In other news, I mentioned the other day that I ordered a hard drive enclosure so I could take the hard drive out of the decrepit Gateway desktop and try to recover files. It arrived yesterday – can you say quick shipping?? – and I was able to mount the hard drive and get it up and running. There’s clearly nothing wrong with it, so something else in the Gateway malfunctioned… I’m not even going to bother trying to find out what. If I had to guess, I’d say the graphics card finally died, but it’s just not worth it to me to try and keep it going. I am relieved to know that I didn’t lose any data, though, and I’m glad I can keep that hard drive for additional storage. I consider that $39 well spent…

Since I’ve spent so much time at home this week, I’ve been thinking a lot about what changes I might like to make to the house this year. I don’t know how much of it I’ll be able to accomplish – some of it is going to require financing of some kind, which I totally dread. I think I can do a lot of the work myself, or with assistance from RC, which will help with the financial part.

• To start, I want to paint and re-floor the living room, hallway, and foyer. I ultimately want hardwood floors throughout the house, but I’m okay to start with just the main living area. The living room is actually a combination living and dining room, but I don’t have dining room furniture. It’s about 15′ wide and 24′ long, but it’s a big rectangle, so I think I could install the flooring without too much trouble. Painting will require some help since I have cathedral ceilings, but I think RC can help with that. I’m also thinking about wallpapering half the foyer and the dining room wall, but I have to find just the right wallpaper.
• In the kitchen, I’m going to put beadboard paneling and a chair rail along the two walls that don’t have cabinets. I’m also going to paint above the paneling, which will require RC’s help, again. I’d love to put in a tile floor or a stained concrete floor, and I’d also like to install a concrete countertop to replace the existing laminate and reface the existing cabinetry, but I don’t know how feasible that really is for this year. I don’t have a lot of issues with the kitchen as it is, so I’m hesitant to put a lot of money into it.
• Paint and new flooring in the master bedroom. Paint is definitely doable this year, flooring is more of a maybe. Like I said, I’d really like to do hardwood throughout the house, but we’ll see.
• Paint and new flooring in the guest bedroom. Again, not sure if flooring will happen, but paint is going to happen for sure. I would also like to furnish this room – I’m going to have to start watching Craigslist to see if I can find some furniture bargains. I’d really like to put a daybed with a trundle in here for when the girls spend the night, but it also needs to have space for crafting, and potentially a very big dog crate…
• In the bathrooms and the laundry room I’d REALLY love to put down tile flooring, and I think that’s something I could handle on my own (with a little help cutting the curved and angled tiles). I’d also love to install a new tankless water heater, but I can’t justify doing that until my existing water heater dies. It’s a fairly energy efficient model, and I don’t think it makes sense to replace it yet.

Short list, eh? Who knows how much of this will actually get done… the paint I can do easily, but the flooring is going to cost a lot. I don’t want to finance any of it if I can avoid it, which means paying cash. It’s times like these I think it would really be nice to have two incomes.

Second, I have a sick bunny. Hazel had surgery almost 3 years ago to open his floppy, loppy ear canals to combat recurring ear infections, but somehow he managed to develop one in the last month that caused some facial nerve damage, leaving him unable to chew properly. He got to the point where he would eat a soft mush on his own, but in the last few days he’s having a harder time with that so I’m syringe-feeding him again. He doesn’t mind it, but it’s just a lot of extra work. Life is much easier when he eats on his own, and fortunately he seems to be back to it as of yesterday.

Third, I’ve been landscaping! I started Thursday night by spreading 18 bags of topsoil on the flowerbed. Naturally it rained on Friday, so I spent the day driving around buying plants and more dirt. It doesn’t sound like I did much those two days, but when I think about the fact that I, personally, moved almost 2000 lbs. of dirt… it’s a wonder I’m still standing! Saturday I got up early and added cow manure and peat to the flowerbed, then turned it all under. The soil here is such heavy clay, it really needs a lot of work. I also bought mulch, and then spread some of it around some existing spots. Sunday was D-Day… I spent the entire day adding another 22 bags of topsoil to the flowerbed, raking it smooth, putting down landscape fabric, planting all but 5 plants, and mulching. I finished at 8:30… just 1/2 an hour before sunset. Phew! My goal was to get it done over the weekend, and it is mostly done. I have a few more plants coming from White Flower Farm, and I’ll be visiting Soules Garden in a couple of weeks to pick out some daylilies to fill in the big bare space. I’m planting all perennials, and most of them are not mature plants, so I’m excited to see how it looks in the next couple of years.

