2020 outdoor projects

Following up on the garden post I did in April, the corner where our parking strip touches the alley saw a lot of action this year.  First, trucks including garbage trucks, drove over it a bunch and made it muddy.  I got the biggest rocks I could manage off of craiglist and put them there.   Someone took them.  Then the street and the alley were torn up over the course of several months and the parking strip was part of the staging area.   Several smaller plants were destroyed, but our trees made it through and they did replace a section of our sidewalk that was in bad shape, saving us the expense and hassle in the future.    

February - my short-lived rocks in the mud

May - pouring our new sidewalk

May - they definitely re-paved some sections more than once

June - four months in and still going strong

September - the rosemary we transplanted from the roof is happy, along with some yarrow and wildflowers

November - I moved the small pavers to the curb and put in some much bigger and more useful pavers

The road and alley work was prime entertainment during the first covid lockdown, when Dd was out of daycare and most everything else was paused.  They put data cables in our block of the alley and the block to the north.  In March and April the work was shockingly close to our house, but nothing was damaged.

I think something they did broke the storm drain just outside our house.   I know that the pipe that goes under our transplanted rosemary bush is ancient and broken, but I can't be sure the drain worked or the pipe wasn't broken before all this work.   In any case, the drain just overflows and the water runs down our sidewalk, rather than draining under our trees and rosemary busy and out in to the street.   If we have prolonged ice and snowmelt there might be a problem.  

So far in this post I've mostly described work we observed, but we did do a few more outdoor projects ourselves.

• On the roof Jack modified the planters so that the two roof drains are easily accessible for cleaning.
• As a birthday present to myself, we bought a box leaf azara tree (evergreen, fragrant flowers) and a 170 gallon trough planter and put in on the ledge in the boîte.   It was hard to plant and it had terrible transplant shock.  After almost all of the leaves turned black and fell off, there is some new growth and I think it will live.   Lesson learned.

• In November and December we finally took the plunge to cut the sports net we have in the boîte, which allowed us to attach it to the fence on the north and south sides of the boîte.  This gives us about 75% more play area and makes it way easier to get bikes in and out.   
• After three Christmases with our last tree "Lefty Right Northtip", we bought a new Black Hills Spruce in September and brought him in for two weeks for Christmas, successfully preventing him from experiencing a false spring.   

• Other new roof plants were: sage, thyme, a new lavender (lavandula angustifolia), a drwarf Alberta spruce, two low pink flowering plants (Dianthus Gratianopolitanus) and a yellow flowering plant whose name I have already lost.

The blueberries were a flop that flowered but did not fruit (hence the little bluegold bush we added to befriend the existing high country bush).

I'm not sure why, but I pruned the raspberries back last winter, so they spent all summer growing and only considered making berries in the late fall, when it was too late.   This winter I didn't cut them back at all.

We had good luck with our carrots and the fragrant jasmine plant continues to be one of our most pleasing roof plants, blooming several times.

Roof gardening continues to be a learning experience.  I've found that it is too sunny for most greens on our roof in the summer because they bolt immediately.  Parsley, on the other hand is self-seeding and growing even in January.

2020 indoor house projects

I find this review of all the home improvement tasks we did really satisfying.  So many are things that no one besides us would ever notice, especially in a year where hardly anyone else has been inside our house....     

• We finished the stair shelf by putting up more cabinet doors and pretty paper backing on some more of the cubbies.

• Jack put smart switches on the porch light (so it goes on when it gets dark) and on the entry way chandelier (so it goes off after 10 minutes).  They work 85% of the time, which is great, but also is why I won't be getting "smart" door locks or anything critical yet.
• Back in the summer of 2016 we hastily ordered and assembled the kids' IKEA closet systems in, just before we moved in.  Both rooms needed a few more shelves to maximize the use of the space, but we waited long enough that IKEA had discontinued the line.  Luckily we managed to find the few shelves and parts we needed on eBay.  Especially now that they are filled out, I'm quite happy with the alcove + closet system + curtain approach we have.   As the kids grow, we can re-arrange the parts to allow for more hanging space and we can replace the curtain fabric (which I sewed when we lived in Boston) if anyone starts to care about how their room looks.  In the small bedrooms, closet doors would just get in the way.

