Tag: Yard

Unduly expensive and complicated raised garden boxes

/ Matt Talley / 2 Comments

I have spent something like 40 total hours of labor over the entire summer and spent ~$250 to build the most over complicated raised garden bed boxes within a four mile radius.  I have obsessed over the design & materials, changed the layout and location no more than 4 times and used child labor (my 9-year old son) during construction.  We now have Garden Boxes that can support the weight of our entire house and my wife mentioned that I might need an intervention.

It all started when we decided to grow some veggies and I didn’t want to use treated lumber from Home Depot.  I considered landscape bricks, but the total project cost would be over $700 for three 8X3X2’ beds.  I wanted to use 3-inch thick cypress beams, as that particular wood is rot proof for 50+ years, but that type of wood is outrageously expensive here in the Pacific Northwest ~$1000 for the needed lengths.   I considered redwood, but it was also too pricy to be left out in the yard, half covered with dirt.  The predicament was solved for me when I happened upon a bunch of 4”X10”X8’ fir beams that were end cuts from a beam roof construction project in the neighborhood.  As they were “scrap” I picked them up for a song.

In addition to the boxes, there will be an espalier apple tree and two columnar apples on that side of the yard.  I wanted the garden boxes to mesh with that plan and still be functional, pretty, and to fit in with the style of our house & yard. To help with that goal, I decided to lap joint the corners of the boxes and use hardwood dowels to both keep the joints together and as homage to the period craftsmanship of our home.  I know I have OCD.  Since I was already using dowels, I wanted to marry the planks together (see drawing) so that the whole structure would be stronger and resist and bowing in the middle as the dirt pressed on the sides of the beds.  I felt it might also be nice to add replaceable cedar top rails to shed water and to take the brunt of any abuse.  I may have over-thought the concept and might have been better off just using concrete cinder blocks…

The finished product with espalier apple trees cartooned in.


Here are the exact steps to take in building raised garden boxes just like ours:
Plan obsessively
Re-design twice
Buy lumber – get great deal
Bring home and cover with tarp
Let sit for a month
Measure and layout each joint with son’s help
Let son drop board on your shin
Try REALLY hard not to say curse words
By son ice cream.
Limp for a couple of days
Carefully cut all end notches with son
Tell him no when he wants to run the circle saw
Tel him no when he asks again every 10 minutes
Lit it all sit for 2 more weeks
Find really expensive combination square your son left in the grass
Smile because you love him anyway
Drill all dowel holes in the middle of the individual sections with spade bit
Let sit for a week in rain because you forgot to tarp it
Assembly all sections dry for 1st box
Realize that the pieces are now warped and twisted more than a bit
Say a LOT of curse words
Hand-fit each joint with a mallet and chisel
Cuss some more
Purchase ¾” X 2’ auger bit
Assemble 1st box with glue and dowels
Get HUGE splinter in palm
Say hurtful, mean things to the lumber & loudly question the legitimacy of its parentage
Cry a little while digging the jagged hunk of wood out with utility knife
Use Super Glue creatively as first aid supply
Spend a full hour getting 1st box square using one hand
Call it a night
Make sure the thing didn’t move while you were sleeping
Drill corners for dowels
Almost burn up drill
Look at sky and count to ten
Run out of waterproof wood glue
Say dirty words all the way to Home Depot
Buy bigger drill, glue, and more dowels
Apply glue and hammer in dowels with wooden mallet
Look over to see puppy chewing on your hat
Say the F-word
Retrieve soggy hat
Clamp box up with 8 huge pipe clamps
Let joints dry/sit for a week
Construct next two boxes with minimal dirty words
Let sit a further week
Ask 15 year old daughter if she wants to help
She will look at you like you are insane for the mere suggestion
Try not to break her phone when she returns to texting
Look up and count to twenty – repeat
Spread out boxes in yard and turn over
Apply two coats of white primer to bottoms of boxes
Get paint on favorite pair of shorts
Let wife help paint over primer with green outdoor paint
Look up and notice that wife has painted halfway down the box…
Take paint brush from wife
Say sweet things to her and laugh about the extra paint coverage
Let boxes sit for two days
Finish painting bottoms green (keep ground moisture out and blends with grass)
Let sit a week
Position in yard where they should finally go
Ask visiting friend for his opinion
Take his advice (as it is better than your plan) and reposition
Let wife see
Move 3 more times to make wife happy
Move back to position friend suggested
Let sit for a week
Get married to wife a second time and almost loose mind to stress
Have house full of guests for a week
Try not to kill Ross when he makes fun of your yard
Drink lots of beer
Buy gravel and hardware cloth for box foundation
Cut sod from under box locations and move to bare patch in front yard
Wife will work hard in front planting lavender and arranging sod
Lay hardware cloth and pour gravel footings
Spend Saturday with wife finally placing boxes
Drink beer and wine until you hurt the next day in celebration of your hard work
Let sit another week
Cut top rail on table saw
Decide to really complicate things by adding hardwood splines to top rail joint
Devise special spline jig for table saw
Cut last rail too short
DO NOT throw anything, close eyes and count to ten
Revert to cussing
Trip to Home Depot for extra cedar
Re-rip and re-miter last rail
Glue joints of rail and try not to glue rail to box
Wait 3 days and cut away spline waste
Find “cute” little ceramic tiles from the 1920’s that wife will love for boxes
Spend 2 nights in shop making custom cedar frames for the tiles
Add corner splines to match boxes just because
Measure twice to find box center
Attach tiles to front of the boxes with proper outdoor screws
Coat top rails with food-safe clear coat
Wait 2 days
Apply another coat and repeat
Show wife your handy-work and wait for her to swoon
Point out the joint details and all the thought that went into the build
Wait for batting of eyelashes and the swoon…
Mention the period tiles and their perfect symmetry
Keep waiting…
Waiting……………

