Oh FIGS!

Seed catalogs are dangerous places for garden lovers.  They tempt us with glorious descriptions, beautiful pictures and dreams of a bounty of produce grown in our own backyard.  I am not strong willed, as demonstrated by this brown turkey fig tree. 

See, I love figs.  Yet even on those rare occasions when there actually are figs in the supermarket, they usually make winter blueberries seem economical.  And according to this seed catalog all I needed was $15, 3 years of patience, and an overwintering plan for my little fig tree.  My neighbor has a fig tree in their yard and they wrap it up with insulation and a plastic bag in the winter.  It's not pretty, but their tree is happy.  Another option, which we have chosen here, is to plant it in a pot and bring it indoors in the winter. Our fig tree arrived on Tuesday and now lives in the sun room.

In my defense, I ordered this back in January during a severe bout of cabin fever.  And I was craving figs.  It might not look like much now, but check back in 3 years and we'll see who's laughing... and eating figs.

Starting the Garden

We want a big garden this summer.  I wanted to grow most of the plants from seed, and many of those like tomatoes need to be started early indoors 6-8 weeks before planting outside.  I planted a bunch of seeds in seed starting cups and once they sprout we'll keep them under a grow light.  Some of the seeds I had already from last year, but this year we're building a much bigger garden in raised beds so I bought some new things to try as well.  Most of my pots here are tomatoes, including several heirloom varieties from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds:  purple cherokee, yellow pear, green zebra, pink ponderosa, and bloody butcher.  Then I also have some regular seeds from various seed catalogs, including: big boy, beefsteak, paste and sweet 100s (cherry tomatoes).  I also started cucumbers, bell peppers, ground cherries (the seeds were free, I don't even know what these are!), poblano (ancho) peppers, squash, snapdragons, and herbs.  I have more seeds that will been put directly into the raised beds ("direct sow") - watermelon, carrots, more squash, pole beans, green beans, zinnias, sweet peas, spinach, lettuce, etc.  In May we will also pick up a few things from the nursery, including any seedlings that fail to thrive.

Now if only winter would let go and finally allow the backyard defrost... I really want to build the raised beds already!

The Guestroom: Before and After

This tiny space has come a long way.  The closet was dark and the plaster was crumbling.  The pink carpet had a funny sour milk smell.  The ancient roller shade was ripped and the curtains were falling apart.  The pink walls were... well mauve mist.   There were no usable outlets and without a ceiling fan it was hot in the summer.  It was a tiny pink room better suited for storage... and now it's a space we actually want to spend time in.  And a space we are no longer embarrassed to put guests in!

The Guestroom is Finished!

We finished the guest room! The mismatched molding has been replaced, the quarter round shoe molding was added around the room, and then all the trim was patched and painted with a fresh coat of white paint.  Mike added the blades to the fan, we added a rug to the floor and then brought the furniture back in.

The lamp on the dresser finally has an outlet behind it and can now be plugged in without an extension cord.  I added a large basket to hold extra pillows and throws since we have very little storage in here.  Seating is limited and tight, so I brought up a floor pillow for someone to use (or Georgia as is more often the case).  The room still needs some wall decor and curtains, but that is being postponed until after the office is finished - why bother when it's about to be filled floor-to-ceiling with boxes? 

Just to recap, here's what we did to make this outdated pocket of pink a cozy and serene nook:  we added a light in the closet with a switch, repaired the plaster in the closet and painted everything bone white, replaced the old roller shade with white blinds, added a ceiling fan and rewired the light switch, added a new outlet, patched all of the cracks in the walls and ceiling, painted the walls hollingsworth green, painted the ceiling a palladian blue tint, removed the carpet and carpet pad, replaced the mismatched molding, added shoe molding and touched up all the trim.

Signs of Spring

Even an arctic front and two snow storms in one week can't stop spring from coming.  As the snow melts all the signs of spring are returning to our backyard.

The daffodils and irises continue to grow unscathed by the snow

The sleet and snow knocked over the crocus, but the flowers are still bright and yellow

The forsythia branches are budding 

The crocus are still growing

We've had so much rain and snow that the backyard behind the garage is now a swampy lake

Georgia reluctantly wades through the swampy puddles

New periwinkle flowers are blooming

Does anyone know the name of these little flowers?

Guestroom Wood Floors, Improved

First, one coat of method's wood for good cleaner to make sure the floor was clean and condition the wood.  Then five coats of that quick shine stuff that makes even the saddest floors look shiny and polished.

Before and after - not shiny and shiny

Round Two

Two snow storms in the first week of spring... it feels really unfair.  4" on the ground already this morning and it's going to keep snowing on and off all day.  I don't want to shovel the driveway again.  All we want are a few flowers, some green grass, and some seasonal temperatures!

