Basement Beautification: Thursday evening was spent scraping loose paint from the concrete walls and patching gaps in the concrete. The concrete patching will cure by Saturday, then I'll repaint with several coats of a latex-based barrier paint. My paint sprayer will get the paint into all of the nooks n crannies.
Once this step is done, I'll begin building the new storage partition wall.
I have been severely lagging on my attempts to document the DIY projects at the St.Johns bungalow. I have several "active" projects going on right now...two outdoors and one indoors (in case the weather changes).
First the outdoor projects. I have built a new gate and a potting / bbq bench, which is part of my overall back patio rejuvenation. This Fall I'll lay some concrete pavers and gravel to complete the back patio. The other current outdoor project is the double-bin composter...god knows my oak tree drops enough leaves to make this a priority.
The one "active" indoor project is the basement beautification. My basement is pretty nice compared to some I've seen. In a nutshell, I'm creating a 5' x 10' storage partition wall to hide my vast collection of plastic storage bins. Once the wall is done, I'll move my geeky computer desk and futon into the basement. I have an extra stereo tuner and wall-mount speakers which will provide subterranean tunes. When this project is done, the newly emptied spare-room will be repainted and renamed the Reading Room.
...paintchip no. 4003-1!!
Painting project #1: the bathroom.
I'll be very glad to have soothing color in the bathroom. My retinas have been shocked by the "electric blue" too many times. A warm grey scheme is more my taste...for the bathroom at least. The rest of the house will have bright colors, tho'.
I am really going to enjoy sitting back here this Summer, not a huge porch but it will be shady and hopefully cool.
The remaining cherry-tree is covered with white flowers and the grassy-mossy turf is still green. I'm hoping to get a new fence put in during May, once the soil dries out a bit...it's a bit mucky still.
Tomorrow is Easter and I'll be doing something I haven't done in years...BBQ a ham-butt.
Dang, I nearly forgot about this blog! It was intended to document happenings around the St. John's Bungalow. Anyway...
The big rotten bing cherry tree came out the other day. It was rotted more than I thought so I feel much less guilt over having it chopped down. Some of the limbs were mostly hollow and the trunk was cavernous ... more pics to come.
It's a bit chilly tonight, compared to last weeks weather, about 42 degrees. I was expecting a heavier dose of rain today but it never materialized. There was a bit of hail downtown, so I heard. And the revised forecast for the weekend is sunnier instead of all rainy...woohoo!
This weekend's project will be to sort through the crates in the basement and hopefully get it organized a bit more than it is now. I brewed a batch of Vagabond Ginger IPA this past weekend and will be racking it into the 5 gallon glass corboy for secondary fermentation...having a cool basement should improve my beer brewing, I think.
added 3.27.07: well, now the stump and roots have been ground out. And it appears that a few bits of chipped wood shattered my bathroom window...ah well, a small price to pay for piece-of-mind.
Incredible weather in PDX today, of course I was stuck in my "closet" at work. The thermometer on the back porch read 68° at 6pm...very nice. Right now it's 56° outside and the same in the basement. Looks like tomorrow will be partly cloudy and more rain possible by Wednesday, continued rain until Saturday.
The weather is changing! Warmer today, 50° outside right now, but still colder than San Diego. My basement is consistently 54° and I'm hoping it'll stay cool through the summer. My first summer in Portland was anything but cool, 104° when I drove the U-Haul into town.
Anyway, next weekend will be my first weekend of tackling projects around the house. Gotta start unpacking and getting organized, finding frequently used items is becoming more time consuming than I like. Will also change out some of the incandescent lightbulbs for compact-fluorescent.
Speaking of bulbs, I have yet to determine the variety of bulbs sprouting around the front and back yards....kinda' fun. I've begun laying out a garden for the spring, mentally at least, still have a few more important tasks before getting into gardening. No need to rush, have a few weeks of frosty nights ahead. Spring will be here soon enough but I am anxious to get some seeds sprouting in preparation for my garden make-over. Hostas, foxgloves, cosmos, herbs and coleus will be abundant this season. Being new to the Northwestern climate, I won't be spending much hard-earned money on seedlings at the local nursery...this will undoubtedly be a learning experience for me.
