Tons and tons of projects, getting the basement ready to rent

For the second year in a row Melissa was able to play hummingbird nurse.  Something about our garage attracts exhausted hummingbirds.  She is feeding it some nectar after it decided to land on her head.

 

It ended up peeing in her eye later this evening, spent the night in the garage drinking nectar and flew away the next day.   

 

We were in the garage that night for a reason, besides wildlife rescue, this was the first evening of cabinet building. This is the Ikea kitchen we bought July 4th weekend (yup we bought the basement kitchen 3 weeks before we bought the house).

 

 Melissa decided a white front door was silly, so... now it is coral!  All of her friends love it and have asked her how to do it. I think they meant, "How do you get your husband to agree to a pink door?" Well, the answer to that question is you have to be beautiful, smart, wonderful, and have him wrapped around your little finger.

 

 

We decided to provide a washer and dryer for the basement rental, so we bought a new set for us and put the old set in the basement. Melissa read on the internet that you can make a homemade stand for a frontloading washer/dryer set for much cheaper than the metal stands. It seems much more functional as well, providing a lot more storage.  Well, you can, it does, and it is kind of fun to take vague "blueprints" from the Net and customize them for your situation.

The master carpenter at work, she is more than just the brains in this relationship after all. (She let me help a little) 

The finished project.

Our basement has two windows. When the home was built the basement was unfinished so the cheaper 24 inch window wells were used... now that those are bedroom windows a 24 inch well isn't up to code, which meant they had to come out!  Melissa's vision? A tiered egress well connecting both windows to a safe and enjoyable patio space.

gas powered concrete saw, wait... how thick is this cement?  Oh, over 7 inches instead of the standard 4 in... great.

A backhoe...

A surprise sprinkler line...

A new sledgehammer... (I love an excuse for new tools)

 

Lifting the slab so I can get a better whack at it (learned that trick at our Lindon house from my brother James)... this continues for the next several hours...

And ends like this, "Go away Honey, I'm trying to sleep!"

 Melissa's Dad, Step-Mom, and Grandma came for labor day weekend (arriving sometime during the preceding concrete fight).

Sunday we enjoyed some of our beautiful surroundings after church (Melissa is the 1st counselor in the Primary presidency and I am the Elder's Quorum president at this time in our lives, Blanding 7th ward... if this blog is our family history we need to mention this stuff too).

And Monday we got to work! We cleared the remaining dirt around the window wells hoping to remove them in one piece for salvage.  After clearing the dirt we found they were bolted to the foundation so the salvage plan was scrapped (HA, where do I come up with this stuff!), we just needed to get them out!

Looks like the truck gets to do more than just haul supplies for this job.  A turbo diesel V8 with over 400 HP and 700 lb-ft of torque, 4 wheel drive and off road tires... and all I did was partially let of the brake in low gear. It snapped the window wells right off the bolts.  Kind of disappointing, I was hoping to get some fuel flowing and dirt flying.

 

While Keith and I dug in the window well Melissa, Grandma and Darlene dug in the garden (bean harvesting).

 

We called it a day after lunch, got cleaned up and took the family to see Bluff Fort.

 

The fort consists of ~20 replica cabins, a couple stone and brick buildings and one original cabin from the first LDS settlement in Bluff. It is kind of an important place for us... because my Great Grandfather Hanson Bayles and Great-Great Grandfather Platte Lyman were among these first settlers and each built their cabins here.

The Hanson Bayles cabin

The fort also has two Native American dwellings representing local tribes.

The ladies in a Navajo Hogan (farmer/gatherers)

The men at a Ute Teepee (hunters)

After Melissa's family left we still had to finish the projects.

We continued to build the window well and repaired the sprinkler pipe (can we tag this image with the search term "Where is that sprinkler pipe on the north side of the house again? Isn't it around here somewhere?")

We decided to add a second driveway and a patio to the north side of the house.

This is Allis, Allis Chalmers. She is 71 years old (1942), but she's still got gumption. I borrowed her from Dr. Albert Noyes, PharmD (the farmer's son, turned pharmacist, turned farmer-cist who helped bring us to Blanding in the first place).

 

Weed block fabric and several cubic yards of gravel

Laying stone, a stone layer, a mason? Masonic Melissa?

 

Yeah, I worked her well into the night. 

 

The terraced window well. Way more light in the basement, a beautiful area for the renters to use, and a functional fire escape reducing our liability in a wrongful death lawsuit... a win-win-win.

 

Oh, and maybe we should make/install a guard rail around the cement stairs to the basement door? Yeah, another liability reduction.  We painted it white to match the posts.

 

The finished gravel driveway as seen from the street... and the end of the outdoor portion of this renovation.