A drawing of the project shoeing some of the detail

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Cleaning and organizing the shop

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

My garage is actually condemned and we knew it was a tear-down when we bought our house.  Half of the bottom sills are rotten, there was no power,  and it used to move a little when hit by a strong gust of wind.  I have planned some projects in the house that require some saw and painting space, so we decided to leave the garage up until we completed the wanted updates to the house and then replace it with a somewhat larger, yet period-appropriate, garage/shop combo with a studio apartment above.

Right after we moved in, I scrubbed the place, applied some leverage to the walls to square them up as possible, reinforced the roof trusses, glued and screwed 3/8 plywood sheathing to two of the interior walls, installed florescent lighting, installed 9 bike hooks in the rafters, added garden tool holders and box storage shelves, built a narrow stout plywood work bench, and partially wired 5 outlets.  I did most of it with lumber, wire, and lights that I already owned, so my total outlay was less than $200 and the structure is now solid as possible given the years of neglect and will usable for the next couple of years.  I was going to do a little more – rebuild the barn doors and finish the wiring, but a surprise shoulder injury and subsequent surgery put that off indefinably.  I now have more projects than time and can’t fit it all in.

The little bit of work making the garage usable has really been a blessing:  In the six months that we have owned La Maison Du Talley, I have built our compost bins, the three huge garden boxes, two window flower boxes, a mason bee house, refinished a massive hutch, built a rolling utility cabinet, stripped and repainted furniture, built stuff for the kids, stored and serviced my fleet of bicycles, rewired a couple of lamps, etc… all without filling our house or basement with noise, sawdust, or fumes, which keeps The Mrs. happy!

For the last couple of months my kids have been here and cleanup and organization after this or that project was minimal.  Crap started piling up.  I got some new lumber and supplies dropped in my lap and they were just sort of tossed in.  There were semi-emergency house and bike repairs that left tools splayed about, my larger table saw (every proper joiner/cabinet maker needs two…) is in pieces as I am rebuilding the fence and adding a router table to the side leaf.  I had to crawl around and under bikes, push saw horses out of the way, step over a wheel barrow, and move the drill press to get a set of micro pliers to repair a necklace for my happy wife.  It was starting to look like Godzilla ate a strip mall containing a furniture, garden and bike shop then pooped in my garage.

