Little Mean Green Eating Machines
Posted: August 27, 2013 Filed under: our dog, our garden, our home | Tags: diy, DIY Fail, DIY Vegetable Garden, Fence Boards, Fence Pickett, Pinterest Fail, Raised Garden Box, Vegetable Garden Leave a commentAround our house we have what I like to call our little mean green eating machines which would include: our viscous life eating puppy, the innocent adorable neighborhood bunnies, and we can’t forget Greg & I’s complete lack of green thumbs. Growing a garden in the ground in our back yard seemed to be an impossible feat.
Therefore to combat the first two issues we settled on ideas similar to these:
Even Ana-White had a DIY plan to build one, but instead of $80 for lumber or $90-$250 to purchase a garden box we decided to shake what our momma gave us.. <<insert awesome dance moves here>>
As our home used to have an in-ground pool.. then turned dirt pile when we purchased it.. now turned normal grass back yard. [Read more of that saga here].. we luckily inherited the remains of what was the old in ground pool fencing.
One beautiful Tuesday spring afternoon, I was searching for a proactive outlet for one of those frustrating days at the office. [one of those days where you wanted to rip yours or someones hair out…] <<Insert hammer into hand>>
Greg came home and asked no questions as he observed me ripping fence picket boards off their 2×4 frames and tossing them all around the yard. It was actually super easy, quite painless and only required a few minutes of my time, and after a long day at the office and a beautiful spring afternoon, it was just the outlet I needed.
After a sufficient number of boards were laid out I cleaned up the fence boards by scrubbing them all down with the Behr All-In-One Wood cleaner.
After a nice scrub on both sides with a deck brush and some elbow grease the boards were ready to go.
All ready for the weekend, where i’l need an extra set of hands to get our idea on paper..
Oye with the poodles already..
Posted: August 20, 2013 Filed under: our adventures, our dog, our home Leave a commentSo this story starts when I had the greatest idea known to man! (SPOILER ALERT.. IT WASN’T). Since we were moving closets and playing bedroom musical chairs in the house, I thought; “What if I painted and updated my closet!?”
Before Closet:
Genius right! I convinced Greg to let me paint the interior top half of my closet with a yellow chevron. We were moving our bedroom into this room and I had a week deadline before we left for vacation. Surely, it wouldn’t take that long, I would have time to spare and work on all kinds of stuff in the meantime including creating more storage like the dream closet so I could fit all my clothes.
Dream closet:
Day 1. Paint Base Color – All Closets Should be white instead of weird tan.., and we had white Semi-Gloss Sherwin Williams Paint, already, Sweet. Easy. Done. Free YaY!
Day 2. Tape off Chevron Lines – Okay so this thing was tricky, but surely this had to be the worst part right?
[spoiler alert.. it wasn’t]
I drew, and cut, and penciled, and erased, and marked.. and well it was alot of work..
and after 1 long late night it looked like it was going to pay off.. ta-da!
Sweet. Almost There, now the easy parts
Day 3. Paint Yellow Paint – Sweet, another easy part.
Nailed it right.. watch some paint dry with the pup..
Paint another coat of paint..
Day 3. Last Step – Pull off Tape slowly..
and
DISASTER..
The paint all layers peeled (almost all the time) off the wall.. See how cute it might have looked if it wasn’t all peel y? {I even have a cute glass door to go on the closet, so that you’d see it. It was going to be wonderful! Blah.. Well after I got over my complete disappointment and reality set in we went on vacation.
However after vacation reality set in and that meant 4-Days straight of scraping, sanding, and priming properly to get the closet back to step 1 even before the disaster.
The base layer of paint must have been an oil based paint (good to note for other rooms..) But super frustrating as it took this easy cute project to a disaster pain in my rear end. On the good side this was only a closet, and not an entire wall! EEek..
Final pictures to come on my abandoned yellow chevron closet 😦 but Live. Learn and then get Luvs..
Anyone else have a terrible diy story..
The Escape Artist
Posted: October 6, 2012 Filed under: our dog, our home | Tags: amazing neighbors, backyard, dog, escape, fence, Guinness, run-away dog 4 CommentsOur house was sold with a “fenced in” back yard. And by “fenced in”, I mean it was only missing the oober critical gate. No big deal Guinness our lovely pup, has lived with us in my Arizona apartment fenced in by only by 2 temporary dog pens. While her sister was a skilled pen hurdler, Guinness always felt content staying on her side of the barrier.
For the last 6 months we have been using these “temporary” barriers just to get us by. They’ve acted as a temporary gate and on the long, long, long list of things to do was: put up a gate. Every weekend we talked about putting one up but it just seemed so unnecessary since we were all content (Guinness included).
For the last 3 weeks Guinness has been cooped up in a small pen as seen above. The backyard was recently seeded and while we are amidst growing grass (<3) we can’t risk her love for eating grass and digging holes. Long story, but as you could guess… she’s not enjoying it
The first time we noticed something fishy was after our weekday date night earlier in the week. Pulling into the driveway Greg thought he saw something in the dark shadows and turned into super protective man mode. After a few seconds passed and the coast being clear, we headed towards the house however before reaching the house we were greeted by YouKnowWho in our driveway. interesting… very interesting…
The next day we double checked the gates and the blockades before we left for work. However we received a call around noon while we were at work from our Town Police. They happened to find her by herself just leisurely strolling 5 blocks away from home on her daily walk route. Adventurous Dog Lucky for us they happily delivered her home, and locked the door behind them. phew.. how she did it? no clue?
Friday night, we come home again and this time my stomach dropped. The gate was pushed to the side, door shut, and a dog was nowhere to be seen. We did however find this note as seen below.
(Did I mention we have the BEST NEIGHBORS!) Seriously they are just awesome, and welcomed Guinness as she ventured over to play with their puppy. So we’re even now as their puppy had escaped a few nights prior and showed up at our house to play a few nights prior.
Anyways with an escape artist on our hands, and not a clue on how she is doing it.. building a gate has become our new weekend project.
Anyone else have a master escape artist on their hands? Or a new spontaneous weekend project?
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