This past weekend my parents came in to town to visit and supervise and help out with some projects. I didn’t have any big goals in mind, but I thought it would be nice to finish painting our trim work in the dining room, which my mom helped with, and finish adding the trim to the stairway area.
Here’s my mom painting in the dining room, which came out nicely.
And here’s my dad and Nik working on the stair trim:
Nik has been putting off this project because if things don’t fit together perfectly, he’s not happy. But in the end, I think they were able to get a pretty good fit on all the parts, and with some shims and caulk added I think it looks pretty good. They also got to test out our new air nailer putting it in.
And under the front edge, we added cove trim to hide the gap:
They filled the holes and on Sunday we created a dust bubble and my dad went to work sanding down the edges of the column that didn’t match perfectly with our mouse sander:
Everything looks pretty smooth now, so I think its about ready for paint! Once this step is done, we’ll be able to install the balusters and banister to complete this project. I don’t know if you all remember how this started back in August, but I think it’s come a long way:
My mom (in hopes that our garden will someday be approved) also brought us some seedlings…well, they’re not really seedlings anymore! We got 3 huge tomato plants (they’re leaning a little in this picture because it just poured), an eggplant, and 4 peppers.
I tried sprouting some plants too (tomatoes, cucumber, cabbage, eggplants, peppers, vincas, and marigolds), but mine are a little behind hers to say the least:
For the garden application, we have made some slight progress. This week (7 weeks after our application was submitted) they said we can put a garden in our side yard, but it has to be in the ground, and it can’t have a fence. Or we can put a raised bed in our backyard, but if we want to fence that we have to put in a SEPARATE application to add the fence (even though our first application has the fence we would use already described. And I’m pretty sure I know how that application would go if I resubmitted it). Our yard is all clay, so I’m not sure a non-raised bed garden would work well, but we could try digging down and replacing the clay with dirt to be able to put it in the side yard. Our backyard is shaded and our HOA doesn’t allow us to cut down trees, so this was my concern about relocating the garden here. And in either location, we need a fence because we have rabbits and deer.
We have the option to “appeal” in a couple weeks, so I think we’d basically push for what we want – allowing the raised bed in the side yard, and the ability to add a very thin deer fence to this garden. Houses on our street have exactly these things, in the exact location on their property we’re trying to make ours, so we’re hoping this argument will work (although all these points were stated in our application and they have yet to sway their decision). But, if they won’t cave, I suppose putting the plants in the ground will have to do for this year, and we’ll have to make some sort of removable fence to try to protect them. Let’s hope our appeal goes better than this though!