After dropping my daughter off at the Airport the past Sunday morning at 5:00am, I went home, snuggled with the wife and the puppy for a couple hours, spent the rest of the morning in my bathrobe reading part of a book, consuming a large amount of coffee, and had a leisurely lunch.  I then spent the entire afternoon cleaning and reorganizing the garage so that it would again be usable and so I wouldn’t brain myself every time I opened the door.  I was super-productive:

Completely cleared and cleaned my bench top
Hung all the bikes on their assigned hook
Worked on stripping “new” Schwinn frame
Unpacked two boxes of refinishing and painting supplies
Sweep up a summers worth of saw dust
Emptied trash and recycling bins
Got the Tug-a-bike trailer ready to sale on Craigslist
Completely reorganized my tool chest (All the bike tools now have their own drawer!)
Put some labels on the nail and screw bin
Organized bench tools
Worked on a secret project for Laurel
Hung up First Aid Kit
Reinforced a wooden table
Made up a complete took kit for the house (no more in and out for little repairs)
Moved drill press to better location
Worked on finishing table saw fence

In addition to my sometimes compulsive need for organization, there will be a number of Engineers and builders staying at or visiting my home in the next month and it would kill me if my work space looked like that when they showed up.  When I shut off the lights at 10:00 PM, it was a whole new space and ready for inspection and for me to jump into a new project that I have planned for  September.

a few pictures of the building and the organization spaces/racks from earlier this summer.

You wish you had my neighbors!

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

Some mornings I get up and it feels like I live in the nicest mobile home in a south Alabama trailer park. It is the neighbors – both sides.

On the North side of Casa da Talley, resides a couple of 20-something constructions workers who also happen to be in a metal band. They are nice enough guys during the day and when sober, but add beer and darkness and the guitars are plugged in, the drum sticks uncased, and the amp volume is turned to 11. Sometimes the music is OK, but there practice space is 10 feet from our bedroom window and guitar licks at 2am when we have work the next day is super-uncool. Add to the music their general inability to take care of their yard, the heaps of trash in the front and back, the non-working trucks and motorcycles parked in the weeds and one has a recipe for hillbilly soup. On of the most enduring things they have done since we have been there was to carve their Halloween pumpkin with the words “Balls Deep” and put it out on their front porch. While I seriously doubt that they had even one trick-or-treater I am willing to be that their artistic flair led to a bunch of uneasy questions from the little ones on the street.

I need to point out that I live on a block of 500K+ homes. These guys live in one of the very few rentals on the whole street and have made life generally miserable for the entire neighborhood for the last 2.5 years. The owner of the property is a septuagenarian lawyer who could care less about the those of us who have to live near his tenets.

To the south I have on old chain-smoking semi-recluse whose yard, if left solely in his care, can have grass growing 3 feet high. There are vines growing into his roof and attic, the back yard is completely covered in weed-trees and there are heaps of trash in the back and alley. Though usually benign, he has recently moved a homeless couple into a tent/tarp in the backyard and says it is in exchange for them doing his yard work. Both of my new “neighbors” seem to have serious alcohol problems, but the woman also has a chemical dependency and possible severe mental health issues – her companion has apologized for her outbursts at least once. When a half naked homeless man apologizes for your behavior while he is smoking a hand-roll and taking swigs from an Olde English 800 tallboy, you might need to look into some in-patient care…

While having a BBQ with friends and family 2 weekends ago, there was cussing and screaming from the tent compound about how stupid her partner was and shortly there after screams of drunken ecstasy and and very vivid and specific directions as to what she wanted done as the couple engaged in freaky dirty hobo sex 2 feet from my fence. REALLY!? My buddy, David – The Sleepy Weasel, was there and we went over to ask the homeowner to make them stop. He seemed genuinely surprised that he his very own drunken, crazy, high, street people were doing the dirty. He apologized and marched into the back to turn the hose on them or something. The stopped and we spent the afternoon around the grill loudly discussing the ballistic wound capability of various pistol rounds and hand loads – David just got back from his third tour in Iraq and his wife grew up in her father’s sniper rifle producing machine shop: he is currently manufacturing optic mounts for the Navy Seals .50cal rifles. After she uttered the phrase “6 inch permanent wound cavity” there was a rustling under the tarp and all was quiet for the rest of the afternoon 🙂

In all fairness, part of the reason that we got such a smoking deal on our home was the neighbors and the condition that their houses were in. I spoke to a Realtor 3-4 months ago who had shown our house a few times while it was on the market and lamented that is not for trash and the truck parked in the yard next door (north house – truck was gone when we put our offer in) she could have sold the place in a month and got the full asking price.

