Future Memo: DIY Cleaning

A link or so of some very good at home cleaners to keep the house work lasting longer.

Car Wax as Stove polish to Coffee filters as TV and PC cleaner

Epic Grout Cleaner

Everlasting Dryer Ball and Downy Sheet While the link shows you to use a foil ball to eliminate static in your dryer instead of expensive dryer sheets. I also found a way to give the laundry a burst of scent that won't cost you 3-8$ for a box of pre-cut throw away dryer sheets.

The 40+ load Dryer sheet:
1 Old hand towel or flour cloth

Favorite liquid fabric softener

Soak the old hand towel or flour cloth completely with fabric softener. Wring it out and let it dry completely, then throw it in with your next load. This mega-fabric softener sheet should be good for at least 40 loads of laundry, stretching out softener use and lessening waste.

Along the Drive and ideas for the Tiny SideYard

Okay, and now we're getting into the sideyard and driveway ideas. Mind you the sideyard is going to be about 47 feet. / a little less than that since we're going to take out the hillside by the drive to make the parking wider for garbage, groceries, guests and car doors. And about 5-10 ft wide on the one side. "Tiny yard." 

Pretty self explain

The thing is, we're on a hill. So we can see DOWN into the neighbors business and if we're outside eating they can see what we're UP to. You can see the small retaining wall we're going to put in to widen the drive a little more. I thought of having this done in a smaller scale that leads upto the sideyard from the driveway. See the steps that lead up into the Yard. I wondered if this would be Too much to have and act as privacy. I don't want to "Box" ourselves in but I don't want to be in the middle of a meal, turn my head and wave at a neighbor watching us eat from their porch.



Welcome to the side yard and tone the nib down?



Patio Idea but instead of it being in the middle it surrounds the edges

Oh, and not to worry about flowering layouts I found a TON of Pdf files on BHG (better homes and gardens) that I can mix and match around with.

How I'm pictureing the side of the house. The windoes are the bedrooms
but the sitting area is more to the left which would be in front of the
dining area and kitchen.

I thought this was a pretty side yard dress up. Would look real
nice around grandma's house. Especially if you give the red brick
a coat of blue gray then go over it in white with a chocolate steel roof.

I love those daisy's. It's a variety of Black eyed Susan the name
eludes me. But I do know it.

Time consuming but a well worth river rock garden.
Use the rocks natural color and some cement along the bottom with
sand wetted down over top of it to make it stick and you have a
persian stone rug.

I love the roses with this front door. It's so pretty.

To hide the retaining wall railroad ties. Polyurethane the sticks
gathered and snipped to size with lopper cutters and use some
thin wire to loop and hold it all together.

How I want to do the patio but the green
squares would be Mint. So when you walk
on it the smell permiates the air.

This was just cool. It's on wheels and acts as a privacy barrier for
the backyard and when there's an event or guests over they move it
to the side to allow access to the back yard. Thought of doing this
to the side of the driveway since Einy wants to conrete it all.

Another side yard idea.

So very pretty, I'm wondering if I could scale
it down to size and still have it look right.

Absolutely loved this for the Driveway idea. But
just along one side of it with a plant tall enough to
block the view down into the neighbors home. I would
also love to do this down camp with the Drive and for the
driveway towards the church.

Another stunning side yard done up to the nines.

Another Patio idea but between the crevices place Mint instead
of crete or sand.

Instead of the arbor maybe this as the entrance
up into the side yard at the house corner.

Under the Porch~

Okay so a few posts ago I mentioned the Root Cellar idea under the porch. Well I have full support of the idea from Einy so that's a plus. Secondly I went spelunking for ideas on setting up the underside of the porch so here are some of my findings. It's going to hold the food on one half and the firewood on the other for the woodburner.

Mind you the underside of the Porch isn't THIS big but it is very
long and wide enough to probably hold a family of 3-4's winter food
supplies and then some.

 I'll posts pictures of UNDER the PORCH when I get a good sunny day and some light down there. The word Dark doesn't even describe the black hole that is there.

I'm also seeking out idea's of what to do for the Porch on the house itself. I thought of several structual idea's but I don't want a porch that will overwhelm the house nor do I want one that looks "thrown up" and "not to scale". The Porch is meant to be welcoming for guests and visitors. The Front door is going to be moved to the far rightside of the Porch and be just slightly wider than the average 36" door. I also want to do the decorating painted rug to the cement as long as it won't detract from the porch itself. This pergola is one of the design ideas I thought of having as the Front Porch Roof and have a trained Wisteria growing up over it. (don't need it tearing into the gutters or house siding)

Below are a bunch of Porches that I liked. While I know that home looks more Cape Cod I didn't fancy thier porch designs with keeping to period. So I went back a little further towards the 1900's and late 1800's and I also jumped ahead to today'd modern porch look to see if anything would fit the homes front. A house is like a person; the porch is its face and what you do to it is the make up. Too much make-up it looks bad and too little makes it look plain.

Very pretty colors, Loved the curved door and sidelights not to mention the
opulant header design over the front door with the columns that continue along the porch.

Our home can be seen from the next street down. You can look up through an
empty lot and boom, there she is (will get a picture of that too once the dumpster is gone)
I thought this would be a very pretty way of displaying the house number from that street
should anyone be looking for us. Not to mention the Numbers are in 1920's Font. Which is
techincally the same era of the house.

I liked the bevled underside and how it looks like they painted
the slat boards in copper paint to give is a metallic glow. I don't know
if this look would be proper for the porch though as it's much longer than this.

Short and simple right over top of the door. I would actually love to have
this over the basement or a side door since if it was on the front it may
make the porch look like an over plucked eyebrow.

Ah yes gingerbreading for the home. Make it the same length of the porch
then I got to thinking of it being just a little too much for the simple front.
I think it's pretty but it just may be too "to period" for the home. 

Again more gingerbread this time with a to period paint scheme.

Once again the placement of the numbers caught my eye
I thought I could do the same thing to the side of the house
where when you pull in the driveway you can see the house number
as well.

We're going to have a steel roof on the house hence why I chose
this particular porch. Not to mention we won't be walking up to the
house from the front, like this one is, but from the left side.

This was taken from another blog I had found and didn't save the link
(apologies to owner of picture) It's a southern porch and the owner was
tesing out paint schemes for the siding. Personally I'm really liking this porch the best. 

Another porch that was too early period, but I fancied it and
decided to show it anways. :) 

I liked the colors and the vertical, I think it's called Baten
siding. Imagine this with a steel copper painted roof.



And aren't these colors and siding of the house just Pretty!?!
I don't really care much for the gray paint on the window though but
it does tone down the white that would be in the area.



I liked the black door and the porch posts, the greenery just makes it pop.

Processes

Well Einy has once again improved his original idea for the houses bones. Since the outer walls only have a 2*4 he's going to reinforce them with another 2*4 to give us 2*8's inner walls. This means that the R-19 insulation is still a go.

Secondly, the subfloor is still coming up but the new subfloor is going to have 2 layers of sheeting over it for extra stability. This step will be done in sections of course so we have a path to walk on and after the chimney's are out.

Thirdly, we're also going to paint the guts of the house from roof to basement floor. The reason being is that once we get the dust and dirt we can get off the wood we're going to use the paint to seal the wood. Eliminating the dust issue and also brightening up a dark attic crawl space allowing us to see better. There is no treated lumber in this home it's even got the square cut penny nails in it holding it together along with corner joists. Two things that have been lost with time and architectural advancements.

The new Bathroom and Kitchen will NOT be completed right away, we'll need to have warmer weather and rebuild up our funds but we'll have a temp bathroom and kitchen while the living room, bed room, and basement will be complete.