Driveway Moments

As many of you who have visited us (in the past, obviously. We no longer "visit", do we?) know, we have a long and treacherous driveway. Torturous, really.There I am above, attempting to not fall into one of the many( and very deep!) holes that decorated our driveway. As we share the driveway with our neighbors, we often shared thoughts as to how we needed to get together and fix it up.
Bob- and myself in a far more limited capacity- had wheel-barrowed many a stone to try and fill the larger holes but it was beyond our abilities. We had discussed getting a pick-up trucks worth of gravel and filling holes- or more radically- purchasing a dump trucks worth of gravel. (The cost is NOT in the gravel, but in the delivery.) We assumed we'd all get together and spend an afternoon spreading gravel (such fun!!) and split the cost. Our neighbors volunteered to call around for pricing...

Picture of "the old driveway" complete with central raised strip of grass.
Imagine our surprise when I was told by A + K (names hidden to protect the identities!) that they'd contacted a local company and the entire driveway was "being done"; and not just dropping a load of gravel, but leveling and scraping and pounding and packing. We contemplated the cost of such a lavish operation (initially considering maybe $200 each for the gravel) and expressed our concern.
"Not to worry!", exclaimed A + K; they were paying for the whole thing!!!
My goodness! Such good neighbors! I hate to consider what it cost... but they had wanted to (gasp) pave the driveway when they moved in, and I'm sure that was prohibitive. So this was a happy conclusion and they said how appreciative they'd been when Bob snow-blowed and weed-whacked the entire length of the driveway many times. Wow! There are nice people out there!

So one day, enormous equipment got dropped off. I don't know about you but I'm so super excited and thrilled by big equipment. (Like when we went to the gravel pit that time: see blog post from several years back when we made the terrace.) Oh boy! Early morning progress!

Lots of beep-beep-beep back up noises and huge dump trucks and piles and piles of gravel...

Nothing for scale, but these were BIG piles- heaps! Several men with shovels began dancing with a bulldozer type appliance and they spread it all out and then pounded the hell out of it. This took hours. I was in my studio- which is right off the driveway- and it felt like the house might cave in. That would have been an interesting side effect of getting that perfect driveway.

I think this is the thing that made the house shake. It was all very amazing. I couldn't help but wonder where our neighbor's two kids were, though. As a kid I would have been out there watching... better than t.v.! But maybe modern children are different.

Maybe this isn't the most dramatic picture, but it's lovely! Beautiful! No bone-jarring, frame-bending catastrophe to negotiate...  It's a pleasure to sail up and down the driveway now. If only we had somewhere to go; seeing as how the pandemic still rages and we're being stay-at-home conservative.

Spontaneous Renovations!

A refresher for those of you who don't recall: the living room was formerly my studio. This cabinet in the corner (yes... MY little cabinet of horrors!) was blocking the "front" door. The door had been graciously nailed shut by our house's previous owner. We will also fondly recall some of the other "improvements" that he made such as attractive ceiling holes, visible in the above picture. Or here in vivid close up:

But wait! I'm getting side tracked as is easy to do while contemplating household projects! That's for another day...
Where was I? Okay, so I painted the "front" door green and that sparked a slew of projects and the shifting of multiple tectonic plates. Like Bob has been saying for ages, "I'd love to get that front door opened up" and I know that the painting of the door roused us to action because on Monday, we moved the cabinet, Bob prised the door open and Hey Presto! The living room became a new space.

In all fairness to (mostly) Bob and myself, there was a lot of work between here and there. Not only had the door been nailed shut, the door frame itself had been partially removed and there were odd gaps and openings to fill. Poor Bob had to secure a new 2 x 8 for framing and then discovered that the door itself had warped. He set about shimming and planing and generally refitting the whole mess together. But now it opens! And closes!
He also replaced the knob- for which we had no key- with a nifty handle. Much easier to use and better looking. (Ahem: please ignore that weird exposed cluster of taped up wires. Future project!)

So we've been happily spackling and painting and enjoying going in and out of our new front door. Bob even dragged the lawn furniture over to that side of the house for us to take in the new view:

Now I have to find a home for all the studio stuff that was stacked up beside the cabinet. (Hahaha! Not an easy job as my studio annex is still packed with Mommy's furniture! Yet another project! Onwards and upwards!!)

A Few Persistent Problems as Projects Accomplished

Despite extraordinary complications involving Windows 10 (and my Yahoo email!) I blog on. And I am happy to report that household projects are being resolved! F'rinstance, we had noisome, noxious, noisy European starlings (an invasive species to boot) nesting in a hole in the side of the house. The hole was in the wall next to where the computer resides and every Facebook adventure or web search was accompanied by the loud chortling of hungry baby birds. Bob and I realized we had been living with this for months; they must have delivered a multitude of litters of chicks before Bob devised a clever bird flap, that allowed the birds to exit, but not re-enter. It worked (with no birds hurt) and we can reclaim the wall. Bob has patched the hole with aluminum, visible in the picture above. We had tried the owl featured below, but he only served to scare our friends, as he was only five feet off the ground. Huzzahs to Bob!

