People ask me how I get so much done.  I tell them my house is a wreck.  And then they laugh.  Here's my sewing room after two of my last projects.

I just wanted to show you that this is a work in progress. I have toys, boxes, leftover scraps, pattern pieces, an ironing board & iron, all my fabric stash, all my felt stash, a huge bookcase, and the closet is full of my husband's clothes. All packed up and no place to stow :)

Remember this monstrosity? Well, it is no more! What did I do for four straight days last weekend? Well of course, work in the steamy Florida heat and finally lay down the paver walkway and landscaped the side of our house. Let me remind you of what this all looked like last February (I bought the pavers last summer planning on a winter project...but winter turned to Labor Day).
We had already removed all the boards and the sheds, as explained in three previous posts, go there to review how much work had already taken place - Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. You can tell just how steamy it was in the picture above. That's my dad and sister helping to dig out the place we would need to level before we put in the pavers.
And more digging. This shows the strips of plywood we put down with stakes to mark the edges of the path and to give us a level height to work from. We leveled the plywood tops with a string and level that we marked off from the height of the pool deck so the pavers wouldn't be very far away from that. It was hard to be perfect. You can see in the above picture that we were working on leveling the dirt before we starting adding leveling sand to perfect the surface to lay the pavers on top of.
Here you can see we put down leveling sand on top of the dirt we had leveled the same way. This involved using the board my dad is holding and scraping it along the top of the plywood (shown in the right of the photo). It is called a screed. So that helped us make the dirt level and also the leveling sand level.
The path almost done with sand; nice and level.
Whole path done. Now to lift all the pavers and put them in place on the path. I picked some pavers that would create a natural looking path, not square and it was neat how they fit together like a puzzle.
This is what the path will look like....next we used polymeric sand to fill in the gaps. Polymeric sand does not promote weed growth, doesn't float away like regular sand/dirt, and also will harden somewhat. Follow the directions on the package...and one bucket of that stuff goes a long way.
Here you can see I next put down landscaping edging along the sides of the path, filled in the pathway with regular dirt to keep the pavers locked in place, and mulched and planted the sides of the path with Florida native species. I'm hoping these won't die like the last 3 sets of plants I tried.
Ta da! Just a reminder of what this looked like before! What a difference!

I hope you enjoyed this....I'm so glad it is done. And just in time to put our house up for sale because I got a new job in Tampa. Whew! And we have an open house this Saturday (tomorrow) that hopefully goes well :)

My first tomato of the year (I wish I was Dan Quayle so I could spell it tomatoe).
We also have a single planted rose bush that has a nice bloom on it right now.
I am growing cuttings in smaller pots from my grandparent's house as well. After my grandmother died, my grandfather planted a rose garden. He even got a sign that says "Elizabeth's Garden" and the cuttings are from those roses and others on their property. I hope the cuttings root well so I can plant them before the heat of summer.
Tomato bushes. I have about 6 on the right in a line that are very large now and 4 on the left that are smaller. I had to replant seeds during the spring because of cats digging them up and the coldest winter I can remember here in Central Florida.
Corn! I love summer corn and I'm hoping these get bigger. Makes me remember that I need to fertilize.

Did you plant anything? What is the best thing for where you live?

I finally removed enough dirt to plant the podocarpus, which ideally will create a nice hedge to block the view between us and our neighbors. They are wonderful neighbors, and we love them, but the houses in our area are built EXTREMELY close together. So I started digging the first spot, right behind that front plant in the next picture.
Of course, it couldn't be easy. We are planting under two very large Australian Pines, on our neighbor's property. The roots are soft though. But I didn't hit a root. I hit a....5-gallon bucket, turned right side up! Lordy. Took 2.5 hours to get the sucker out because the roots had cemeted it in place, combined with the dirt inside which made it too heavy to just lift out.
This is where I was as of the Saturday before Easter. I have since begun planting the plants. My husband brought Azaleas from his job, he is an Agriculture teacher in Polk County, Florida, so we bought plants the students raised. They are already blooming!
More to come! If you want to see the project from the beginning (I recommend you do so you can see how *beautiful* the house was before), use these links: Part 1 and Part 2.

Last weekend I was pretty busy but managed to work on the side of the house project a bit more. I began by removing the screws in all of the wood planks that are rotting. The screws are still as good as new (although I don't think I'll reuse them). Too bad because I have a gazillion.
Next I removed the planks, although it got dark before I finished them all.
Just a reminder, this is before:
Next step is to remove the rest, then start digging out the dirt to lay the foundation of gravel. I chose gravel under sand as the base because this needs to drain water well (otherwise it gets very muddy). I probably could get by with just sand, but I want this to be 100% wetland free. We have a pool pump on this side of the house as well as our A/C unit too. So mud is not so great.