The Guestroom Carpet is Gone

Over the weekend we finally pulled up the carpet in the small bedroom.  This was a job I'd be dreading since my mom and I pulled up the carpet in the hall and stairs... it was disgusting and messy.  The carpet itself was old, dusty and dirty- and worse underneath was the melted, sticky carpet pad.  Little bits of blood red sticky rubber goo that clung to EVERYTHING (skin, shoes, pants, etc) covered the entire floor and we had to clean it up without tracking it onto the beige carpet in the hallway.

Once all the tack strips and staples were pried off the floor, we vacuumed with the shop vac and then vacuumed again.  And a third time for good measure in hopes that some of the sticky rubber bits would be sucked away. They didn't budge.  So then began the grueling, painful task of scrubbing the floor by hand.  Mops, sponges and scrub brushes are no match for these little rubber bits because they are rubber and therefore impervious to water and too sticky.  The consistency of the goo is hard to describe, it's like glue paste and chewing gum combined.  Each square foot of stickiness required a painful two prong approach - first rubbing/chafing away the bits with a dry paper towel and brute force, then scrubbing away the stickiness with a bottle of method all purpose cleaner.  This teeny tiny room took two hours to clean, and by the end my hands were numb.

The floors are not in the best shape.  We mistook a lot of little paint splatters for dust until the floor was clean.  And there are some big paint splatters too - a big gray mess and a big black smear by the long wall.  Apparently some careless jerk person from long ago decided drop cloths were unnecessary.  Luckily we can still make the floors in here work until we (someday) have the money to refinish them.  None of the weird painted outer edging of the hallway entered the space.  The worst of the paint spills are along the long wall - a prime place for furniture due to the small size and awkward layout of the room.  And we always planned on putting a big 5x8 rug down in the middle of the room, which will actually cover most of the floor space anyways.

As you can see in the pictures, we also (finally!) conquered the mismatched molding from hell.  It may have taken blood, sweat, tears and more cursing that a pair of sailors - but it's finally gone.  If you want to refresh yourself with what we were up against, I wrote about it here.  Honestly it took so long that I'm too exhausted to rehash it, knowing what we were up against you can just imagine it.  But it's gone! GONE! And now we can finally replace it with molding that blends with the rest of the house.  Hooray!

A Touch of Sky

Mike painted the ceiling in the guest room.  It's hard to tell from the photos, but the ceiling isn't actually white - it's light blue.  We mixed flat white ceiling paint with a little leftover palladian blue  in a 5 to 1 ratio to give the ceiling a nice soft tint.  If you have to paint, why make it white and boring?  We also did this in the master bedroom with 10% palladian blue.  When we eventually install crown molding in here, the bright white molding will really pop against the colors.  And I love light blue ceilings, it makes me think of the sky.

Of course, nothing in this house is ever simple.  Mike patched the cracks in the ceiling, sanded and started painting... and the paint roller started bringing down chunks of ceiling in new spots!  It was ridiculous.  No wonder people cover their old plaster ceilings with drywall!  Mike had to scrape the problem areas, patch the chunks, and then apply a skim coat over a much larger surrounding area so the whole thing would hold.  Once it was dry and sanded smooth, he re-painted large sections of the ceiling a second time.  Luckily we mixed extra ceiling paint and stored it in the freezer.

Nooooooo.

This is what it looked like outside this morning.  Huge flakes of snow just falling out of the sky.   Apparently mother nature didn't get the memo about it being officially spring.  How can it hit 75 degrees on Friday, then snow like this on Monday? 

Starting Spring Early

In honor of the beautiful weather outside (it's 70 today!), I thought I'd share one of my attempts to make our house a little greener and bring spring a little earlier.  A couple of weeks ago I bought a package of ranunculus bulbs from Home Depot.  It was an impulse buy at the checkout but I couldn't resist - they are some of my favorite flowers (yes I have a lot of favorite flowers).  I thought the package said 4 bulbs for $4 - not exactly a good deal, but less pricey than many of the other summer bulbs for sale.  And I wanted to start a few bulbs early indoors just for fun (because yes that's my idea of fun, okay?).

Then last weekend when I went to plant them, I discovered the package actually said 15 for $4!  And of course because I love them and I was feeling compulsive (wait until it's warmer and put half in the ground ?! Heck no!), I decided to plant them all in several ceramic pots.  There's probably a little overcrowding, but they aren't big plants and they usually die back after blooming anyways.  Now they are crowding the slider in the dining room where it's warm and sunny... after a week little green stems are already poking out!