Well, as of today (July 9, 2010) my hellbilly neighbors are quiet and respectful, and have cleaned up some. They had a huge party a couple of weeks ago and pissed off the wrong neighbor who called a couple of cops he knew. The cops told them to turn it down and they did – for exactly 15 minutes. the cops came back found the party in full gallop. They used some obscure statute about willfully disobeying the Seattle noise ordnance, and the police seized all the guitars in the house. They busted a few people for underage drinking and both of the guys living there got hauled off to jail for a day or so. I guess after 2.5 years one guy had taken all he could stand.

Concerning the new “tenants” to the south – well, that one is stickier: There is no law in Seattle that makes it illegal to live in a tent in someone else’s backyard. The fact that there were invited by the property owner also adds a wrinkle and there is very little that can be legally done about the situation. One of the guys across the ally came out the other morning and saw the dude peeing in the back with just a shirt on – no pants. That neighbor was enraged – he has a couple of kids. He called the cops, the health department, Planning and development, the sheriff, and the city attorney. I would really HATE to piss this guy off – he seems to be tenacious, bright, and angry. There is talk about him procuring bees. For my part, I have been cranking up the circle saw bright and early every morning and shooting the pellet gun with my son, talking loudly about marksmanship. As my boy has a competition air rifle that shoots a .177cal pellet out at 1200 feet per second, it is not a quiet activity. So far it has endeared me to the Machiavellian homeowner and made our new neighbors grumble a little bit.

I will give it a couple of weeks and watch from the bench to see how this all plays out. Hopefully,  no new tents appear and the one there now gets packed up and moved.

Coffee gets crap done!

/ Matt Talley

I was a whirlwind of activity on Saturday.  I got tons of “to-dos” accomplished, TONS!  Not sure what it was – the sun finally shining, nervous energy, the continuous day-long ingestion of coffee, or what but I wish I had that much fire every day.  Here is how it went down:

Awakened at 5:30 – neighbor flipping out: cussing, smashing, yelling…
He found girlfriend cheating on him – no shots fired and she was long gone
Back to sleep until 9:00
Laurel ground some fresh roasted beans and made coffee 🙂
Took Brodie in the truck to run errands
Stopped for more breakfast (and more coffee) at C&P
Got haircut and surprise tea tree oil scalp massage
Went to estate sale
Found amazing joiner and radial arm saw for $50!!!!!
Already sold 🙁
Purchased a clamp and pruning shears
—- Estate sales make me a little sad – a reminder of my own mortality
Stopped at a garage sale on the way home
Got 4 cook books and a DVD (Leon the professional) for $2.50
Picked up puppy food
Came home and mowed old guy’s yard next door
My sweet wife made a yummy lunch
Rode the Penny-Farthing 4 miles – down on California Ave and back
Came home and did some truck maintenance – air in tires and oil change
Down to hardware and garden stores for a couple things
Picked up another top-hat blueberry and spearmint
Dug up 6 ferns in the back yard – only one lives there now
Planted white azalea – they remind me of Daddy
Cut some shrubs off front fence
Planted blueberry and mint
Had pizza with friends and family for dinner
Enjoyed a wheat beer
Went for a walk around pond with everyone
Picked some raspberries
Sowed grass seed in the backyard just before sunset
Watched The Long Way Down on DVD
Enjoyed a great glass of port with Laurel
Asleep by 11:30

I was a whirlwind of activity on Saturday. I got tons of “to-dos” accomplished, TONS!

Awaken at 5:30 – neighbor flipping out: cussing, smashing, yelling…

He found girlfriend cheating on him…

Back to sleep until 9:00

Laurel ground some fresh roasted beans and made coffee J

Took Brodie in the truck to run errands

Stopped for more breakfast (and more coffee) at C&P

Got haircut and surprise tea tree oil scalp massage

Went to estate sale

Found amazing joiner and radial arm saw for $50!!!!!