• On the roof door, Jack installed a door closer, which was more complicated project than anticipated, requiring a lot of fiddling and replacement parts due to the thickness of the wall and the dyslexic instructions.  He stuck with it and now it works, making the door not slam up on the windy roof and holding holding it open when it is pushed open all the way.   Letting hot air out of the roof door is key for making the third floor more comfortable.  We can stop wearing out bungie cords now.

• We washed all the windows and tried out some new equipment and methods.      
• We put up some more electric blinds on the north wall of the second and third floor (blinds and leaking windows saga).
  

• We patched and painted the walls for the first time.  Some look okay and others are quite obvious because the paint looks different.   I don't know the trick yet.  I think after four years (and the window issues) I have come to terms with the fact that there isn't really a honeymoon period where a new house is maintenance free.  Since this is our first house, there are tons of small maintenance tasks we've just never done before.   
• In December we pulled out the manual for our water heater and cleaned the thimble sized filter that pumps water in to the water heater compartment.  It gratifyingly improved our shower situation from cold-scalding-icy-icy-icy to cold-scalding-warm.   There are more issues to work out here, but it's a big improvement.   
• On level two we still have some electrical weirdness.  When Jack's computer is on, and the bathroom vanity light is on, and the printer runs, the circut shorts..... or something like that.  Jack replaced the thing-a-ma-bob in one of the vanity lights and that seemed to help.   We removed the vanity lights for a couple of weeks also, to test.   One got broken while it was off the wall, so we ended up replacing both with a cheaper, similar looking version, which at least took less than half an hour (with both of us) to rewire.   I *think* it's all working now, but when the printer runs the office lights do flicker.

I'm including organization here too because it is so satisfying, and requires time and effort also. 

• We bought an enormous new heavy-duty shelf for the north part of the basement, which is a big improvement
• I organized arts and craft supplies in a big cabinet by the dining table, instead of on the stair shelf.  So far D has been appreciative and tried to keep it nice.  D draws less than a lot of kids but being home for almost the whole year has definitely made us do more crafts at home.
• We switched our ugly bathroom shelf to the entry way, where it is slightly more functional, and brought the cabinet from the entry to the bathroom, where it is at least super well organized.  Bonus points were awarded for spending $0 on this.

• One easy and fun thing we did was put up this PEony (get it?) wall decal in the third floor bathroom, where we have spent quite a lot of time working on potty training

blinds and leaking windows

Yesterday people moved in to the last of the six townhouses across the street from us.  The houses were being framed when Dd was born in 2018 and the first people moved in in March 2020, just when everyone with the option, shifted to working from home.  Blinds became very important, for us and for them!

Gather round, while I tell you the story of our blinds and the leaky windows behind them.

We bought our blinds in four batches from The Shade Store between Dec. 2018 and Sept. 2020, because they are not cheap, even with Jack's professional discount.  Prior to that we had paper blinds on the second floor and no window coverings on the third floor.   I mentioned the new neighbors across the street but our downhill neighbors also had trouble adjusting to the reduction of privacy caused by our house.  In the first year, on two occasions they asked us not to open our (cumbersome, rarely opened, paper blinds) so that they could have privacy in their yard, and I think their house which has few curtains.  We said we were saving up to buy blinds and they offered to split the cost with us.   We declined and pointed out that virtually no one in our neighborhood has outdoor privacy.  Yikes.

Our windows started leaking a little over a year after we moved in.  I am still annoyed that they apparently did a crap job installing them, but I am thankful that all of the cost of repair, which must be ridiculously high at this point, has been covered by the subcontractor.   2020 reminded us that there are worse problems to have.   As I write this, I only know of one leaking window in the house, behind the kitchen stove, and I am expecting a call about it tomorrow.

Let's mix it up by going top to bottom, rather than in chronological order!

