Not a project: Our new dog Jill!

Jill is the new addition to the Williams house. She's a 6-year-old "Terrier Mix" (in quotes because that is the least helpful description I can imagine) that we adopted from the Houston SPCA about three weeks ago. Nate and I are convinced that she's the nicest dog ever, as she doesn't bark, is affectionate and likes to play and cuddle, doesn't have an aggressive bone in her stout body, and behaves better than most people. She looks like a fox 80% of the time, especially her tail, and officially stole my heart when she learned how to give me a high five.

Et cetera: Fence, Part III

Sorry for the extended silence on this blog. I got busy with finishing my proper school, and then have been occupied with setting up my internship. And we've both been busy working on projects, and usually at the end of a day we just fall asleep and don't have the energy to combine the pictures and write some text. But, after taking a few breaths this week, I decided that we could at least post a lot of pictures. And here we go!

A month or so ago we finally had the majority of our fence replaced. We've been really happy with the results.

The fence posts:







Dead fence:


The completed fence:









The whole fence job went really smoothly, and we're happy with the results. No more dogs running into our backyard to poop! And the neighbors are staying out as well. The only thing is, Tonya and Shanna and Rob have been interested in how much the pool neighbors (whose names we discovered are Donna and Joseph) paid for the section of fence that we share - if they even paid at all. Now, in a previous post I mentioned how everyone had badmouthed these neighbors, and to be honest, we didn't have much of a problem informing them that we were getting the work done, and they paid about 80% of their half. That's fine by me. But, Rob called last night and asked me if Donna and Joseph had paid anything for the fence. I said they paid for some of it and left it at that. However, Rob was very, very emotional and angry, and I hope I didn't agitate him by my answer. I think he's very upset that we got paid, and he didn't. It's a messed up situation, and I wish my neighbors would talk our their issues with each other rather than all this snipping about each other to Nate and me. Bad neighbors!

We also did more work on the front bed. We've decided the outline for the stones, making the front yard a little easier to mow, and have been steadily hauling away dirt from the built-up bed to the backyard. A couple of weekends ago my family visited and my mom helped up break apart the soil on the section near the driveway, and we got the soil low enough that we could plant some lilies of the Nile and caladium. We also got several trees from Lowe's for 50% off the original price. We planted a Jane magnolia in the front yard:





The Jane magnolia:


In the backyard we planted two gem magnolias and a pink dogwood. We also found a hibiscus tree at Kroger for $5, and planted it near the fence as well.

Dogwood:


Magnolia:


Hibiscus:

With bloom!


Our garden has been doing so great! We've used some green onions, and had the most delicious tomato in our BLTs. It's nice to just visit the garden when I want green onions, or basil, or sage, or cilantro. I have had to moved some things out of the herb spiral, though, because the squirrels were enjoying them too much. Who knew squirrels had such a thing for mint and cilantro? They don't seem to like the sage, rosemary, or oregano as much, although I think they've been sampling the thyme and spinach. Not enough to destroy the plants, though.

Arugala:


Basils (sweet and peppermint) and pineapple sage:


Onions!


Cilantro:


Tomato plant:



Finally, we've been finding lots of peculiar things as we've dug up our yard to remove/plant things.

Over a hundred (and likely over two hundred) oyster shells found underneath some photinias:


Nate with the remains of a post that was next to the slab for the shed:



A few random pictures that I'll throw in since this is practically a picture post:

The Canna lilies by the dining room window:


Pictures from when it was floody in the street:






Front bed:


Shed foundation (right-side yard):


Back patio:


Front yard:


Our poor garden got flooded out. After everything settled down, we redid the soil in the garden (since we now knew the low spots), and then planted the spinach and onions, as well as the basils.

Project 6: Redo the Orange Bedroom Closet

This is our surprise project! We decided to add something fun to the bedroom upstairs and continue our exploration of color.

The shelf in this closet was pulling away from the wall - the nail holding the rod and shelf in place had been more than half-way yanked from the wall. My guess would be that someone placed too much weight on the shelf/rod for many years.

So we pulled out the shelving unit, which went fairly smoothly. I used a crowbar on one side, and accidentally poked a hole in the wall. So we used our new patching drywall skills to fix my mess!



N was much more methodical on the other side of the wall, where he first exposed the nails, dug around them, and then carefully removed them leaving no damage except nail holes.

Then we moved on to texturing the newly exposed areas.





After the texture was done, we painted the ceiling white, and the majority of the walls yellow. We marked out how the stripes would be placed in the closet, and where the yellow would be exposed we painted a second coat of yellow paint.







Then it was time to tape the walls. This part of the process was very time consuming. The pattern we decided on was to have tweleve inch stripes of yellow and red (the yellow from the bathroom downstairs, the red a new color). N and I were concerned that it might look a little too much like a circus tent, so we decided to include a two-inch orange stripe in the center of the yellow stripes.

The taped closet:







Close up detail of the tape:



Although we taped the closet, we weren't sure if the paint would bleed through the tape or how neat our lines would turn out. We decided to paint the small orange stripes first:





With the tape off:





We were actually really happy with the orange! The lines were fairly straight, and where the lines isn't straight, it's a natural bleed out onto texture. The stripes aren't too fussy. Now it was time for the red:

I had bought a quart of this red paint (COLOR NAME) at Lowe's, and when N opened it up the paint was much thinner than we were used to with the Valspar paint. This was both good and bad; the good: the paint was thin enough that one quart could completely cover the red sections of the closet (but only just). The bad: the paint was very thin and spotty.

Red paint with tape up:







Even after a second coat (with a new full gallon of paint that was the usual consistency), the tops and corners of the red were uneven. Also, the thin red paint had leaked under the tape quite a bit in some areas, so I went back with a small brush and covered some of the red spots with yellow, and with another brush went over the weak spots in the red:





The last of the can of red paint: