Project 2: Tiered, Terraced Garden Boxes

Boxes built! Yahoo!

Project 2: Tiered, Terraced Garden Boxes

Step Two:  Building the boxes...this took two full days!  

Project 2: Tiered, Terraced Garden Boxes

We decided on splurging and building the boxes in cedar instead of the standard pressure-treated wood.  This way we won't be leaching toxic chemicals in the the soil that will grow our vegetables.  The building of the boxes happened on a rainy, stormy day...but, now that we live in a bungalow with a car port...you get the picture...the building continues despite the weather. 

Project 2: Tiered, Terraced Garden Boxes

We need a sunny place to plant a vegetable garden, so we decided to get in gear for this year and build some raised beds.  Step One (after design and staking out a square plot) was to de-sod a large square of grass.

The "after" carpet removal

Carpet Removal

We've been itching to tear something out and decided on an easy project.  There is this plush and disgusting trail of carpet leading from the front door, through the hallway, down the back steps to the back door that continues down to the basement.  Note the scalloped edging...classy.  We took a peak when we were first viewing the house and decided that it was subfloor underneath:(  We resigned ourselves to having to live with bare, scalloped edge plywood floors (maybe we'd paint them?) until we were ready to redo the floors on the whole main level.  However, when we peeled back the layer of underpadding (equally disgusting) there was oak strip flooring underneath!  We discovered and removed vinyl tile that was hiding under the carpet in the foyer and vintage marmoleum in a lovely speckled brown/teal/pink melange that was under the carpet at the back door.  We thought we'd save the marmoleum for a while..it's almost retro enough to be cool, but crow-barring the tack strips ruined it...so it left as well.  The only bit of carpet left is in decent shape and is in the rec. room.  It will stay until we renovate that room.  The house suddenly smells better....

Ah... the first post of our blog that will hopefully take us from the purchase of a virtually untouched 1950s bungalow to our completed home.  We searched for the right neighbourhood and house/land combination for nearly a year.  We offered on and lost 3 houses before offering and getting the best house that we had seen in all of our searching.  I was trying to tell myself that losing the other houses was all in some higher housing plan, and now I actually believe that this was the house we were meant to have.

All of this is a HUGE lifestyle change.  We have moved to the 'burbs, something I never thought I would do.  But, this quiet, quaint neighborhood is very appealing and in real world time, we live a 5 minute drive to work or a 15-20minute bike ride from downtown...hardly far by any standards.  Also, the 'burbs in this context is old 'burbs with each house on a large lot with mature trees, lots of green space and plenty of space between houses.  There are still individual mailboxes attached to the houses and there are no crazy rules restricting clothes lines or  requiring us to mow the lawn on a diagonal.