On the third floor we installed white painted boards just below the highest windows and attached the blinds to them.  This means that we can never block out all of the sunlight, which is fine for the third floor, with the exception of a few late summer dinners where the sun is in just the wrong place.   We did this because the west windows of the kitchen, where there are actually three stacked windows are too tall for any of the type of blinds we wanted to buy, and top-down electric blinds don't exist.  The opening at the top doesn't intrude on privacy and in the summer we keep the operable upper windows that are kid-safe and rain-safe open almost all the time.   I'm pleased by how you can't really see the wood we mounted the blinds on at all.

Jan. 2019 and May 2019 with Dd brightening things up

We did the third floor west wall blinds in Jan. 2019 and the third floor north wall blinds in March of 2020, which was good timing with the new neighbors across the street.

At one point, I thought we should wait until the windows were all fixed before spending money on nice blinds, but it seems unwise to put any hopes on the end of window repairs.

To appreciate the blinds in our bedroom, I must include some picture of just how bad the west wall of our bedroom has looked at different points.  

Here is the initial water damage from Dec. 2017, which prompted the first round of  window-repair scaffolding for about 2 months at the beginning of 2018 (when I very much wanted to take first-trimester naps at lunch time but there were men inside and outside my windows).

Aug 2018, "fresh" $5 paper blinds                                               March 2019 "black out" paper 

                                                                                                      while Dd shared our room  

The fall of 2018, when Dd was a newborn, was the third attempt at fixing the bedroom corner leak.  A guy from a new crew took the complaint seriously and cut out the drywall in the corner, going up about three feet to trace the leak.  I guess I was too annoyed by the window and enamored by Dd to take a picture of it.  It remained all chopped up for months though.  At some point they replaced the drywall, but it leaked again (along with others) and they came back with the scaffolding (round 2) in Sept. 2019.

May 2019 - blinds that open from the top or bottom!

Sept. 2019, nice blinds with scaffolding

During this second round of scaffolding they accidentally broke the window over the front door.  Then the took it out, realized it would be better to leave it in until the replacement came, re-installed the broken window and ordered a replacement without measuring the window.  The very large replacement then came and did not fit, so it was taped up in Seahawks colors for several weeks but did not guillotine anyone walking in or out the door.

Here's Dd enjoying scaffolding round 2, just before his 1st birthday.

Moving now to the office, we installed the blinds in March 2020.   Unlike the third floor, where we were able to hike the patches in the wall where we had to cut out drywall to put in the wiring, in the office the holes were much closer to the ceiling where a picture would look quite odd.   

Here's a picture where you can't see the patch in the wall!

So how do we like the blinds?  Mostly they are great and we can't believe how long we made it without them on the third floor where it's easy to be blinded by the sun or feel like you're in a fishbowl.  The electric blinds really are pretty cool.  They have a remote and so you can raise or lower a whole batch of blinds with a few clicks and you can program them to close or open at certain times of the day.  In the office, two of the blinds open halfway every morning so that the plants I have by my desk get sunlight even on weekends when I would forget about them.

On the other hand, they have a sticking problem and a couple of them look like this when they are lowered.   After a few agonizing minutes they mostly unstick themselves, but it looks pretty terrible at first.   The company readily sent out replacements for this issue and for the cases where their measurements were wrong.   We ended up deciding to stick with the stickiness and used the replacements on other window, so we got a couple of free shades for our cheapness.

All that remains is to keep getting the windows fixed and to put up the five blinds on the south wall of the kitchen, which have been sitting in the office, waiting for us to make time for them.  It will be interesting because we'll be putting glass behind the stove but over the blind, to protect it from cooking.  Wish us luck!

Dd turned 2!

Dd turned 2 in October and we managed a socially distanced (bring your own food) party with close family up at Jack's family's property, near Cle Elum.  I was happy to share it with my family and delighted to learn that it was Jack's (maternal) grandma's first visit after 30 years of Jack's mom and step dad being together.

The balloons were popped quickly

model social distancing

GG dressed for the parade walk my mom lead

Dd remains a delight.  His particular interests are trucks and infrastructure like heating systems and drains of all kinds.   

