More Jungle

Jon King came over a later weekend and we cleaned up the yard with raking and lots of weed/vine pulling. We bagged all of it so I could dispose in my own trash over time instead of borrowing a truck to head to the dump. There was actually a decent yard under all that mess!

Controlling the Jungle

This house was definitely a fixer-upper type purchase, but wow was the yard out of control. The picture to the right only shows one aspect of this, which is the overgrown trees being dominated in morning glory ivy. It was blocking 25% of the patio, so it all had to go. So I got myself some power tools to get after it.

 
There were four trees that needed to be cut down and Michael Tall and I attacked a couple of them. He came over to help "get the yard under control" but then he grabbed my chain saw and was like, "let's cut down this tree." It seemed aggressive at the time but it started the process that has made a world of difference already.

When we were done with the first batch of trees, we had quite the large mass of tree debris to deal with. We cut most of it up and took it to the dump to recycle. Turns out if the greenery comes from your own yard and you live in San Diego county, you can drop it at their greenery recycling center for free! By the end of it we had made a huge change just by cutting down two trees.




I cut down the other trees myself, which maybe was not the smartest move. The two trees were attached to each other by morning glory vines, so when I cut down one and it went timber, it held and actually swung above me. The vines snapped and it fill on my back. Sounds worse than it was, I just had to get out of the squat in order to get the tree off. Not ideal.

Wine Fridge Completion

Because of the slight slope in the kitchen counter and the tight fit of the wine fridge and the custom cabinet, I had a little bit more custom work to do to make everything fit nicely. I had to cut into the drywall and cut some of the baseboard so that everything would fit. No easy task in this setup and a jig saw was essential.

Once there was a enough space, I had to wedge the custom cabinet into the side. Then I cut a custom piece of the excess cabinetry wood to frame the top of the wine fridge so everything would look flush. This took some ingenuity to mount to the plywood attached to the granite. Finally gradually pushing the wine fridge into the tight space. There is some trim work and caulking not shown here that completed the project. It will look even better when I paint the family room and clean up the pain in this area.

Kitchen Color

My all white kitchen definitely needed a little bit of color. I wanted something bright and in the blue-green family to tie in with the green counters. The first step was preparing the area by taping off edges and removing outlet covers. I decided that since my security system is not even active that I would patch up that hole and leave the wire in the wall in case I want to reactivate it in the future.

Next was sampling some colors. I realized with the first sample that I was not willing to go as bold on color as I thought.  I finally settled on a sort of sea foam green called Windwood Spring, which is the bottom one of the samples.

Over a few days I painted the walls and edges and removed the tape. I had previously painted the window frame a bright white to match the cabinets and trim.  Eventually I reinstalled the drawers and doors back into the kitchen. I need to install the new outlets and light switches next. And then I will paint the ceiling and I can begin to decorate the kitchen.