Magnolia

Mantel Project

The mantel before: not bad, but room for improvement if I wanted it to fit with everything else I had going on in the house. As big as the fireplace is, I thought the mantel needed to be a little bulkier.
Plus, I still had a good bit of salvaged wood left in the garage :)

The profile of the original mantel.  

Removed the little strip of molding..

Planed, glued, clamped, sanded.. the boards I had in the garage. Square nails, knots, and all!

Wrapped a wider band around the existing mantel..

Top in position..

The final profile! The square nails are still showing through on some of these end pieces. 

I actually made that cove molding underneath on the table saw..
..couldn't find a router bit big enough to make it look the way I wanted it.
Improvising.

All done!
I might stain/oil it, or I might leave it raw like this. I'll decide later :)

SO much respect for landscapers!

This is where we started: dirt mounded up from re-pouring the sidewalk, dead grass, rocks all over the yard..and the random nail here and there left over from roofing and siding projects.
Pretty much a mess!

Cleared the river rock from around the house, laid my landscaping fabric, and trenched in the stones for a nice border.

Added wood mulch inside the rock border, raked up the dead grass, rocks, and junk with a steel rake, and smoothed everything out.
This picture shows the before (foreground) and after. Now the yard is a nice clean slate - hopefully the grass seed I threw down yesterday will start taking off over the next couple weeks!

So..I got myself into another project. I read about a method of organic fertilizing called compost tea - it's all of the benefits of spreading a layer of compost, but it's liquefied so it reaches the roots faster.
I bought a fish tank bubbler to aerate the water so helpful bacteria would grow during the "brewing" process. 

Ideally, you'd use a rain barrel, but I don't have one - I just used City water from the hose and let the bubbler work at it for a while.
Compost tea in practice at Haaaavaad Yaaaad ;)

Make a giant tea bag filled with compost and suspend it from the lid of the can into the bubbling water. Add molasses to feed the bacteria, and a little organic fish fertilizer if you can get it. All in all, it's a great shot of nitrogen to the soil, it helps the root system of the grass reach deeper and increases the lawns drought resistance. And it's organic - even if it doesn't work exactly like it's supposed to, there's nothing in it that's going to hurt anything. Pretty cool process!
Compost Tea

Easter weekend

Finally getting around to installing the drawer organizers from our trip to Texas...another IKEA find!

The second drawer is a little lighter on the organization, but everything still has a place.

The highlight of Easter was looking through piles of old family photo albums and laughing at everyone's hairstyles :)