He's a good sleeper, a good eater and a pretty happy kid.  His most common malapropism is "pick my body out" (instead of "up" which is usually when he's hungry and we're trying to cook).   The song we are most sick of singing is Old MacDonald, which is mostly about trucks, not animals.  Our copy of "Machines Go To Work in the City" is heavily taped and much-loved by Dd as it was by D.  Being a second child seems to work well for Dd and he has been exposed to bad knock knock jokes at an earlier age.  His are all about food and don't have a punchline.

As is typical, his verbal skills have rocketed up this year and he recognizes most letters and numbers.   Our present to him was a three-wheeled scooter and he has learned to actually coast on it, although the breaking is not yet reliable.   His hair only just grew long enough to be cut and he continues to resemble Jack as a kid.

zip strips are holding us down and keeping us stationary!

I know we have much more serious issues facing us, but here's an annoying little thing in our lives.  In July, we returned home from a getaway with our bikes safely attached to our car.  After taking them off the bike rack, we somehow lost our bag of plastic clips that attach the bikes to the rack.    We realized they were gone in August.  We've searched and organized the basement, but I think we must have left them outside or on the car perhaps.  In any case, they are literally impossible to buy and this is the first time we've ever encountered this in our spoiled little lives.

We ordered them in August and they were supposed to come in October, and now that site says they will come in March.   We ordered some more on Amazon, but we are pretty sure they are just lying about having them in stock as the shipment is just inexplicably delayed now.

We've tied the bikes on to the rack once but it was pretty hard and time consuming and still didn't feel very secure.  Considering that it takes us a really long time to just load the bikes, drive somewhere and unload them, even at the best of times, we will be riding from home for the foreseeable future.

On the other hand, considering the shortage of all things bike related, we did have a lot of good bike buying luck this year.  I bought a new bike in January,  just before the bottom dropped out. In addition to the uber feminine "acid strawberry" color, it has frame dimensions for women, which I've learned is essential for me  (no more reaching way forward for the handlebars, while having the seat all the way up).

The kids are growing like weeds so we've been changing bike set ups a lot.   In April we got D a used bike for a good price that was borderline too big (24" wheels), but a month later seemed just right for him.  Within a couple of months he was shifting gears pretty well.  Dd showed that he had outgrown the Burley trailer by being able to stick his foot out to reach the back tire of the parent towing him, or smooshing the side of the trailer so that the wheel rubbed.  So we sold that and bought and bought a used Weehoo trailer, also in April. Then in August we bought D a really nice used  (Burley piccolo) ride-along for a great price as well.  It is way more stable than the $40 ride along we bought last year and can fit him for a few years.  It even has gears!   With both kids in trailers we can safely ride from home.

Soos Creek trail in January.  D is on the ride-along because there were hills and he didn't have a gear bike yet.

First time on the big bike on the Green River trail in April

We did the Green River trail again

This was the last trip where we had the clips, in July.

We rode in Yelm in July

Dd started on D's old strider bike.

Riding in our neighborhood in October with D on the new ride-along

kitchen upgrades

We’ve been cooking more than ever during this pandemic.  Jack and I went on a dinner date in February and we get takeout every other week or maybe less.  It always seems like a good idea when we're busy, but then the money and time it takes to decide what to get, to order it and maybe to pick it up often doesn't feel like that much of a time saver.  

Restaurants have been open in King County with lots of restrictions, but they don't sound appealing, especially with the kids.  A year ago, my favorite place to eat was the Whole Foods hot food bar, but that is also not a realistic option these days.

Anyway, we like to double recipes and cook big portions so we've now outgrown several kitchen things.  The instant pot doesn't build up pressure if it is more than about 2/3 full and literally not being able to stir a soup in the dutch oven for lack of space is quite annoying.  If you make a one pot meal, it has to be a pretty big pot :)

Happily we were able to sell our 6 quart Instant Pot and put the money towards a 10 quart model.  My goal is to use it every day so that Jack won't put it away in the cupboard.

We also used our 4 cup glass measuring cup so much that all of the lines and numbers wore off and when I went to replace it I saw an 8 cup measuring cup with a lid, so I went with that.  It's great.

Lastly, we just welcomed our 13.25 quart cauldron, which we considered for about six months before finally seeing a real sale on the non-doll-house-sized le creusets!