It's finally almost done!

I know that it has been a while since I have posted an update but once school started, things have been crazy!

We have been working constantly on putting the house back together. Since my last update we have almost everything done!

Completed thus far since the start of this adventure:
Pool table taken apart and moved
Basement carpet installed
Basement "put back together"
Pool table put back together and felt replaced
Bathroom painted
Living room painted
Living Room carpet installed
Living room "put back together"
Kitchen flooring installed
Kitchen Painted
Hallway and upstairs landing painted
New washer and dryer ordered and installed
Bathroom REpainted
John's "new" desk" put up
My new desk ordered and put together
New living room blinds ordered and installed
Basement Closet cleaned out and shelves redone
Duct Cleaning

During all of this work, we have made 5 trips to Goodwill, filled many garbage cans and donated several boxes of kitchen "stuff" to a friend's daughter who is in the process of purchasing a house and does not much to start with. We are still working on unpacking boxes of stuff that we needed to move when all of this started. I have a feeling that we will be making several more trips to Goodwill before everything is done.

We have a few more projects that we are looking to do over the next few months, but these are just "extra" things that we have decided to do since we have started with the updates. Some of these will be near future, some will be "at some point in time" lol

*We are in the process of converting closet by washer and drying into a pantry, complete with roll out shelves. John's brother did such a great job on the ones that he put into his house that we asked him to do some for us!
*We are also in the process of cleaning out the office and turning it back into a spare bedroom... just need to figure out what we are goign to do for a bed in there.
*As we are doing the office/spare bedroom project we are also doing some work with Darrin's room as one of this dressers is moving into the other bedroom, we need to get rid of one bookcase and may get him a new "smaller" bed so that he will have room for a desk in his room. (his current bed may end up in teh spare bedroom)
* On the "in the future" list, remains adding another bathroom in the basement as well as an egress window. Not really sure when that will be done, but it would be a very nice addition!!

The bulk of the work is behind us but at the rate that we are going, I don't think we will ever be finished!

Progress, slow but sure!

The basement carpeting is officially done! They came back on Monday to finish it!! The installer that has been working on our house is too much fun! He is easy to get along with, likes to joke around and is quick with a smart remark, and does fabulous work. But just don't call him Sir... he said that just doesn't work LOL We also found out yesterday that our vinyl for the kitchen has been ordered and will be here in about a week or so. We are tentatively scheduled to have the kitchen floor taken care of the Thursday after Labor Day! That will take a few days and then they will be able to do the living room carpet.

Guess that means that we need to think about getting out new washer and dryer ordered so that it will be here shortly after the flooring is done in the kitchen/laundry room!

In the meantime, after we finished painting the bathroom, I guess we didn't have enough... we decided to paint the living room! We think we have paint figured out, but just to be sure we picked up a sampler of the paint and tested it in a few spots around the living room. If all goes well, we will pick up the paint right away so that we can start painting next week.

So there has been progress. Seems like it had been crawling along but now it seems like things are moving right along and before long we will have a "mostly" new house! Guess the only think left to consider is pulling the wallpaper from the kitchen, but that is another discussion for another day! Let's just get through one project at at time... oh wait, we are already in the middle of 15 bazillion projects! LOL

Update

I figured that it was time for an update on our home repair adventures.

Going to the laundromat is for the birds! Last night was laundry night... granted it took me less than an hour and a half to get everything washed and dried, but the whole idea of having to HAUL it to the laundromat and back home again is no fun!

Last week Wednesday, the Dehu's left (no more extreme heat!) and on Monday the last of the fans were finally taken out (everything is quiet again!) We are also missing a bunch of the flooring in the kitchen as they needed to pull that out to get the floors completely dried. The last week has been spend talking to several different companies and getting estimates from them on the repairs. We are still waiting on the one form the restoration company that was originally sent out to do the initial cleanup/drying. We should have that by the end of the week. We have also been going through endless samples of ccarpeting and tile to figure out what we are going to have put in! We had foudn some vinyl that we really liked and kept going back to as our favorite (in photo to left). However in our last trip to one of the flooring companies, we found another one that is from the same company and same line that we like better. Will have to get a photo of that one posted as soon as we have time to get them uploaded.

