Painted House 2

First, we had our house painted. And then, we had our house painted again. On paper. Isn't it beautiful. Now we just have to find it a frame and a place to live.

Insert Funny Joke About Stripping Here

I could have come up with a clever title, but on this minimal amount of sleep, I'm just impressed I'm posting an update at all. Now that our garage door is pretty, it was time to put new weather-stripping on the bottom. Even though the garage isn't climate controlled, it shares a wall with a room that is, so might as well keep out as much outside air as possible. Plus whatever animals might be sneaking in under the door (as opposed to lots of other ways they probably find to come in). The old one was cracked and starting to fall off--

 The nails holding the strips in place seemed unnecessarily gigantic.

 About 12 nails later, the old weather strip was off!

And within about a half hour (helped by a second pair of hands),  ta-dah! It's so pretty! Time for the animals to find a new way to sneak into the garage.

Basil Surprise

A friend gave us some basil with the promise that it might actually re-seed itself every year, so rather than plant it in a pot with the rest of our basil, we decided to plant it around one of our trees, like we did a few years ago with our mint. Easy, we thought. Clear out some grass and weeds, dig some holes, split and plant.

Clear around the tree. Check. Dig dig dig - hm....the shovel isn't going through the soil anymore. It's not too dry, so what's in the way?

Landscaping cloth, the bane of my existence. D goes for the big shovel and scissors and starts digging and ripping. He finally dislodges most of it.

 OK, time to dig a hole for the basil again and...what's that? A brick?

 Another brick? And another brick? And another brick?

 Thirteen bricks!?!? What used to be around that tree? I wish I had some idea what the previous owners were thinking? Is there a whole patio under the grass? Maybe a secret passage?

Over an hour later - BASIL! Now hopefully we don't kill it with our less than successful gardening record. But hey, at least we managed to harvest some bricks.

On a totally unrelated note but just to document it - take a look at our ceiling in the new ("sun") room. See anything? No? Well that's good because this is the "after" picture - yet again, we got something fixed before I managed to take the "before." After a few months of cold, warm, dry, humid, etc. changes, the ceiling and the edge of the crown molding had developed a visible separation. This week the team that built the room came in to caulk it so it's totally invisible now.