I may join NaBloPoMo for June… just waiting to hear what the theme is. I’m hoping it’s something I can be creative with, but I can say for certain that it’s a lot easier for me to post when I have to… it’s easier having a reminder of sorts.

Well… RC couldn’t make it. The tiller is in the shop, and… let’s just say he was strongly discouraged from spending more time over here today. It’s not personal; my sister-in-law is with the girls all day, every day, during the week and just needs a break on the weekends. Anyway, I had to press on without him. On my list of things to do:

• Pull the hostas out of the flowerbed and plant them in big pots;
• Dig and turn the entire 100 sq. ft. flowerbed, by hand;
• Overseed the part of the flowerbed that used to go down the sidewalk, the part I’m letting go back to lawn;
• Plant clematis (I bought 2 clematis plants while I was at Lowe’s this morning, and in order to plant them I had to remove the sod around the trellis so I don’t kill them by mowing over them or trimming around them with the weed whacker).

I actually got it all done. I took a break around 1:30 to go find something to eat, and stopped by a local nursery to see if I could find any of the plants I think I want, just to see if they’re available locally or if I’ll need to order them online.

Needless to say, I’m pooped. I’ve taken enough Tylenol to put me down for the night, and I’m already loafing on the couch in my jammies, watching the Indiana Jones trilogy on SciFi. And now, I am done. I might pop out for a Dairy Queen (I passed no less than three of them on my trip out this afternoon, and now I think I need a Blizzard or a Peanut Buster Parfait. Yep, I need it.)

Mine is the type of house that comes with six shrubs and two trees when it’s built… usually some kind of evergreens and a flowering plum or pear. I was lucky enough to get plum trees; every single house in the neighborhood besides mine has Bradford pears. I’m happy to be a nonconformist, even if I had no choice in the matter. Anyway, about a year or so after I moved in I had a landscape guy come and tear out one of the two flowering plums in my front yard. It was a nice little tree, but since the front of my house faces north AND I only have one window on that side of the house, I was afraid it would be a little too dark. I also had him tear out the six little evergreen shrubs, mostly because I wanted a bigger flower bed across the porch, and also because they were stunting my creativity. I just couldn’t figure out what else to plant around them, and they were pretty puny.

In addition to pulling out the tree and shrubs, I had the landscape guy create a giant 5′ deep flowerbed that stretches all the way across the front porch (20′), down the length of the sidewalk (15′), and over to the driveway (5′). That’s 200 square feet of flowerbed, give or take. Here we are, 4 years later, and all I’ve managed to plant is three puny hostas, a Virgina Sweetspire, and an Andromeda bush. The hostas have done great, but they look lonely. The Andromeda hasn’t done well; the soil where it’s planted is terribly wet, and it hasn’t grown at all. The Sweetspire looks great, and sends up new shoots every year.

This year, I’ve decided, is the year I’m going to DO SOMETHING with the outside of the house. I’m going to rip out the steel edging around the giant flowerbed and let the part that goes down the sidewalk and to the driveway go back to being lawn. Then, I’m going to dig up the plants, build a big raised bed/retaining wall thingy across the front porch, fill it with good dirt, and start over. I can’t wait to get started. I need help figuring out which type of retaining wall bricks to buy, though. I went to Lowe’s and Menard’s to price different styles, and I think my favorite is the one from Lowe’s, which is (of course) the most expensive.

This is the one from Lowe’s. I like the color; it’s a little pinkish and so matches the brick a little better.

This one is really a paver, to be used for patios and walkways, but I think it would work for a wall, too.

This one is similar to what I found at Lowe’s, but it only comes in a tan or gray and I’m just not sure about either of those colors. I suppose I could buy a sample and bring it home to see how it looks…

Any thoughts? Suggestions? I’m hoping to get this done by the end of May so I can enjoy it all summer.