Magnolia House

Remembering the Journey through Garbage

This weekend is Easter weekend. It's also dumpster weekend. I've lost count of the number of dumpsters we've had at our house over the last three years.

We have them in reduced frequency now... the latest is to send away a full year's worth of accumulation. 

I suppose we could hire someone to take all this stuff away, but there's something I like about personally disposing of the debris from our efforts; the memories.

Like the pile of mortar that Cynthia and Sascha chiseled off of the old bricks that became the studio patio. Or the chunks of concrete from the sidewalk we broke out to make way for the new back porch and patio. And then there was all the wood from tearing off the porch, scraps from the new arbor, branches from another large shrub that fell to the chain saw...

Some times we look at our house project and forget from where we have come.

Touching the cast-off's one last time serves as a nice reminder, an opportunity to celebrate our journey.

Here's what the back yard looks like at night now...

 

A Few Before and After's

I've been neglegent in posting to our blog here, as I've been sharing more on Facebook this last year. Here are some before and afters of what's been going on the last 10 months...

Bed Room

Last summer we had our friends Matt and Carly Cross coming to stay with us for a few months, so we did a quick flip to one of the downstairs bedrooms. We painted the floor, repaired woodwork, painted walls, and added a chandelier. Boom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back Porch

We had a vision of steps cascading down onto a new patio, and we made that happen this last fall. The old porch was sitting on a brick foundation and after 100 years had its share of rot. Sitting on new concrete footings, the new porch has stairs to the side as well as steps off the back. The rails were fun, but the angles... well, in the end I was able to use some engineering skills to get the right angles!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Studio

This ended up being a year in the making, between resurrecting the old shed, laying a brick patio and adding a cover. It's a fully operational pottery studio now!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back Yard

This has been three years in the making, from the initial clean up of Mr. Allmen's rock collection, demo'ing old sidewalks, pulling out pipes set in 2 feet of concrete, acquiring a couple of mature pygmy palms and various other plantings, refinishing a used fountain, running sprinkler lines, and laying a paver patio. We recently added a Jacaranda tree as well. It's starting to feel like an oasis...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sun Room

This room is our absolute favorite in the house. The Allmen's were good to us in closing in this part of the porch. We  live in this room, and so does everyone who visits us. At a party we held, I counted eleven people jammed in here. We replaced the aluminum sliders with french doors, addded flooring and repainted the wood work. We refreshed the windows with lace curtains, and you'll find us here every morning having coffee.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Furnace

When we were buying the house, our inspector told us the old furnace had plenty of life left in it since they get used so seldom here. I got excited to sand of the rust and repaint it this fall. We custom fit some shelves and now we have some cubby holes for our shoes and gloves, as well as a more presentable furnace in the back porch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back Door

I couldn't part with the back door, but we didn't need a cat door. I spent a Saturday rebuilding the bottom of the door to install a new panel, refiitted the window, some paint and new hinges and we kept one of our favorite old house features; the sound of an old screen door going "kerslam" when it closes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What's Next?

Well, we've been adding trees. 8 of them. 5 new Magnolias, a Crepe Myrtle, a Tulip Tree and a Jacaranda for the back yard. We tore out the front yard in November, and started to make plans for some water conserving plantings, some grass, and a picket fence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Special thanks to Curtis here, for helping dig all these big holes! Oh, and check out the irrigation tubes for deep watering. Yes, Oregonians, we have to water trees in California! More in another month or so!

 

 

 

 

Backyard War-Zone. Last Dumpster (I think)

Once again, we have used the side yard of our house as a junk yard, as debris from the latest clean-up and refurbish has accumulated. I think this is the last one for a long while.

This is mostly rotted and termite eaten wood from the shed, and some of its contents (old shelves and the like).

So now our yard it pretty close to being a blank slate, and the landscaping can begin in months to come.

We still have a pile of rocks that are all pretty cool from Mr. Almen's rock-hounding days (the previous owner), and a stack of used bricks.

We'll figure out how to incorporate them in the yard somehow. In the mean time, visitors enjoy the opportunity to dig through the rock pile for treasures.

Our friends Wade and Jenn visited last night, and their three boys left with a couple of bucket fulls of cool rocks.

The pile in the middle of the back yard is a three tiered fountain that will be one of our features in what will be a garden and patio oasis. Needs a little rework, but what hasn't?

The new back fence was painted by our roomie Sascha. She endearingly refers to it as "my fence." She did a great job.

 

New Side Yard Fence and Gate

This weekend, I finished up the fence and gate for the side yard (it still needs paint).

The old fence and gate were at the back corner of the house, and there was a delightful little hidden garden beyond it on the path to the front yard (the path that used to be covered with a hedge).

