The Hint of a Patio?

I don't even know what else to call this thing. Pavers under the garden bench? Eine Kleine Patio? Well, whatever it's called - it's about time. I love my little garden bench but sitting on it in summer always left the

ankles exposed to all the mosquitoes that seemed to hover under the bench. On top of that it always looked a little sloppy because not much grass grew under there, and occasionally a neighborhood cat would decide it was a great place to sleep - at least until Linus came out!

So this season I decided to do something about it. First I laid out the 16" pavers to get an idea of positioning and so I'd know exactly where to dig. The nice thing is this was a small project so the digging was minimal.

Then I just laid out the pavers, leveled them, and swept some soil into the cracks. I wish I knew the name of the pavers, but they are a kind of oldish looking brown with gray and I really liked the design. I got them at Lowe's for about $4.50 each.

The whole project took about an hour-and-a-half.

This is a good shot because it puts things in perspective. Believe-it-or-not, I actually like the fact that there are at least four different types/styles of pavers going on in the back yard!

One more project done!

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The Back Stoop - Done! (Well, for the most part)

As a reminder, when I started the back stoop, which seems like forever ago, it looked like this:

So it was time. At the end of the last post, the stoop was looking like:

It was getting there. Really, all I had to do was paint, but if you know me - I......hate.....painting! Stain on the floorboards and two coats of B-I-N primer, and two coats of paint later, here it was (of course Linus supervised throughout):

Oh, just a quick step backward - here's the stoop without the doors. As you can see the mower and some other things are stored below:

What you can't see here is that the storage runs the entire length of the back porch, more storage is always good! Anyway, I showed you in the first post about the stoop that I had built the doors, so all that was left was to paint them (of course - ugh) and hang them.

Aaahhhhhh, so much better - or was it? The pad outside the stoop looked like, well Ma will be reading this so - it looked like (insert your own word). I hate when yo…

Made at 173: Dining Room Table

OK, so this table wasn't exactly made at 173, but it was re-done! Bear with me a minute. For years the dining room was just missing something...

The Kitchen - Part 3: Walls

The walls were solid, but paint was peeling everywhere, and there were some rough spots throughout...

If you look closely at the picture above (and below for that matter, you can see the spackle in pink. And, this next picture shows where there was a large dip in the wall that leads to the dining room. It was significant enough that it made the ceiling look horrible, and I had to put so much spackle on that I figured I better put some tape in it:

I used this stuff:

I liked it because it went on pink, and when it was dry it turned white, taking the guessing game out of it. Besides that, as to quality - well, it worked just like any spackling I suppose.
Then there was the area behind the stove - what a mess. All these years there was this big piece of metal on the wall behind the stove, and a large piece of melamine on the wall next to it:

And here's the sheet of metal behind it:

Luckily it all came off pretty easily, but how ugly is that glue??

Only one thing to do - cover it:

…

173 Our Old House

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