Here is what it looks like laid out. I have to begin thinking about ordering the sand and gravel soon. You may have to click on the picture to enlarge it so you can see what I mean. The AZ are azaleas my husband is growing in a greenhouse. The BR are Bromeliads I've already bought. We are going to plant podocarpus along the chain link fence which will act as a screen between us and our neighbors. Their kitchen window now views our swimming pool since we removed the sheds.See Part 1 of this project here.

Okay, so I finished the attic project last weekend with the help of my sister, Katie. And a little help from my dad. Here is the picture of more notable items that we found:
The tallest item is a floor scrubber...I checked it and it still worked! The blue "Gas can" type item is actually a foam fire extinguishing tub. It was empty. I also pulled down a ton of trash, chairs, and other items not in the picture, but notice on the right the white thing? It is a meat slicer!!! OMG!

It could be that it is my luck. But I think that it is weird when people sell you a house and leave piles of items inside it. Not to mention that (which we took care of before we moved in) but now the attic is on my to-do list because of this:

I know it is hard to understand why people would leave such beautiful and useful items, like:
1968 wall paper, a golf bag with the clubs, and a piece of multicolored blue/red/orange carpet. Wish the carpet had been bigger, I could have gotten it bound! Do you have people that left stuff at your house? What have you found in your attic? I have a long ways to go before this project is over!

Now, because of Tropical Storm Fay, not only did our dock get submerged, but we also had some bush damage. We had a very very large bouganvillea that was quite beautiful. So beautiful I decided to pose in an ugly bathing suit the first month we lived in our house, with my nephew.
Well, Tropical Storm Fay actually pushed this over, till it hit the dock pilings, which are behind me in the above photo. It was leaning at a 45 degree angle. This won't do, Gidget!
See above for how the bush landed after the storm. Next step was to cut down the bush, which I ended up doing to ground level. Behind it, the bush had destroyed the chain link fence, so I employed my father, who nicely came and helped me with this part. We saved the links, and got the connectors and bars at Home Depot. I still have to spray paint to keep it from rusting further.
You can see above what is left of the bouganvillea, which is a stump, and new growth that I'll have to make stay smaller than what was there before. Nice job on the gates, huh? I know my dad is a genius.
We needed them replaced on both sides of the yard, so the above is the other side. Finally, we had a gate leading to the front yard that was not able to swing, so we had to cement in a new post and change out the hinges. Note the special piece on the right. My dad had that made in a machine shop. He is a mechanical engineer so he is good with these things (I'm only a lowly aerospace engineer.) Before it was just the pole on the left, which left a large enough space for a small child to creep through, which always worried me. Now it is impassable!

Gosh we didn't have much space on the left side of our house before. I realize now that it was because the sheds were much larger than I thought. The roofs were both damaged due to cutting down the tree above them. So we removed them completely. Before pictures here:

Here is what it looks like now that we have removed the shed walls (we have to pry up the shed floors after we remove the wood planks).Also note that in the picture above, I have removed all the pavers and rocks that were surrounding the air conditioning unit (they were up behind the unit about 6 inches, covering it...not good!). You can finally see the concrete it is sitting on. See the lovely shed floor below. Fun times. Also, they stored a biminy top frame behind one shed...it is stuck for now.

So I've been promising more pictures, and believe me, more are sure to come. Here is the dock before. It was really in sore shape. Notice the before pictures with the pilings that are leaning, and are rectangular (normally pilings are round). Some we could see through, of course I didn't get good pictures of that.And the dock was pretty small before. We definitely couldn't fit a table out there, and we were worried about falling in the canal all the time, since it was small. And of course, there was the time that the dock collapsed on one end and two people actually did end up in the salt-water.

Now, these are terrible, but it shows the old dock removed, and the new pilings going in.

Now here is a picture of all the pilings installed.
You can see it is getting much larger! This is the day they were starting to install the lift.
We changed the layout and now the boat faces the other way. But it gives us much easier access. Before it was a 2-person job to ease the boat out of the slip. We had to back out and make a turn at the same time. Now we can get straight out.
And here it is in all the glory...with our used lift we got for $2K :) -- thanks RoxyinRed!

Now it is also higher, so this doesn't happen again (Tropical Storm Fay Fall 2008):

Over the past two weekends, we have tackled some projects at home. The first was our back porch door. Before we bought the house, the owners enclosed the porch and since then, there has been water that reaches the threshold of the door. Thus, the door has been taking the brunt of all Florida’s moisture. Ta da—

Lovely, I know. (The next project I’ll tell you about is even lovelier.) So now, we have a lovely new door, with a window so we can see outside more easily. I’ll have to remind myself to take that picture and put it on my blog at some point.

(Imagine the door here.)

Last weekend, we got up bright and early to see the shuttle launch, that didn’t happen, but instead, realized we have a drip in an upstairs bathroom (horrors!). When we investigated, this is what we found.

It had to be upstairs, in a WALL, under a vanity, between two pieces of drywall and two studs, and another pipe. Nice! So the plumber is coming today.

You wouldn’t think it was so bad from this view.

Oh, but this view can make your stomach churn over.