Already sold L

Purchased a clamp and pruning shears

—- Estate sales make me a little sad – reminder of my own mortality

Stopped at a garage sale on the way home

Got 4 books and a DVD (Leon the professional) for $2.50

Picked up puppy food

Came home and mowed old guy’s yard next door

My sweet wife made a yummy lunch

Rode the Penny-Farthing 4 miles – down on California Ave and back

Came home and did some truck maintenance – air in tires and oil change

Down to hardware and garden store for a couple things

Picked up another top-hat blueberry and spearmint

Dug up 6 ferns in the back yard – only one lives there now

Planted white azalea – they remind me of Daddy

Cut some shrubs off front fence

Planted blueberry and mint

Had pizza with friends and family for dinner

Enjoyed a wheat beer

Went for a walk around pond with everyone

Picked some raspberries

Sowed grass seed in the backyard just before sunset

Watched The Long Way Down on DVD

Enjoyed a glass of port with Laurel

Asleep by 11:30

Fresh Raspberries

/ Matt Talley / 5 Comments

I got up semi-early Sunday, went out for a little yard work and noticed that 5 bright red ripe raspberries were waiting for me.  I gave ’em a little squeeze and decided to give them another 24hours before moving them from cane/stalk to my cereal bowl.  I thought about them as I cleaned the garage and finished up a few little projects during the afternoon.  My mom called and we were talking yard/garden stuff and while I was in the middle of telling her all about the raspberries, I looked  out our bedroom window at them and a fvcking bird swooped in and started pecking away.  Holy swamp-crotch!!  I dropped the phone and ran out of the back door barefoot to save Monday’s breakfast.  I was too late – only one of the ripe ones survived the avian assault.  I MAY have eaten it greedily while hunched over glaring about with murderous intent for any feathered “friend” who happened to have flown by…  It looks like I will be off to the Garden Center in the morning for netting.  At least it was only a few berries and not a whole crop.

My strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries are all comming along and it will be July before most of them are ready, so I have some time to set up my anti-bird blockade.

Being Good and Bad in the Garden

/ Matt Talley / 6 Comments

Our yard (front and back) is in bloom and we have all sorts of flowers, herbs, and veggies coming up.  The grass is thick and green and the couple of bare spots where the overgrown bushes used to be have now been reseeded and they are now sprouting tiny green slivers of Kelly green cover.  The vine maple is in full leaf and is a pleasure to both look at and to lay under in an afternoon hammock snooze

I woke up early Saturday morning and took some pictures of the rhododendrons in the front and various sprouty things in the back just to document the current state of affairs for some friends and family who have been asking.  Progress in the yard redo is slower than we had wanted – mostly due to us being overly ambitious for the first year in the new house, my own inaction, a screwed up shoulder, and our convoluted schedule.  We had planned to have the garden boxes in, but it doesn’t look like they are going to make it this season as I am just running out of time and more projects inside the house have appeared.  For now we are growing our kitchen herbs, garlic, and tomatoes in planters/containers and will expand that little by little for the next month to include peppers, three additional tomatoes, two more blueberries, and some yellow squash.  I had hoped to have the apple, lemon, and cherry trees taken care of, but as yet the Lapin cherry is the only thing that is growing roots.  The raspberries and thorn-less-blackberries are chugging along and I have started tying the canes to galvanized wire on the fence.  Someone is going to have cool fresh raspberries in his cereal come June J

The plan for our front yard is currently going through a bit of a shift, mostly because of the neighbors to the north of us:  It is a rent house with two 20-something guys (referred to by some of the other neighbors as Bevis and Butthead) who are in a metal band,  work(-ish) in construction, and are living what could be called an extended adolescence.  Loud band practice at 1:30 AM, wafting pot smoke, firecrackers in the middle of the night, beer bottles on the sidewalk, grass two feet high, trash all over the front stoop, trucks occasionally parked in the yard, etc…  They are nice enough guys to talk to, but we don’t want to look at that every day.   So, we have left the two 10’ tall rhodies on the north fence until either they move or accidentally burn their house down in the middle of the night while lighting the bong.  The Belgium fence of heirloom apples and roses is on hold until then.  Additionally, I had wanted to rip out the two rhododendron bushes in the front and replace them with red and white azaleas – Laurel made me wait until they bloomed and she was right, they are beautiful and they get to stay.  We are going to thin them some after they are finished blooming and will plant just two white azaleas on each front corner of the house.

I have been watering and potting and weeding in the back a little when I get home in the afternoons and this is exactly the bliss that I had imagined and wanted when we put the offer in on Casa d’ Talley in June of last year.  Gathering sticks and string for our nest…

Progress in the back yard

/ Matt Talley

We spent some serious time in the yard this past weekend. I was “asked” by my lovely wife to move the compost bins for the third time… Then, I spent an hour with a chainsaw cutting stumps off below ground level in the spot where we plan to install our raised beds.  The last stump gave the saw fits and I ended up having to attack it with a double bit axe, splitting maul, and pry bar.  Holy crap! – it was work. It has been a long time since I swung an axe at something other than ice and snow.  Following the defeat of the stumps, I mowed, raked moss from the grass, cut vines from the back fence, planted some shade-loving grass in a bare spot, removed three ferns, sweep the garage roof (don’t ask), watered the kitchen herbs and took care of the normal weeding/edging/mowing in the front.

