Cable Rails in and Garden is growing

the whole cow

You know the saying don't bite off more than you can chew? Yeah.

Instead of finishing the few things remaining required to get a mortgage, we undertook a major landscaping project. This is partially because I really wanted to make a retaining wall to avoid erosion on a steep slope near the foundation that had me worried. Since this virtually required renting a mini excavator, I figured why not use it for other projects.

So, we decided to make the retaining wall, and go ahead and make the 60 foot long raised garden bed we had planned for the future, and also dig the utility trench to later connect the house to the garage.

Not a huge amount of work? 16 posts, 1000 pounds of concrete, 55 50 pound blocks, lots of hand digging, 13 hours of machine time, 32000 pounds of gravel and 20000 pounds of topsoil later, we beg to differ.

In the end, we prevailed, though I was up until 2 am and then back at it at 7am to maximize machine rental time and finish so we wouldn't need to rent again. On Monday, I could hardly move.

Here's the story in pictures:

One of 16 posts, set in concrete in a sonotube

all 16 posts set, earth torn up.

first three rows of treated 2x12s attached, me in the background hauling gravel. The gravel goes under the topsoil so the soils drain well.

backfilled with gravel, reinforcement structure to be compacted under silty gravel.


topsoil in place, tops of posts will be cut flush


This is the parcially backfilled utility trench which will go to the garage. A PVC conduit for electricity goes in next. These are pex tubes for heating glycol to heat the floor of the garage via the houses boiler.

Roland helps by sleeping sprawled on his back

Me digging out any silt that may disturb the first course of stones for the stone wall. Gravel goes in the trench and then gets compacted and leveled. These machines are fun. Just like playing with Tonka trucks!

Bringing in gravel after a couple courses layed. The gravel gets compacted with a vibratory plate compactor after every 6" course of block. The machine I'm on is a Boxer brand track loader. I got this because it has retractable tracks so it's just small enough to squeeze between the deck and garden wall. You stand on it and hold on as it whips you around.


five courses of block layed

all 6 courses (at the lowest point) and topsoil layed in place. A staircase from the deck will step down to the flat area created by this wall.

Here's another project we've been working on: Deck railing. The space between will be cable rails.

Sided and Painted

Last weekend Andrew and I had some amazing help from my Mom and Dad. They came up to paint and ended up doing numerous other tasks. Like helping us finish the last bit of siding and dog sitting our puppy. Together they painted 2 sides of the house on their own! It really was just the extra push we needed. So thank you Mom and Dad for your help!


Dad Painting, I didn't happen to get a picture of Mom painting but she was working really hard too!




Dad on one side Andrew on the other.



I don't know if you can see this very well but the color difference between the primer on the house and the color we painted the house are very similar. The new color was just the slightest bit more chocolaty. Kudos to Mom and Dad again because the house really was tough to paint. When the house paint went on wet it matched the primer color, so you had to wait a few minutes for it to dry before you could tell if you made any mistakes.

Below are pictures of each side newly painted and sided. All we have to do now is put up the last of the roofing material around the soffets and the deck railings and the house will be finished enough for our mortgage!









Below are the dormer sides.




And because I can, more Roland!



Here is a picture of the new family together!



The above picture is courtesy of Andrews camera going wonky. However, I thought it was kind of cool and artsy. So I put it on the site.



Last but certainly not least I got this super cute picture of Roland today. He sits when I ask him too most of the time. He has gained 3 lbs in a week and has already lost his infant puppy wrinkly nose. Sigh...he's so adorable!

It's a boy!

Today we added an important piece to the house: a puppy! We picked him up in Anchorage this morning and drove all the way to Fairbanks. What a chill dog! We thought he'd have difficulty with such a long drive, but he just relaxed, slept, and never even peed in the car. We stopped a few times to play outside and those were the only times he pee/ooped. In fact it's pretty easy to predict. 30-60 seconds after eating and he goes. And after waking up. And before going to bed. And most of the time.

He doesn't seem to have any problems with our tile and laminate flooring, and our flooring doesn't seem to have any problem with his housetraining. He's really friendly to people, very calm, and just seems like a nicely mannered dog. Of course we've only had him for an afternoon, but we're happy to be dog owners.

Oh yeah, we named him Roland, after also considering Winston, Atticus, Pippen, Grimble, and several others.