We have also decided that, since our house is going to be torn apart to get everything fixed, we are also going to redo the carpeting in the living room as well as the wallpaper in the downstairs bathroom. So, we have spend the last 4 days moving everything that would could out. When you are redoing floors in the 3 largest area's of the house, it gets hard to figure out where to put everything! We have a garage full of stuff and the spare bedroom is getting close to being full! Jim is going to take the toilet out for us this weekend when he is in town so that we can start pulling wallpaper and get everything repainted right away.

The pool table was also moved yesterday. We had a crew come in, disassemble the table and haul it out to the garage. Once the flooring is done in the basement, they will come back and haul it back into the basement, put it all back together and then replace the felt on the table and rails. So glad that we didn't have to do that ourselves, and that insurance is covering the cost of all the moving of it, reassembly and felt replacement!

It seems like we are getting no closer to the end of this project! But in the end, we are practically going to have a new house!

The temperature continues to rise!

We thought it was bad earlier...

When I got home this afternoon after work, the temp in the kitchen had risen to 98.6! It was body temperature in my house! NOT COOL! Darrin and Jacob helped me get a few things moved out of the house and clean up the garage somewhat and then we headed out to dinner with Jacob and Kelly - the least we could do for them taking in Darrin AND the cats!

We stayed at the hotel tonight, so of course the boys were excited about being able to go swimming! John had called Jerry to talk to him about the extreme temps in the house and he did give us the ok to turn off the Dehu in the kitchen and then open some of the windows upstairs. So hopefully that will help somewhat until they can get back to take more of the equipment out. WooHoo!

John went home after dinner to open the house up somewhat before we took the boys swimming. When we stopped at the house after dopping them off, it had already dropped a few degress but it was still warm!

Day 4 and still counting

Met with the guy that was coming to check out the furnace this morning. He was also going to check out the Dishwasher and move that so that it was out of the way when they do the flooring. We could open a used appliance store in our garage with all the stuff out here now!!

The dishwasher and furnace look fine. He is going to recommend that they replace the vent in the laundry room and well as the pipe going up to it. You can see where the water got into it and he would rather have it replaced as a precaution. No complaints by me!

When he left he told me that we just have to let him know when the floor is done and he will come back and put the dishwasher back and take care of the vent.

I was finally able to talk to our Ins Adjuster and go through the list of stuff so far that has been damaged or may have been damaged and what we need to do to have this added to the claim. This could be a long process! oh well She did say that when we call to get an estimate on replacing the felt on the pool table that we can have them add in the cost of having them come and disassemble the pool table and move it out of the way so they can replace the carpeting, then come back and put it back together and replace the felt. Works for me! I don't want to have to try and figure out how to move that!!

Day 3 and it continues to get warmer!

Tonight after work, I met Jerry from the restoration company at the house so that he could check on things and assess how everything was drying.

The carpeting in the living room and basement steps is dry! However the basement still has some damp spots especially at the bottom of the walls where it soaked into the drywall. In the bathroom off the kitchen, the floor is still damp under the vinyl and he pulled some of this back (so I guess we will get new vinyl in here too). We also discovered that it did get into the the floor in the hot tub room. The floor is wet and he asked if we still have any of the vinyl left from when that flooring was done... guess we will have to check on that. There is also damage to the wood on the door frame and baseboards. Didn't realize that one before. Bummer.

He has someone coming tomorrow morning to check out the furnace and dishwasher to make sure that nothing shorted out with them and check a few other things associated with each of those.

When Darrin stopped at the house when he got home this morning, he called me and it was 94.2 degrees according to the thermostat in the kitchen. By the time I got home at 3:15, it was 96.4. It was quite warm waiting at the house while Jerry worked! We decided that it was time to find something to do with the cats as it was getting too warm for them in the house too.

