Not a whole lot happened on the project this past week. August is always busy, and I feel like it’s harder to carve out much time in the evenings. We’re still waiting on the appliance quote so that we can make some final decisions there. I did have a virtual meeting with a salesperson at ILVE on Friday over lunch, and am waiting on that final quote as well. I’d feel a lot better having everything on order so that I can move onto finalizing the casework.
The extreme heat relented a little bit, so it was possible to work outside for more than an hour without suffering heat stroke. We spent a few hours out back on Sunday afternoon. M pried off the chicken wire and wire mesh that we had installed at the balcony ceiling to prevent nesting animals, pitched it over the railings, and I neatened it up into little bundles for recycling or reuse by someone else. (We are doing our very best to avoid throwing much into the landfill – salvaging materials as we go, which does take a lot of time!)
M cut up the old T&G ipe deck boards into smaller pieces, and crated them up for a future use. Our neighbors used some of our salvaged river rock on one of their landscaping projects, and now I’m going to see if I can sell the rest to other DIY’ers. I sold the last item from the basement on FB Marketplace, and we took another truckload of items to the storage unit. Mostly outdoor items like our Bertoia chairs, and some of F’s scooters and play items. I also continued to clean out items inside – I did a deep clean of the wardrobe in our dining room which acts as our mudroom. We donated old uniforms and soccer gear and violins to some neighborhood schools as well. I fashioned a large portfolio case for E’s work to store under her bed, and wrapped up one of her pieces to take for framing this weekend.
I’m going to continue thinning out the kitchen items, and getting information together to sell the current kitchen when we are ready. I’m going to put together a plan for how we create a temporary kitchen for awhile. That can go in the living room / dining room to start (using the 1/2 bath sink for water), but at some point we’ll have to move everything out of the first floor of our house to frame the opening for the basement stair and then to install all new flooring on first floor. Moving in and out of our house is going to get pretty exciting!
I noticed they were dividing daylily bulbs at MoBot last Wednesday, so I might put that on my to-do list for this weekend. I’m going to sell those bulbs on Marketplace, but I’ll probably replant some off to the side of the yard to hold onto for future use. M’s asked the neighbor if we can use the lightwell of his house to lay down a few pallets that we held onto from our limestone deliveries for the front garden. If he’s okay with that, I’ll start to take up the bricks in the back and along the side of the new addition and stage them there. I might go through the bricks in the backyard stack and see what is salvageable and get rid of the broken ones. Then I’ll move the sand into the sand pile we have out back on tarps. Our rear yard looks like a construction zone already, so we’re just leaning into it.
I’m visualizing the rear garden to get me through this. I know it will be awhile before we are finally there, but I also know what a difference a year made in our front garden. The dahlias are back. It’s doable. And it’s worth it.