(and in case anyone was wondering, the plant on the top right in the red pot is an amaryllis, not a ranunculus)

Dining Room Shades

When I hung the bamboo shades in the living room, I also hung a third bamboo roman shade on the single window in the dining room.   I want the window treatments in these two rooms to match since they are so open to each other.  I think the "oak" shade color looks good with the sage green.  We have a lot of wood in this room already, but the shade blends well with the floors and offsets the dark furniture.  We still need to go to Ikea and get curtain rods that match the living room.  It's on the to-do list. 

Living Room Shades

We decided to go with bamboo shades in the living room in a medium brown (similar to the wood floor).  I was inspired by a Smith & Noble catalog that came in the mail, but horrified by the $300 per panel price tag that came with it.  Yes they were fabulous and lined, but for $300 they better be lined with gold.

One night at Home Depot (our home away from home these days), we were looking for simple white blinds for the office and guest room windows when we saw that they had bamboo roman shades on display.  The color was just what I wanted, the style was simple, the price was great... but they only had one left in our window size.  This of course inspired a wild goose chase around Northern NJ searching for more... and going crazy when their store stock did not match what was listed online.  We wasted a lot of time and gas only to come up empty handed.  Frustrated, it occurred to me that I should check out JC Penny online, especially since I swore I was a customer for life after their customer service was so nice and helpful.  As luck would have it, they were having a home sale - each bamboo shade was $8 cheaper than Home Depot AND there was free shipping! JC Penny really does rock - the prices were great, they arrived quickly, and the color ("oak") matches our wood floors perfectly.

Originally, in my mind I wanted to set up our living room curtains and blinds to come down from the crown molding, creating the illusion that the windows were taller than they are and make the ceilings look even higher.   Except my plan had one big flaw - it hid the gorgeous wide window casings of our older home.  This trick works great in newer homes with regular windows, but it would completely cover up one of our home's best features.  So I revised my plan and lowered the curtain rods I hung previously.  They are still high and wide, but are now better balanced and hung halfway between the top of the windows and the ceiling.  I still need to find curtains... one of these days I'll get to it.  And I still need to repaint the trim.  At least the clashing taupe sheers are gone.

Guest Room Ceiling Fan

Mike installed the guest room ceiling fan, and it works just like we had hoped - there's a fancy double switch that controls the light and fan separately!  I love it.  The fan is missing the blades because we still need to paint the ceiling and cover all the patched cracks.  But the good news is that it's up, it's functioning, and the light and fan are separate!

The Guest Room Walls, Painted

Over the weekend I painted the guest room a soft sage green (after some serious spackling work).   It's a small room, but the ceilings are high, making cutting-in around the top a chore for a person of my height.  I get really woozy on ladders and step stools -  so the shorter the stepladder the better.  

The color was supposed to be Salisbury Green like the dining room (I like re-using colors throughout the house for continuity), but that was too dark for such a tiny room.  Instead we went two shades lighter on the paint chip, Hollingsworth Green #HC-141 by Benjamin Moore.  It's a lovely soft sage green, muted with lots of gray so it's not minty at all.  It looks a little too gray in these photos, but it's been dark and cloudy every time I pull my camera out.  Here's a swatch for a better idea of the real color:

Also negatively affecting the photos - the green currently clashes with the soon-to-be-gone pink carpet... but then again, does anything look good with mauve-pink carpet?

Guest Room Ceiling Fan: In Progress

Mike is working on the installation of a ceiling fan in the guest bedroom.  Electrical work is a complicated task in itself, but this time we added a new wrinkle - we wanted the fan and the light on the ceiling fan to be separate.  We learned from living with the fan in the master bedroom - both run off of one switch and it's frustrating on summer nights when we have the fan running and we have to turn the light on and off with the pull cord.  Entering the dark room and having to turn on the light from the middle all the time resulted in a lot bruised shins and of tripping over shoes.

This time Mike is installing the fan with a double switch that controls both the fan and light separately, which requires special wiring.  I think it will be well worth the effort  and we plan on doing it in the office as well and *hopefully* in our bedroom too before summer.  It's a good lesson in living with things in one's house and taking renovations slowly  - if we had rushed into installing ceiling fans in all the rooms at once I don't think we would have realized the problem until it was too late.  And who knows how long it would be before it could be fixed or if we would ever bother to redo all three.

So far most of the action is up in the attic (and I'm not going up there unless absolutely necessary), but here you can see the hole Mike cut in the ceiling and the new fan-appropriate electrical box he installed.  He's getting so good at cutting holes in plaster that I don't even think we'll have to patch much of this part of the ceiling! (Though we do have to patch a lot cracks in other parts unfortunately.)

Here you can see the wires sticking out that are ready for the fan once everything is connected in the attic.  We bought a small white 36 in fan for this room because the room itself is barely 7 ft wide.