I figured that while I was sitting there, I would call the Ins adjuster to ask a few questions. The claims adjuster assigned to our claim was not in the office anymore so I was going to be transferred to someone on her team. After being on hold for 20 minutes and 3 different attempts at being transferred I FINALLY got to talk to a human! WooHoo! This was the first time through this whole adventure that we came across someone with the ins company that was difficult to deal with.

They will not cover anything associated with pet so if we bring the cats to be boarded we have to cover that ourselves. We did however get the approval for a hotel stay for us for 2 nights. When I first asked about the hotel, she questioned why it was now, 3 days after the incident, that we are finally asking about housing allowance. It was like she was questioning if we really needed it since we didn't ask before. We just didn't call to ask about that since Dan offered his place for us and we thought it was only going to be for a few day - and that would have been more comfortable than a hotel! In reality we saved the insurance company the $$ they would have spend reimbursing us for hotels. But I guess she didn't see it that way. She then asked if I knew what hotel we were going to stay at. I explained that I would have to call around and see what I could find since EAA started in Oshkosh. When EAA rolls into the area, there are usually a shortage of hotel rooms! She proceeded to "tell" me that it "had to be a reasonable hotel with a reasonable rate and if we were that close to Oshkosh, what would I find that was at a decent price?" Well, I know that it needs to be a reasonably hotel and rate, but I can't tell you where it will be until I get off the phone and make some phone calls!

She finally did approve the hotel stay for 2 nights for us. Wow, that was a painful conversation! lol Since we already were planning on going back to Dan's we will save those for the next few nights since it sounds like the Duhu's and fans will be here for at least another few days.

With all the difficulty she gave me, I will wait until tomorrow to call back and talk to our Claims adjuster!

When Darrin got home, I told him that he could stay at Jacob's tonight that way he could get to summer school tomorrow. Yeah, he was really disappointed about that! LOL NOT! I jokingly asked Jacob if he wanted a few extra cats for a night. His eye's lit up and got excited, so he called him mom. As he asked his mom, I yelled in the background that she could say no! But she said that was fine as long as we brought an extra litter box. Yippee! The cats no longer have to be miserable in the house! Poor Fozzy was laying on the cement floor in the basement trying to keep cool!

Cats and Darrin at a friends, we are back at Dan's. It's been another fun filled day in this adventure. Wonder what tomorrow will bring!

The saga continues

48 hours later and the adventure continues.

Yesterday morning when we stopped at the house to check on everything, it was 70 in the basement and 82 in the kitchen. Not very pleasant to start working on any more cleanup and going through stuff to see what was damaged. We stayed about an hour and that was it!

Today, it was 75 in the basement and 90 in the kitchen! We did get a few more photo's of various things around the house that we will have to post later. Again, we stayed long enough to get what we needed for work tomorrow and left. It seems like the carpeting in the living room is dry but the carpeting on the basement steps is still wet.

Dan has been gracious enough to let us hang out at his place while our house is miserably hot as they try to dry everything. We will find out tomorrow just how long the equipment will have to be in the house when Jerry comes back to check on things.

the summer flood

Originally uploaded by FuzzyKryton

When John called me at work and said that it was raining in our basement, my first thought was to look outside to see how bad it was raining. Then I realized it was not actually rain! Our washing machine apparently decided to NOT stop filling and left water to cascade out onto the floor.

Thankfully John was at home when it happened! He had thought about running out to do dome errands after he started the washer but figured he would wait to run to the bank etc. He did not realize we had an indoor pool until her heard a splash. he looked into the kitchen to see a wet Silver. The cat either jumped from somewhere and landed in the water or came running up the basement steps and hit the water that was on the kitchen floor.

Once the washer was turned off, John started throwing towels on the floor to try and sop up some of the water. By this time, the water was everywhere in then kitchen and starting to get the living room carpeting.

Then he headed to the basement to see how much may have leaked down there. He was not expecting to see the waterfalls that he did! It was coming down in several places and by this time he was really not sure which way to go first. There was water running down the pinball machine as it came in from above - the washing machine was right there. There was also a waterfall coming down near the pool table (the pipes etc for the ice maker in the fridge go through the floor there). The pool table actually had a pool on top of it. Thankfully the plastic cover was covering the table. However the one corner that has a rip in it was near that end of the table and some water was able to get underneath. The laptop was sitting on the other end of the pool table, just 2 inches from the water! however the boards for the portable poker table were on the pool table and were sitting in water.

