it or it would stick out and cause the molding to look really funny. So I ended up painting it to match the molding all around the room. Unfortunately, the paint didn't adhere to the concrete very well and has to be touched up:



Not a huge deal, but it would have been nice to just be done with the painting.

Anyway, the project is done, the furniture is moved back, and I'm very happy with it all in all. Now wouldn't it look great with a giant bay garden window?! I'll start saving for that now.

Laminate floor update

I totally forgot to post about the other project I tackled this weekend - laying the laminate floor in my office. Basically it's about 90% done. It looks pretty good, and other than the prep work being a royal pain in the ass (ripping up the nasty, dog-pee-moistened carpet, disposing of the disintegrating carpet pad, pulling up about a thousand staples and nails from the floor...) it was pretty easy to cut and install the pieces. They locked together with minimal effort.

I did end up making a fundamental rookie mistake in not realizing I would need the quarter-round molding to go around the entire room and cover up where the edges didn't meet perfectly at the wall. You're supposed to use spacers to leave a 1/2" border around the perimeter, to accommodate for the flooring spreading out. Which I did, but my measuring wasn't exactly perfect, so I need the quarter round to cover my not-so-perfect work:



Thankfully (or not), I ordered just one piece of quarter-round when I ordered the flooring, thinking I'd need it for the seam where the stair met the floor. But it came in the wrong color that didn't match the bamboo flooring at all. We went back to Lowes on Sunday and ordered the right amount of what will hopefully be the right material. It's not supposed to arrive for another week and a half, but i hope it comes sooner so I can put my office back together.

Dishwasher - installed!

So my dad is pretty awesome. He managed to get the dishwasher to fit into the smaller space by cutting away about a half inch to an inch of the plasterboard to the right:



The part that had to be cut out on the right left a bit of a hole, but it should be easy to put a piece of wood there that looks like a cabinet edge.



I *lovelovelove* having a dishwasher! There's nothing like nice warm clean dishes hot out of the dishwasher.