Taking Little Bites

Unexpected weekend! Going into it, I had no real plans, no real to-do lists, and no expectations. (Hard to believe, yes I know.) It started out small. Saturday I weeded, cleaned, vacuumed the basement, and re-set our backyard watering timer.

Then, I got the notion to try the old soapy water plus household vinegar (5%) plus as-hot-as-my-tap-will-make water poison ivy killer. I mixed the three in a bucket - very liberal on the vinegar and soap - no other measurements - and I threw the bucket contents over the rocks. After the first bucket I realized I was in a bit over my head. One bucket only covered the smallest of areas. But I had enough vinegar to do three buckets full, figuring that this would be a good test.

Side 1 Rocks: Before

Side 1 Rocks: After

Side 2 Rocks Before

Side 2 Rocks: After

As you can see from the results - it's obvious where I threw the mixture. The leaves turned black, then to white in those areas. Conclusion - I need more vinegar and a bigger bucket. Actually, I need a 50 gallon barrel with a pressure washer attached to it. I could market that.... Anyhoo, I'm going to keep watch to see if those areas and plants actually die. Then, I'll go to BJ's for another giant vinegar and make a little one-girl bucket brigade.

If that wasn't enough for one day, I randomly decided to paint that one fan-section of the farmer's porch ceiling. So randomly in fact, I only had a half hour window in which to prep, paint, and clean up. But I somehow made it happen. I started around 2:30 and was out of the shower by 3:45 and out the door to a house warming party.

Sunday morning, Mike installed the fan for me. And it looks beautiful! More importantly, the dang box is out of the living room!! Hooray! It's only been in there since my mom's bday. (May)

Then he took care of some other little things:
Installed the front door doorbell.
Replaced the one odd GFCI outlet on the porch with a normal one.
Cut two outlet covers in half to fit the porch outlets by the french doors.
Put up my Bermuda weather sign. (Gift from some friends of ours who went there... I was not so lucky to have gone.)
Removed the yucky Yukka plant from next to the lilac in the front yard. (Looks so much better without!)
Fertilized the back yard.

For the remainder of his rainy Sunday, Mike got to pick his own project. Installing the old garage door on the new garage addition! (Previously, we had a drop cloth keeping weather out of that area and didn't store anything steal-able in there.)

But as usual, it wasn't as easy a project as he had hoped. The door opening was 6" too big for the door. So, after using all the rest of our scrap wood, Mike had to hit the DeepHo for a few more pieces to build out one side. What a pain in the butt! After finally finishing the framing and installing the door tracks, it was close to 8:30pm. He called it a night and installed the door on Monday.

Looking at this door now, I can hardly believe it used to be on the front of our garage. It's super gross and ugly. I wish I could have bought Mike a new door for this space at the same time I bought the other door. But he really wanted the super huge door instead of two small ones for the front. And I can't blame him for that. We can live with this for a while.