It also was leaking down from the stairs. The water has starting going down the basement steps and just leaked right through the seams between the boards. The computer that was under the stairs is the main server, not sure yet if that was damaged, however the laptop that was under the table had water pooling on it.

It was then that he saw the cascading waterfall coming down the shelves where a bunch of Darrin's toy's were. This again is basically right under the washing machine...

Since I was at work and I knew that he was busy with the water, I called the insurance company to see if this was covered. Our agent was not in the office, but the receptionist pulled up our policy and said that we were covered for water damage caused by failed appliances! At least that was a good thing. She gave me the number for the claims department so that I could call once I got home to see the damage. Instead of waiting, I called John and gave him the number so that he could call right away and open the claim.

By the time I got home, it looked like someone's closet exploded on the back deck. We had one clean/dry towel left in the entire house. The rest were out on the deck along with all of the dirty laundry that had been on the floor in front of the washer (3-4 loads worth). Now it was WET, dirty laundry.

The insurance company was already working on everything for us. The adjuster had made a call to the Estimator who was on his way to our house! Once he got there, he showed us just how wet the walls and everything were. He put in a call to his emergency crew to dispatch them to our house to start the process of getting everything dry. They are also going to move the washer and dryer so that they can get the floor dry under it. He was also going to call someone to come out and check out our furnace to make sure there was no damage to that, as well as the dishwasher that had water leaking around it.

Between the time he left and his crew got there, we were hurrying to try and get some of the sopping wet laundry spun out and at least dried somewhat so that we could haul it out to wash it.

Once the crew of 2 got to the house, they went right to work pulling up wet carpeting, moving the washer and dryer out to the garage and pulling up wet vinyl. By the time they left we had 7 large blowers and 2 HUGE dehumidifiers going to pull out the water and dry the floors and walls.

We were warned that the fans were going to be loud... loud was an understatement. Also, with the dehumidifiers, it was going to make it warm in the house. Seeing as we have to keep the house closed up so that the equipment is not trying to pull in the moisture etc from outside, we opted to NOT stay in the house. We were heading to Dan's for at least the night, where we could also do our mountains of laundry!

We will post more updates once we go back to the house and talk to the insurance agent.

Omelet's in a Bag

Last week at my Weight Watchers Meeting someone mentioned how to make easy omelets... in a ziploc bag! This was a new one for me! But how easy could that be!!!

SO we figured that we would give it a try today.

The directions are simple...

1. "scramble" your eggs in a bowl well, just as if you do when making an omelet.

2. Pour eggs into ziploc bag.

3. add your choice of "fillings".

4. Seal bag and place in pot of boiling water.

5. Boil for 13 minutes

Your omelet will steam itself right in the bag and slide out easily! No butter or oil needed

This morning I used spinach, portabello mushrooms, tomato and leftover hash brown potatoes. Once my omelet was cooked, I topped it with some cheese. It was perfect!

This would be the perfect way to make omelets wen you are camping. Have a bunch of omelets to make when you have company? Set up a omelet bar, everyone gets to put their own toppings in the bag with their eggs and all the bags get thrown in the same pot! What could be easier!!

It will probably take you longer to make all the toast for your guests that it does to make the omelets!Breakfast is served!

Strawberry Fields Forver

Ok, maybe not forever, but it is strawberry time again! Blasers opened for picking this morning and we were there! It was not well known that they were open yet as they did not really know when they were opening for sure until this morning! We had actually decided to head out to the zoo this morning and when we saw that they were open, we decided to stop and pick a few. The zoo could wait.

It was a great morning for picking too - warm, but not too hot and there was a nice breeze. There were probably only about a dozen people out in the fields so we had our pick of rows.

The berries looked great this year! Plenty of them ripe, but even more still waiting to ripen for picking later. It did not take long for us to pick 2 full flats of berries. in all... 25 pounds of berries picked in less than an hour!

