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 :)

Hope you're not afraid of heights..

This was from my plane ride last fall - see the Courthouse in the center?

From my Sunday night walk a few weeks back.

The County will be starting a construction project up here in a few weeks. The cement in the ceiling here is starting to fall apart. :S When the crews are up here taking care of that, they'll also tuck-point the entire belltower, inside and out.
Once this project is complete, they will have renovated every area of the building. VERY cool!

The E. Howard Clock Co.
Boston - New York - Chicago
1905

Excuse the bird netting - this area was full of 100 years worth of crap prior to this :)
I'm in that open "arch" area just under the clock, facing north.
Our Post Office (brick building, gray roof, white door - just left of the center of the image) has some historical significance, too. In the lobby, there's a massive mural painted by the WPA during the Depression.

Northeast.

Southeast. You can see the 3M and Hormel plants in the upper left, here.
The white building with blue across the top was the home of my house-family's business for nearly 100 years. Under the metal siding, there are several really pretty brick buildings downtown.

South. The black and pale green building right in the center of the block is our 1922 movie theater/opera house that will be undergoing a HUGE restoration soon. I hope to write about that, too!
Grand Theater
Behind the theater is our Carnegie Library (clay tile roof, yellow/orange brick) and the Dixie Gebhardt House (red tin roof). Dixie was the designer of the Iowa Flag. Both of those properties are undergoing some renovation as well!

Southwest - you can actually see my house in this picture :)

West.

Northwest, toward the Knoxville Raceway and VA Hospital in the distance.
Knoxville Raceway

And back to north, again!

After climbing another loooong ladder, I ended up in the very tippy top of the Courthouse..

...next to these. VERY cool! :)

An article from the Knoxville Journal in 1905, talking about the purchase and installation of the clock and bell..several years after the Courthouse was originally constructed.

Spring Break!

The last couple weeks have been pretty cushy for me - it's Spring Break after all!
First off was a weekend trip to Minneapolis with a group of friends for a concert at the Target Center.

This past week was a week-long trip to Texas with the family. We drove down and stayed with my uncle and his family in their new house. VERY nice place, and a beautiful neighborhood!

Loved the trees in Houston.
Anything green was especially attractive given that we left Knoxville at the tail end of a long winter! :)

It's definitely a different environment there!

One of my favorite stops on the trip - Central Market by HEB. Probably 100,000+ square feet of great food!
Central Market

Hands down the best food we ate on the trip: pork chop at Perry's Steakhouse.
Perry's Steakhouse & Grille

Nobody lives here without paying rent..

If last year was the Year of the Bat, 2013 will be the Year of the Mouse.

Not in the ‘Chinese New Year’ sense so much as in the ‘Things That Are Temporarily Living in My House’ sense.

Yes, last night – while brushing my teeth – I learned that there was a small mouse in my house. Specifically, in my bathroom. By my foot.

After trying to quickly think of something I could use to catch the little guy, I decided I’d be better served by trying to brutally kill it instead.

Rather than go to bed, I pulled on my coat and shoes and headed across town to Wal-Mart for a midnight mouse trap trip. Of course, now that all the traps have been set (10, to be exact), I’m wondering if I did the right thing. Not in terms of animal cruelty or anything like that…no, eff that. No I’m wondering if this mouse is heavy enough to trip the trap..he’s only about the size of my thumb..

Anyway..this is my life. I’ll report back soon enough if anything other than my finger gets snapped in one of the traps.

Don't unpack, buddy..