Sage – Author at Plaster & Disaster

Happy Monday! I hope you all had a lovely weekend. Life continues on here, there are ups and downs but I’m making it through (and asking for help where I need it). After a few weeks full of unusual events (death, wedding, vacation, car breaking down, etc), it has been nice to be getting back into our normal routine — I do well with stability and consistency especially when life is throwing curveballs.

For me, that very much includes getting back to home projects. October is our final month to get work done for the year on our yard, and it’s actually a good time of year to do things like planting. As you may recall, we last left off with planting our dogleaf hydrangea hedge and climbing hydrangea trellis:

When we ordered the hydrangeas, we also ordered the dogwood tree for corner by the shed, but we splurged and decided to have that delivered and installed for us because a) transporting a tree is not easy, b) I’m terrified of immediately killing an expensive tree and the installers would put in all the soil amendments needed for it to thrive, and c) digging in our yard is a real pain with all the roots and rocks. Since we had to wait for the tree to arrive and an opening in their schedule for them to install it, we weren’t quite sure when it might go in.

But last Wednesday, I got word that Friday morning they’d be coming by to put in the tree! My amazing landscape architect friend who has helped us through this process came with them to help advise on exact placement (they work for the same firm as she does; her advice has been generously free of charge but obviously we paid for their labor and the tree itself).

They wheeled it in on a dolly, we picked out the exact spot for it, and then they started digging!

It was so nice having someone else hacking away at the roots and rocks, and they had an awesome large spade-like tool that let them make quick progress.

Unfortunately I didn’t get photos of the whole thing because I had to leave to go to work while they were still going, but when I got home it was looking amazing.

It’s 8′ tall right now, and we will fertilize it so hopefully by the end of next season it will already be growing pretty well. And I am totally sold on sometimes paying people to do work for us (like we did with the deck) — they were so much faster and did a better job than we would have, and left it in great shape including ground stakes, mulch around the base, and putting in place our drip hose.

On Saturday, we capitalized on the momentum and took on a few more projects. First, we spent some time planting bulbs throughout the yard. We’ve never planted bulbs before, but my friend always places a bulk order for family and friends so we were able to get 225 bulbs for $75. We got a mix of crocus blue moon and rotterdam mixed daffodils:

We planted the daffodils in groupings of five bulbs in a few places like in front of the trellis, around the tree, and in the side garden bed, and the crocuses along the edges of the lawn. I was very glad to have Sam’s help!

I’m excited to hopefully have some color in the springtime, which we’ve never had in the yard before!

Now that all our plants are in, we also put down a ton of mulch to finally start defining our lawn. Even though eventually we hope to use natural groundcover instead of mulch (ie adding lots of smaller plants to cover the ground), for now mulch will protect our plants and help make the metal edging around our lawn start to make sense.

My friend suggested that we mix compost in with our mulch to add extra nutrients for all our new plants, so I picked up 17 bags of black mulch and 5 bags of compost. Whew!

I used a wheelbarrow to mix up batches of mulch and compost.

Before putting it down, I quickly raked out the hydrangea hedge — this time of year the leaves collect so quickly it’s hard to keep up! Then I got to work putting the mulch that was mixed with compost around the base of each plant.

Then Sam went in and added more mulch to fill in the rest of the space, I mulched the arbor vitae hedge on the other side of the lawn, and then we laid the drip hose back out.

Planting and mulching -- Plaster & Disaster

The larger rocks are to hold the hose in place (yes, I know they make stakes for this purpose…)

It does look like a ton of mulch in comparison to the number of plants right now, but I think starting to define what will be lawn and what will be planting bed is important progress. Also, we didn’t lay down weed barrier under the mulch because we do plan to plant in it down the road, but I know this will mean grass is ultimately likely to grow through. Again, this situation is fairly temporary, but it helps us feel like we’re making progress!

We still have one more weekend this month with yard projects planned so we hope to cross just a few more things off the to-do list, but this side of the yard is looking pretty done for the year. I’m already dreaming of what comes next, but I have to admit it’s a lot of progress from where we were just this spring! (The “before” photo below is actually from when we bought the house, but it had really only gotten worse between then and this spring….)

Sorry about the title, everyone! We figure that if we’re going to share some really embarrassing and ugly truths about our homes, at least we should get to make puns while doing so. So consider this your part of the bargain.

Our disaster confessional series is distinguished by our use of horrible puns and bravery at sharing some really non-blog worthy areas of our home. It’s all too easy to project an idealized image on the internet, and we think it’s important to show the not-so-ideal parts, too. Fortunately, that’s easy for us, since we’ve got a lot of not so ideal things to share! We’ve talked about the various holes and gaps in our homes, our sheds and messes, and even that time that one of our basements flooded. (Spoiler: Sage’s basement has flooded numerous times too, she just hasn’t posted about it because last time she tried to do so, a different kind of disaster occurred and required coverage on the blog.)

You’ve probably figured out that today we’re talking about our stairs.

“My Basement Stairs are an Ugly Death-Trap” – Naomi

I was so proud to share my basement clean-out and new workshop space a few weeks ago!

But what I didn’t share was the situation going on right behind me as I took this shot…

And that’s the cleaned out version. The stairs are really ugly, with chipping gray paint and some sort of brown-ish fabric tread tacked onto each one. I’ve dreamed of painting these, but it doesn’t seem worth the effort since I don’t think they could ever look that attractive.

However, that’s not the worst part. They’re also quite unsafe because they are so steep and narrow. My size 6 foot just barely fits on them, and there is a big overhang that trips you on the way up and makes the stairs seem even smaller on the way down.

It feels really precarious walking down with a basket of laundry. Add to that a really low ceiling ridge (I’m 5’2 and I can walk under it, but it’s low enough that I reflexively duck).

Think that is bad? It used to be even worse. The top used to have these shelves jutting out, making the space feel really cramped and putting you off-center before you even started down the stairs with your basket of laundry.

The shelves were also a magnet for clutter of the worst kind.. the kind that you put there because you have no idea where else it should go. So when we cleaned them off in our basement clean-out, we decided to take them down entirely. They can’t collect clutter if they’re not there!

It doesn’t exactly make the stairs pretty, but it’s an improvement.

“USPS avoids my house” – Sage

Speaking of ugly death traps…my front steps have seen better days.

We barely use them (since we enter around the back), but I feel for the poor delivery people who brave them to bring us mail, pizza, etc. because they certainly don’t look or sound structurally solid. Like, would you feel confident walking up a flight of stairs where the first one has giant holes in it?

Maybe that’s why they have started leaving many of our packages at the bottom of the steps, and I can’t blame them.

I don’t think they’re actually dangerous yet, but I think we’ll need to replace at least portions of them next year and will need to repaint all the stairs and the landing. Yay for homeownership!

So be honest, are you glad you only have to see our houses online rather than trying to brave them in person?