Garden dreaming

We are really looking forward to getting out to do some landscaping and gardening this summer, with priorities in the back yard and some smaller projects out front. As we were thinking about the back yard, I realized that last year, every time I wanted to pop in a plant or snag a weed, I had to run through our around the house, down 25 steps, and to the garage to grab my trowel or weeder and gloves. Barring adding a shed out back (which we don’t want to do), it seemed that having a stash of simple tools would be ideal, so I looked online for old mailboxes, thinking I could install one that would look window-box-like under the bathroom window, in easy reach. Most of the ones I liked on ebay or etsy were a fortune – but I found this gem for under $20 and the seller worked with me to reduce shipping to a reasonable amount. And it’s absolutely perfect – exactly what I was imagining, and old galvanized, beat-up mailbox from a farm in the midwest. We cleaned it up and clearcoated it to keep any additional rust from forming, mounted it, and popped in some new tools and a pair of gloves my Aunt sent me last fall. Now we’re ready, whenever the sun wants to come out.

It has been looking like this outside.

Window-box style.

We love the tiny door on the side!

All the tools fit great.

With room for more.

But for now, this is the only “garden” growing.

Sealing the ceiling

We are behind on posts, but we’ve been working away at a bunch of tiny projects – the kind that live on the punch list until everything more fun is done, and you can’t ignore them any more, and it’s still to cold to garden. So here come a few posts about insignificant-seeming projects that nonetheless make our space a nicer place. First off, the ceiling in one corner of the kitchen where all the leftover evils gathered: the uneven underside of the loft floor, a flying beam from the bedroom wall, the open top near the bathroom fan that we weren’t sure we were ready to close in. It wasn’t really visible as it was above a small kitchen cabinet, but needed to be closed in nonetheless. Enter some leftover log slabs, a 1/4 sheet of whitewashed plywood (this was new to us, like this but 1/2″ thickness), and some patience as we made a zillion cardboard templates since the shape of everything was crazy.
Somehow I didn’t get any before pictures.

Note new clamps! I had an old un-used Groupon for Rockler and we remembered to stop by when we were on mini-vacation a few weeks ago. They work great! Just ignore that hole in the wall – it was where we were going to put a fixture until we found the cabinet. Luckily the cabinet covers it :).
Everything in, and caulked the edges. Just needs final touch-up at this stage.

Finished! I’m not sure anyone else will notice, but I feel better.