Sicne we still wanted to stop at the zoo really quick, the berries were going ot have a short wait in the car - at least it was not too warm out yet!

The zucchini is growing strong! Two shoots have popped up in the last few days and are looking strong!

We also have also added another 12 Pole Beans in the last few days. I was doing some browsing on Craigslist and found a posting from a lady here in Green Bay that had planted too many beans and was giving them away to anyone that wanted them! I sent her an email on Wednesday and she told me that I could stop and pick them up after work. When I got to her house, I found a ziploc baggie taped to her front door with several small bean plants! It's always great to find stuff for free, and this way we also saved her from just wasting these great little plants! There was 13 plants in the bag and we planted 12 of them (the last one looked pretty small and it probably was not going to make it) These are now taking up the 3 boxes in the back corner of the garden so that we can utilize the fencing to help give them something to climb as the grow.

The broccoli that we planted is really starting to grow and look great. We have realized that next year, we need to plant the broccoli in the outside boxes, closest to the fence as it is going to get a lot taller than Darrin's pepper plants! Lesson learned...

We have Beans!

Overnight, the beans have popped up! So far there are only 2 of the 8, but I am figuring that the other 6 are not far behind!

Garden Update, week 1

One week after planting...

We have green! A few of the plants have started shoots already! WooHoo! The Cucumbers have popped up, as well as the zucchini, lettuce and beans.

The plants that were added last week as quickly taking to their new homes and have appeared to get bigger already. We have had fun checking each day to see what new green is arriving in the boxes. So far so good!

We have about half of the garden planted so far and next weekend we will add more carrots, lettuce, cucumbers and zucchini. No point in having it ALL ready at the same time! We have also realized that we forgot to get any peas for this year... guess those will have to wait until next year. We have enough going so far this year.

At present count, we have:
4 tomato plants (3 in the garden and on on the deck)
4 banana peppers
2 hungarian Sweet peppers
3 red peppers,
6 broccoli
9 carrots
1 bib lettuce
8 beans
1 cucumber
1 zucchini

I an sure that the counts will grow as we add more over the next few weeks.
Just not sure exactly what else we are going to plant in the remaining squares...

More Cat and Mouse

Tonight when we sitting here, chilling and watching come TV, we thought we heard the cast squeaking one of their toys. Listening a little closer, we realized that it was not a toy...

Fozzy came upstairs with a mouse in his mouth... Yay! NOT

He headed to the dining room and dropped the mouse near the food dish where he and Silver proceeded to bop it on the head, bat it around the floor and pounce on it from time to time.

Now we did not want the mouse in the house and since the cats already caught it, it was time for us to make the mouse go away. John covered the mouse with a plastic bowl so that it would not get away and headed to find something to contain it with so he could get rid of it.

Granted our cats are nor necessarily the brightest crayons in the box all the time, but we knew they would figure out how to get the mouse from under the bowl.... so I had to stand there with my foot on the bowl. The entire time, the cats were watching the mouse run circles under the bowl, batting at the bowl trying to get their toy back.

John got rid of the mouse and all was well. The cats finally gave up on finding their mouse - I think they sniffed every inch of the dining room. So they were off running again.... straight to the basement.

Not even 5 minutes later, we hear that same squeaking again, coming up the basement steps. This time Silver appeared at the top of the steps, clutching the mouse in her jaws. Back to the dining room they go. By the time we got in there, Fozzy saw us coming and grabbed the mouse and dashed for the basement... John grabbed to plastic bowl and headed down after him.

Fozzy was not to be outsmarted this time. Each time John started walking towards Fozzy, he picked up the mouse and ran away. He was determined NOT to lose this toy! He made one mistake - heading UP the stairs again. I was standing at the top and he knew he was not getting by me with that mouse in his mouth. As he turned to head back down, he dropped the mouse on the stairs, where John caught mouse number two.

2 cats, 2 mice, five minutes.

Not my favorite entertainment late in the evening. Let's not do it again anytime soon.

Why do some kids like to do manual labor?