Marcy and Roland in his pen. We'll put him in there when we're both at work, about 5 hours while Marcy is on half time. Those stains aren't from the dog, they're from me. No, not that, it was a dropcloth for wood finishing.

Roland in his cat bed


Roland with Uncle John

cooking propane lasts a long time

We finally used up one of our two propane cylinders after four months of heavy winter use. This is with a little 4 gallon standard sized tank like many grills use. We cook nearly every night, sometimes two dinners since Paul is on a different schedule than us, plus we have baked fairly frequently. We were considering renting a 90 gallon "pig" for $6 a month, but even that might not be needed since we might only use about two little tanks a year, and they're easy to fill right down the road.

two sides ready for paint

Today I did the last of the siding on the west side, and the vent is in so birds and squirrels don't move in for spring. Marcy and I finished the soffits on the north and west side, along with the blue metal subfascia wrap.

Kitchen finally 100% done (except the matching fridge)

... and a tiny piece of trim.

Other than that, we finally got our drawer pulls and door knobs.

Siding with Fibercement: A Pain

Fibercement is considered a high end product. It is made from wood fibers impregnated with cement. We're using Hardiplank brand. It lasts a long time, offers some fire protection, is rot resistant, can be painted unlike vinyl but paint lasts a long time unlike wood. We chose it because of this, and installation does not require much special skill. However, it's a pain to work with! It can bend when not carried carefully, it's very heavy (think cement), and it creates dangerous silica dust when sawn.

This summer we're building a garage next to the house and we want the buildings to match, but I'm tired of fiber cement! Lucky for us, there's another product that looks the same, called LP smartside lap. It is a treated OSB product covered with resin saturated, primed paper. It cuts like wood, is longer for fewer seams, weighs half as much, and costs less. I don't trust it as much for moisture resistance and longevity, but the garage is shorter, with longer roof overhangs, and no moisture producing showers inside to permeate under the siding.

Despite all my complaining, we realized recently that that at $4 a square foot, all this siding would cost us around $7000 to have installed. It's probably 7 good weekends of work, so we're not making a bad wage!

We want your comments on colors
Speaking of siding, we need to choose color soon! Any suggestions to go with our blue roof? The primer gray, which is slightly warm actually looks pretty good. I'm leaning towards something similar but darker, or maybe more brown-gray. The window frames can not be painted.

Siding Adventure: Updated X2

We are beginning to dedicate the entirety of our weekends to the house again. Yippee! We've been trying to work on the siding the last couple of weekends but have had some blips here and there. Winter seems to want to stick around a bit longer then normal. I'll put up some pictures in chronological order.

Below you'll see the siding that Paul and Andrew put up on a gorgeous Friday afternoon two weekends ago. Andrew and I spent some time chopping wood after work during that week.



Below is the back side of the house that Andrew and I did last Saturday.



The below pictures are from today. Here's us getting set and ready to begin siding up high on the door side of the house. We're using ladder jacks and made a platform to set on them so that we didn't have to move our big heavy ladders around. Setup actually took us the better part of the morning because we had to shovel snow off of everything.



Below is us getting to work finally (after we took a short break for a game of Settlers). Andrew looking cute as he runs around on the platform. The platform makes me nervous. I'm ok going up on the high ladders but for some reason the scaffolding makes me a bit shaky. I guess because it wobbles alot. The second picture is pretty much where we finished today. We only got about 7 rows done. Setup took most of our time but tomorrow we won't have to worry about that.



This is me wearing those big red sound barrier ear muffs. Thank you to Lou for sending them to us, so far there hasn't been a day that Andrew and I haven't worn them.



Update 4-20-08: Starting to take shape
We worked all day today too, but only got 9 rows! It slow work up high, with windows to cut around, and roof angles to deal with. We also dug (chipped) out soffit material from the snow (ice) and cut the pieces and put up two. The 16 foot platform I made is heavy as hell, but it really helps to be able to nail all the way across without moving ladders. I plan to work a little every evening this week and we'll post pictures as we go.


Update 4-23-08: Soffit, Fascia
On Monday I worked alone and did just a bit. I put up two more soffit boards and a couple pieces of the aluminum lower fascia wrap, which is one of the low (or zero) maintenance parts of our house. Nails, caulk, etc. should disappear with paint.


Tuesday we didn't work at all because of a game of Settlers of Catan, and today we got back to it and are nearing the top of this tallest side of the house.