My better half, helped me clean up the mess from the stumps, level the ground were they were removed from, move some of the cedar rounds left from cutting a tree, water the herbs, and she planted some begonias in a stone planter near the one fern that gets to keep living.

After all that, I took a nap in the hammock under our vine maple and had a dream about garden gnomes while laurel cranked up the grill.  We had a pic-i-nic on the grass just before dark.  As a note: I slept like a stone that night and woke up feeling 114 years old.

Laurel in Garden

Change of Address

/ Matt Talley

My neighbors on both sides seem to be farming dandelions.  They have to be, as there is no other explanation of how every square inch of their yards are covered with the cancerous weed.  Is there some sort of market for them that I am oblivious to? I don’t think it would be too neighborly of me to mow their yards or spray gallons of Round Up or burn their grass from sidewalk to steps so that they can start over…  No, that might be seen as pushy/controlling/crazy and there might be some legal/state mental hospital sort of repercussions.  I am going to have to just keep weeding and patrolling Casa d’ Talley and let the neighbors cultivate what they will – even if it does eventually drive me insane.

I hate Dandelions – HATE!  Seeing one of the little bastards pop up in my yard is like finding a zit on prom night, a dent in a new car, or balls on your hot new girlfriend.  I take it is as a personal affront when one of their little flowers spring open within the boundary of my fence.  They don’t try to hide under the hedge or behind a rhododendron, oh no, the fvckers make sure to sprout right at the gate or next to the steps where they know it will affect me the most – sacrificing one of their brethren Taraxacum officinal in hope that I get so pissed that my blood pressure pops a vain and I keel over in the yard, my last sight being their spiky green leaves.  I know in my heart of hearts that when I pass from this earth there is a good chance that my own personal Hell will have be carpeted with them and there will be a significant populations of soul eating pigeons as well.

I am going to formally change my address to “The house with the red door marooned in a continent of dandelions, Seattle, WA, 98XXX.”  Fvcking weeds!

the smell of fresh cut grass

/ Matt Talley

The smell of fresh clipped grass is one of those scents that transports you back in time to a summer making extra coin cutting the neighbors lawn or slaving away on your dad’s golf course green of a yard.  It can either bring a smile to one’s face or twist the mouth into an outward sign for an inner loathing.  I have a touch of the OCD when it comes to lawn care and have left every yard in every rental house I have ever lived in exponentially better shape than when I moved in.  Today, I got to cut the grass for the very first time in my very own new home.  It was magical for so many reasons:  My house, my yard, my grass – not a rental and not my parents.  The yard has so much potential to become a small, well-kept carpet of medium length green, shaded by a fruit tree, edged with flowers and lavender, and fenced with wrought-iron.  Edging and mowing our own little patch of Heaven made my dark little soul happy, well that and I got to spend some time murdering dandelions.  That weed has no place in my universe.  They are a hateful green grass-cancer that has to be pulled up by the root.  I even have an assortment of special tools that make their demise faster, easier, and thorough.

Along with the house came an electric lawn mower and I have been itching to give it a try all winter.  As I lived most of my lawn cutting years in the heat of the South where the grass is thick and the yards can be expansive, I am most familiar with 2 or 4-stroke, blue smoke belching push mowers.  They all seem to conch out either just as you start when you have a tiny patch left in the very middle.  Our yard now is small and the electric is the way to go!  It was quiet, light, height adjustment was a cinch, and I didn’t have to suck in exhaust fumes for an hour.  I also have an electric edger that I paid $5 for at a garage sale.  I used it once at our rental place and now here, so I think that it has now paid for its self.  I figure that every time I use it from this point on is just gravy.  I have a heavy-duty weed eater/trimmer that I picked up cheap and it ran for almost all of last summer, but it has a carburetor issue.  After experiencing the sweetness of electric yard maintenance, I will put $10 bucks into the gas unit and sell it, applying the funds to an electric model.