As we continue our landscaping project in our front yard, it was time to start getting the rock back where it belongs. This pile of rock that we previously pulled from the landscaping has been sitting in the driveway, in MY parking spot for a few weeks now, and we finally were getting back to it.

John build a "sifter" to separate the rocks from the dirt that we shoveled up with it. Apparently the kids in the neighborhood thought this was the coolest thing and we shortly had 2 of the neighbor kids come over and ask if they could help.

Kids, asking to help shovel rocks? Were they for real? So John said yeah, why not. He figured that they would help for 5 minutes and then run off to play. Boy was he wrong! Not only did they help us for the entire evening, more of the neighborhood kids came over to help! At one point, we actually had 4 of the neighbor's kids, in our driveway, shoveling rocks into John's homemade sifter. They were shoveling so fast that he could not keep up with them! They got to take many breaks as he sifted and put rocks into the wheelbarrow.

Before long, they had shoveled over half of the rocks and were still going strong... but John was out of gas. He was ready to call it a night and find a shower. The kids would have kept shoveling until the pile of rocks was gone, but he thanked them many times for all their help and told them he was done for the night.

Yeah, he was in need of a shower!!!



But the landscaping in the front of the house was starting to look much better!!!

DARE Graduation

As the end of the school year quickly approaches, it is time for the afternoon that many of the 5th grades have been eagerly waiting for... DARE graduation.

They have spent afternoon's each week with Officer Van learning about drug and alcohol abuse as well as many other topics that have a factor is these issues.

From what we have been hearing at home, not only have this been a very education experience, but extremely fun too. There was songs, dances, cheers and a lot more!

As part of the program, Officer Van brought a guest speaker with him. This was a young man that has spend a great deal of time with Officer Van talking about drug and alcohol abuse. During his presentation he spoke openly and everything that he said was was very eye opening for the adult.

As with any graduation ceremony there were certificates to be handed out. Each of the kids was very exited to receive their certification that they earned. During the ceremony the parents were entertained with several of the songs, cheers and dances that the kids learned over the last few weeks. Now we could understand why they were all so excited about the DARE program!

But there were two things that they kids were the most excited about. This first.... once they all received their certificates, Officer Van announced that they were official DARE graduates and could now UNTUCK their shirts! This of course got a huge laugh from all the parents.... we all were wondering how he got everyone to come out with their t-shirts tucked in! NOW we knew the real truth! LOL
The second thing these kids were all excited about? Office Van personally signed the back of each of their shirts to "seal the deal." As soon as the ceremony was over, the kids quickly lines up to get their hard earned signature!

Great job to all of the kids in this year's DARE graduating class!

Darrin and Officer Van chatting as we left the school

Planting time

With the boxes finished and filled it was time to do some planting and put up the fence.

Part of planting was done from seed, part of it from transplants purchased from various places. I figured that since we got a later start on planting this year, instead of doing it all from seed, we would get some started right away with plants.

The next step was to figure out where we were going to plant everything and how many of we were going to plant in each square. By looking at how far apart the plants need to be "thinned" to when from seed, or how far apart the transplants need to be planted, we were able to figure out how many in each box... tomatoes - one per square. Carrots, 9 per square. But then we had to keep in mind those plants that needed extra support or something to climb up would need to be planted closest to the fence. Too much to think about!!

While I started some of the planting from seed, John tackled trying to get the fence post put in so that we could get the fence up. Best to get that up BEFORE we actually get the other plants transplanted - leave it open overnight and the deer will have a feast in my backyard. I want to feed ME, not the 4 legged critters.

Before long we had seeds planted, the fence up and figured out how to keep the door closed. Next stop - head to the store to pick up the plants that we wanted for stuff that we didn't have time to start from seed. Stops at 3 greenhouses (one just to check out some of the flowers) and Darrin and I were ready to plant! Darrin was really getting into the planting (he didn't get to do any of the seed planting since he was running around with the neighbor kids when I was putting those in earlier.

By the time we were finished we had banana peppers, red peppers, tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, zucchini, lettuce and beans. In a week or so I am going to plant some more lettuce, beans and carrots - that way I don't have everything ready to eat at the same time!