So as I've been settings posts and building fences I've been practicing on this little one.

I had to reset the post after my first try, because it was too loose. The ground is very soft here, making for easy post hole digging (unlike the clay in Portland). The draw back is the holes have to be deep and use lot of concrete (remember those poles I took out last year that went to China and had 200 pounds of concrete on them?

So here's that space reclaimed to the back yard. Everything about the fence is custom cut and fit.

From the post on the wall of the house, to the connection to the existing fence, to the fence boards around the tree that is on both sides of the fence. Lots of cutting and fitting.

Cynthia calls it artsy. I call it a whole weekend. Well, OK, I spent 12 hours on it, and didn't get to the back fence gates. Those will have to wait.

August will bring the completion of the back fence, and more importantly, the studio, after my back heals up a bit more. Post holes and bags of concrete are tough on an old guy,,,

 

This is not an Oregon "potatoe bug"

The first time I saw one of these, I thought I had run into some queen termite or something. I don't know... this "Jerusalem Cricket" or more commonly known "potatoe bug" is one big ugly dude.

At an inch and a half long, maybe two, and they are shocking for us small bug people from Oregon used to a potatoe bug looking like a little pill.

Anyway, It's the weekend before Thanksgiving, and I'm out doing yard work. Mid 60's and clear sky. Also not like Oregon.

I put up the rest of the pigeon spikes, cut off those galvanized poles from the concrete and threw them in the alley (some one's always driving the alley looking for recyclables) and starting digging around the big stump out back (this little fellow was in the dirt there). I'll have some pictures of that a little later.

Another Hedge comes out

Call me sentimental (Cynthia does). I have trouble changing things that have a lot of history, so taking out shrubs that have been in place for many years has been tough. We are gradually cutting down and digging up years of history in the yard.

Last weekend we took out the hedge running down the east side of the house, by the chimney.

Elaine (grew up here) had asked me why we didn't take it out when she visited last summer. I thought maybe we could save it... I mean, that took a long time to grow...!

Anyway, with the winter rain, I'm wanting to get some new plantings in place, so it's given me a push to do some yardwork (even though we have plenty of work to do in the house). Cynthia and Cate went to the nursery and brought back native plants. Chris and I went to town on the hedge and made a flower bed. Some of that dirt will be grass.  Here's what we ended up with and what we found:

 

 

Pigeon Eviction

I have been postponing this last weekend's work for some time.

It's not that I didn't want to do it.It was just all the really tall ladder work, like installing the cover on our second story gable vent, and eviciting the pigeons at the high point of each side of our roof.

We rented a 32 foot ladder, and up I went. Looking straight ahead as if the ground was not receding from me by a foot or more with each step, I climbed upward. After my first trip up, I gained confidence and bouncing around up there felt OK.

I was going up and down with drills, buckets, and bird spikes, yes, BIRD SPIKES. The pigeons have been roosting on both sides of our house, pooping all over everything, and making lots of racket. I have poked at them with sticks, thrown rocks, shot at them with a wrist rocket, and now, simple eviction.

I rose into their space with soap and water, and a bleach solution that declared the space MY space. I followed up by installing the most expensive bird spikes on the planet (since I don't want to have to go up there again if at all possible).

I walked the roof, washed with soapy water and squirted bird poop with bleach, hoping to eradicate every smell that screams "Pigeon Party at the Magnolia House!"

Two days later, it's still all quiet.

When the Allmen family visited, they told us about their Dad's various battles with the pigeons over the years, including using a stick not unlike I had crafted. There were spikes up there made of nails, and the pigeons had figured out how to nest on top of them. Crazy.

I hope we've got it resolved this time. And my wrist rocket is still ready and waiting.

 

 

The Allmen Family

Here's a picture of the Allmen family kids that grew up in the Magnolia house.  55 years of history.  Very cool. 

The hedge pictured here inthe background is the one we cut down. It served as the backdrop for the family photo every year.

We look forward to many more family visits as we continue to work on the house and honor its family values history.

 

Don't hedge your bets

Sunday I finished off the two front hedges that were growing between two and four feet across the ground from their trunks.  The one on the left covered the sidewalk, on the right is was just plain ugly looking at it from the top.

The black cat that lives in our hedges is still hanging around, even though much of his home is gone now. 

We found a few interesting things as we pulled out the hedge, including:

a LOT of pastic bags

unopened cans of Bud Light from the 90's,

an old cell phone,

a brandy bottle, and ...

a rabbit carcass.

 

There's a sidewalk under that hedge

Today I started cutting away at some of the overgrown shrubs and trees.  My buddy Steve came over and we went after the hedge that was running down the side of the house to reveal the sidewalk!  And it goes around front, too! 

I think it's time to lose all the hedges except the one between the houses.