Bringing light to the darkness

/ Matt Talley
It has begun… We have started the transformation of our yard from mossy dark over-grown warren to bright open space. There was a 40’ cedar growing into the garage and casting its pall on ¾ of the back yard. We had a guy come in and take it down 16” at a time a couple of Saturdays ago. He brought in a wood chipper and I spent the day cutting eighteen 2” to 8” trees/bushes down and feeding them into the chipper. Laurel and I planted our strawberry pots, and ½ of our kitchen herbs. I am pulling some stumps this week/weekend, planting our new Espalier apple tree and laying out the three raised garden beds – the Territorial Seed Company catalog and I have become the most intimate of friends.

I finished building stack-able ceder compost bins on Saturday (Laurel liked VERY much!) and my next major build is the planters. The raised beds will be enclosed with wall block. It took some soul searching as I REALLY wanted to do them in carefully joined wood, but cypress lumber in the Pacific North West is crazy-expensive. Redwood is almost as good as resisting rot, but to get true clear pieces that are untreated I have to special order them and for three 3X7X1.5 planting beds I would have $750 in wood. The block will last a LONG time and is a quarter of the cost of building in wood. After removing an old pond filled with used cat litter (??), the addition of a hot tub, some stone, and small green house will make my own small urban farm/park/orchard/retreat just about PERFECT.

Click on small image for large one you can read.
The front yard is a project for later this fall – just before my last shoulder surgery. We want to extend the yard to the sidewalk. Right now there is 8’ between the fence and walk were the property slopes down and the space goes to waste. We will also remove the chain link and install an iron fence, cut down the over grown rhododendrons, add a Belgium Fence Espalier, plant a Lapin cheery tree, add Provence, Lady and Spanish lavender at the fence and add azaleas (my daddy’s favorite) under the front windows.

Spring and summer projects for inside the house are vast in their breadth: new built-ins for the living room, a fireplace surround, a new heating system, addition of period appropriate kitchen cabinets, built-ins in the basement, Man Cave construction, rework of basement stairs, a new bathroom vanity and WC cabinet, rewiring of attic, attic subfloor and stairs, etc… etc… As you may deduce, we will not be traveling to any exotic locals this year. Vacations will be spent with children at home and putting sweat equity into Case Da Talley.

Tools on the Cheap

/ Matt Talley

Yard sales are the SHIT!! This weekend we happened upon a garage sale and an estate sale in the middle of the afternoon. I hit the mother-load of man-nesting paraphernalia – yard tools! I loaded our Subaru down with a 2-Stroke weed-eater with attachments, hoe, two edgers, 3 shovels (two round end and one square, tree saw, hack saw, joiner fence for 1942 Homecraft machine, pruning shears, garden trowel, pitch fork, electric chainsaw, rake, yard-broom rake, two water hoses, sprinkler head, edging shears, two tablesaw miter fences, a bench top vise, a grinder base, an old-school milk crate, and the board game RISK with all the pieces still in plastic. I paid a grand total of… drum roll… $43. The weed eater alone is worth $200 – I made out like a bandit! There are a couple more things that we need/want concerning yard tools (splitting maul, pick, maddox, posthole digger, 1928 Model-A coupe, etc…) and you can bet that I will be hitting the garage sales and pushing the blue-hairs out of my way in my quest for bargains.

Water hose, a chain saw and RISK – the makings of a fine par-ty!

Nesting with power tools

/ Matt Talley

I have found that my nomad life over the last 6 years has recently left me with a need to nest and for a man that means I need to build stuff. I need more tools, some projects, and a shop! Right after we moved into our place I started laying out a garage shop plan that would allow me to take care of some home projects, refinish and build some furniture, do some bike building/repair, a little painting, and do some welding. I need a place to store wood, hang bikes, work on projects, and park the car. It has to be modular as we are only leasing and I want to take it all with me when we buy a place later this year. The design is done and so far it is about ¼ of the plan is in place. I am doing it little by little as I have time and funds. So far though I have rebuilt a 1949 table saw/joiner, a 1932 lathe, built a bike work stand, a squirrel feeder for Laurel, assorted shop jigs, and a nice semi-built-in book shelf on our stairway. I currently have a refinishing project going, a bike rebuild (the Penny Farthing), and a rock maple/purple heart topped kitchen-island for Laurel.

Next, I want to build a jig for wooden bike fenders, a honey oak art-deco hall tree, a couple of matching picture frames for some oils we own, customize my table saw further, and build a miter saw cabinet.