The next project completed was skylights! Oooohhh! I am so happy. Thanks to Bob and our good friend Joe, I can now vent the hot air that collected in the ceiling and with the insulation that Bob and Joe added a few months past, the studio is an altogether nicer, cooler place to do business. (The business of art, that is!)

And here's yet another ongoing dilemma fixed: we had a quite large sink hole that formed in our yard. It had probably come from where roots were rotting from a tree removed long ago. But it kept getting deeper and was downright weird. When you went to mow the lawn, you sank waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down and when it rained, water pooled there. That's lil' Robin the Good, posing for scale.

First we added rocks (plenty of those left over from gardening!), then we added dirt and left over soil (from when we excavated to do the Mosaic Walkway), and then Bob (in an industrious burst) added sods left over from edging the vegetable garden. Watered in and !POOF! Instant level, grassed yard repair!

 

 Bob also went up on our roof and patched several areas with tar; we're ready if it ever rains again. (Sort of like California. I think we need rain!) He also cleaned the chimney. Bob's been busy and gets my appreciation and a big gold star!!

Good Fences make Good Neighbors

Bob and I spent what was a really pleasant afternoon erecting part of our ongoing fence project. While we like our neighbors, we don't always want to share driveway moments; I'm sure they feel the same way! We have been fortunate that a good pile of reusable, older stockade fencing came with the house. It was installed in peculiar places, but it was still serviceable and we moved it and used it to block off a good stretch of our property line. Bob recently purchased several new section and while the digging wasn't always easy (roots, rocks, tight spaces) we got three new post in and four sections up. At least the weather cooperated, with no humidity and nice temperatures. But there is a good deal of pollen around to prevent jobs like this from being altogether fun.

 A mix of old and new! This section of fencing goes behind Bob's "show room", where he has a bunch of garden supports and gates and arbors for sale. The new fence will allow the rusted metal work to stand out more, as will the idea of using white sand as a base. Right now the old leaves suppress grass and weeds and keep the metal work clean, but the tomato cages and peony rings do blend in.  We've been planning on doing this fence for a while, so it was good to get to it. There's another couple of panels to set up at this end, and further down the line in the opposite direction we need another four (maybe five) to complete our privacy wall. It also serves to keep the bears out and the dog in. (Yes, there was a bear and her off spring in a neighbor's yard recently. Yikes.)

And what does one eat in preparation for fence installation? Doesn't this look All-American? We've been nursing the remains of a package of (holistic, organic, free-range) turkey hot dogs from Memorial Day, and I think I'm ready to say good bye to them! Today we ran out of rolls and we had to improvise hot dogs surrounds. Bob used a tortilla wrap and I cobbled together slices of hot dog and sauerkraut on a Triscuit. Peculiar but we seemed fortified sufficiently to get the job done.

More of What Artists Do in Their "Free" Time

(And exactly what is "free time", anyway? Bob and I seem to specialize in lurching from one major project to the next. I admit to lying about all that free time we'd have after the chimney.) Here it is the end of November and we're still finishing up the horse fence. Which involved plenty of digging and driving in of all kind of fence posts. Remember us digging holes, several months back? Lots of holes as previously announced in another blog posting, in almost another life time...
So far, it resembles a mini Christo (and Jean Claude) project. We have hundreds of feet of electric poly-tape horse fence festooning the "back forty" awaiting final connection to the posts. As we are using several varieties of posts- mixed metal and wood- we need different insulators. Those are the plastic devices that afix the tape and wire conductor materials to the posts. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the company that sells you poly fencing doesn't sell all the various shape of connectors needed... thank goodness yet again that Bob and I are clever and capable and will create our own insulators and adapt those that are available. Bob thought to use those little plastic electrical tapes that are used to bundle wires. We found them at Home Depot in exciting neon colors (they were out of black)and it made the job that much more festive and entertaining. I think The Horse will likewise be amused at our sense of playfulness:

I am being ironic here, as it was a pretty miserable day to be doing this relatively lightweight job. It was drizzling and chilly and we were chilled to the bone.
Oh and an aside to all of our tasteful friends who no doubt will shudder when they see the screaming white plastic fence bisecting our property: we will replace the white tape with nearly invisible wire in the future. We are also sensitive to the graphicness of this tape fence, BUT as it offers superior visiblity, The Horse will see it and not try and run through it. It's a temporary fix to get Crispin home and carefully contained.

Fun With Geometric Shapes

Most people have openings perforating the walls of their homes. They are things called "doors" and "windows". We are fortunate to have additional openings; sort of bonus negative spaces.
                           

Our house is full of this sort of thing. I can only imagine that the previous owner was so enraptured with his Sawsall that he cast about for places to try it out and have fun with geometry. This approximation of a rectangle and circle is in what was the living room. Here's a close up:

I applaud his free hand flair. He apparently felt no need to measure or trace an outline, but dove right in with gusto- a veritable Jackson Pollack with a bold reciprocal saw.

We have yet to find uses for these holes and are open to suggestions.