For more garden photo's you can check out flickr we will continue to add more photo's there of the garden and it's progress.

Final Day of Construction.... tomorrow we plant!

The final day of construction is here!

Once the boxes are built and in place, it will be time to blend together the "magic mix" that was recommended in the "Square foot Gardening" book. No dirt involved. The boxes are filled with a blend that consists of equal parts compost, peat moss and vermiculite. No fertilization needed. The vermiculite was pretty hard to find. On Tuesday afternoon, we started making calls to find it. Most places that carried it, were either out of stock or only had small bags, of which we would have had to by way too many, making it really expensive! Finally, when we called Green Bay nursery, they said they did not have any in, but they could order it and it would be here before the weekend.

So that was the first part of the project for tonight was heading to pick up the vermiculite and check out what else they had at GB Nursery. Aside from the vermiculite, the only thing that we needed was a few more bags of compost. It was recommended that you do not buy all of the same type of compost... but at least 4-5 different kinds. So we pound a few more bags here! Shopping complete!

A quick drilling of the drainage holes in the bottom when we got home, we were ready to go. Time to figure out exactly where we were going to put everything. Better decide that before we fill all the boxes!

We figured that Darrin would have been all over helping us combine the mix for the garden, but not tonight. Oh well, more fun for us! LOL

We quickly decided that there was no way that our tarp was big enough to mix everything all at one. So we opted to do half at a time. This was the easiest way to divide it up as we had even numbers of bags to work with.

What a mess! It became evident why they recommended spraying a light mist of water over the mix once you have everything poured onto the tarp - it is very dusty!

With everything mixed together, it was time to fill the boxes. Funny thing, even though we checked and double checked out math to figure out how much of everything we would need for the mix we ended up with A LOT of extra. Granted, we knew that we were going to have a little leftover, but we only needed about 2/3 of what we mixed! Works for me - now I have some of the mix that I can up in my potted plants!!!

Garden Project Day 3 - Construction nearly completed!

With the work that was completed in the last few days, Darrin took a few minutes to sit down with the "plans" to figure out what we needed to do next.

Today's mission, get the rest of the boxes completed so that we can play tomorrow! It could be a long night!

Actually, not too bad though. Since everything was cut and all holes were drilled it was just a matter of putting everything together. It was fast work to get the boxes put together and the bottoms put on.

We did make a few modifications to the original plans as we worked through the project. We were not going to put bottoms on the boxes. However, in the end, all of the boxes were getting bottoms - just in case we decide that we need to move the garden or something goofy like that!

One of the final steps in the building process was to get the grid bars put on. Each box will be divided into 1x1 squares for planting. So that means in each large box, there will be 8 boxes for planting in and the small one will have 4. The biggest challenge in this step was to actually get the grids attached to the boxes so that they were even. Can't have one square bigger than another! LOL

Once the grids were in place, the final step is to drill drainage holes in the bottoms of the boxes and we are done! We will get those in first thing tomorrow and my garden will be ready to put into place and plant!

Garden Creation, Day 2

After dinner, the guys headed out to the garage to start on the garden boxes.

Tonight's mission - get the boards for the boxes

Mom can't help with her own Birthday Present". Now of course, that was never said, I was just getting other stuff done in the house. But tonight I didn't have to do anything. They had everything under control. All the boards were cut to the appropriate length, double and triple checking the numbers of course.

Darrin helped with the measuring, marking and sawing of most of the smaller boards and then John tackled the 2x6's with the "big saw" as Darrin called it.

After all the sawing and banging I heard, of course I was curious. They were on a mission! I guess my job for the night was taking the pictures. Apparently Darrin told John "oh yeah - mom can't help make her own birthday present!" But of course no one ever said that LOL

Once the boards were all cut and final counts were done, it was to move to the next step. Darrin wanted to help here, but John got to do all the drilling.

Once everything was cut a prepped, they decided that they needed to at least put one of the boxes together to make sure they were going to be what I wanted. So the small 2x2 box was the lucky on.

Looks good to me! Phase 2 begins tomorrow