Recently in Home Projects Category

This year my vegetable garden has taken on a different look. The grapes vines I planted the year before came out like mad this year along with the raspberry bushes. I tried to build some structure for the grapes to grow over and still may get a trellis. The artichoke plant that overran a huge part of the garden last year is gone replaced with its smaller runt cousin.

The collards are looking hearty, along with my Armenian cucumbers and one of my zucchini plants. Beans & peas didn't come up as I wanted so I may replant some more. My Okra wasn't doing great so I planted another plant in a different part of the garden and that plant seems to have stabilized.

Overall I have a promising looking garden plus an ultrasonic pest deterrent device I picked up because of the rodent issue I had last year in my garden. Take a look and hope your garden does well if you have one!

This years garden is a little late getting together due to needing to get the rental together and the weather but here's the start of the garden front & back before I get time to smooth the details out.  I need to grab some bark for the front where I put down weed block and make the grapes climb my structure I built out of PVC pipe. The PVC pipe was there from when I put the sprinklers in (yes all by myself) a few years ago. This project cleaned up some clutter and provided a needed solution to how I want my grapes to climb for now.

I will also employ a net trellis for my peas and beans to climb if the rodents don't eat them this year!

I have employed an ultrasonic rodent repellent this year to keep the rodents out of the garden.

Here are some pics of the gardens with still a few things to do.

Finally able to get some pictures of my vegetable and flower gardens.

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Well last week I pretty much got the vegetable garden in the backyard and the flower gardens in the front yard finished except some spaces purposely left open for future updates or seasonal vegetation.

I rototilled around the huge artichoke plant that is now producing like crazy. In the garden on the other corner in backyard I tilled around the existing sage, thyme, parsley, chives & strawberries that stayed over the winter.

To compliment my existing herbs I planted, basil (didn't last over winter), mint & more chives, & green onions.

I planted Roma, Big Boy, & Yellow pear tomato plants. I also planted eggplant, hot jalapeno, Serrano, banana, red chili & three kinds of bell peppers.

For the root type vegetables I planted red potatoes, garlic, & red onion.

I also planted watermelon, zucchini squash, mammoth sunflowers, sweet corn, Swiss chard, collard greens, and mustard greens. Today I got some celery, cilantro & summer squash.

I almost forgot I also planted last week some peas, green beans, black-eyed peas (cow peas), a grape vine & another blueberry bush.

I still have a raspberry vine & what I believe is a blueberry plant from last year that survived the artichoke bush from last year. Reminds me I also planted some asparagus I hope is out of the way. Last year the asparagus, grapes raspberries, greens, Swiss chard and other veggies were over run by the artichoke bush.

Last week I also made repairs and changes to the drip/watering system.

Today I also pulled up about 5 bags of weeds from the small corridor between homes I have as well as cut the grass and edged with the weed eater and pressure washed the patio and sidewalks in the backyard around the pool. Now I have the pool pumps going to get the dirt that inadvertently got in the pool from pressure washing.

All in all it was a long but productive day!

Tomorrow the finishing touches and time to hall off some trash perhaps. Ah yes I also got some ground cover flowers to go between my roses up front called "verbien tapien blue-violet".

Pictures later perhaps. For now I will have another martini & watch the pool lights change colors on this very pleasant night.

As I was removing 2 bags of weeds from my garden today I also took up some huge carrots I planted last year and noticed the artichokes are really starting to come in now!

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Well making the move to another house and packing for that move right now. I will rent out my current house. Moving is always a process but I’m not usually much bothered by the process but this time there’s more to this move.

First the impact on my web site will be significant since I host my web site, blogs and Internet music station at home. I will have to break up my services because of the house I’m moving to not having the same services available for various reasons even though its not far from my other house.

I will no longer have 20mb unregulated upload and download Internet service. This will affect performance and availability of my web site and music server. For some reason the developers didn’t equally allow all of the service providers in the area access to placing their infrastructure in place.

My current ISP will continue to hosts my domain but even though the new Internet service will costs more it will be one third of the speed even though its of fiber like my Internet service I’m moving from and they have a lot fewer features. I will not be able to get static IP addresses or

I’m also having issues getting my telephone service turned on for some reason. The only thing the new telecommunication company I’m moving to can say is that they are having facility issues at that address I’m moving to. What an ambiguous statement! Hell let me fix it!

I work at home most of the time so the internet and the phone service is very important and the fact that I’m capped on the Internet even though this provider has the same fiber infrastructure as my previous provider where I had 20mb upload and download really ticks me off!

All these delays are keeping me from moving into the new home so I can get in there and get this place rented out in a timely fashion and thus costing me money!

I may be offline for a while until I swing through the hoops of this new ISP and what I can do to push the envelope of this restricting package they offer.

What is this trend in America now of only doing well enough to edge out someone else who is underachieving? Come on someone try some excellence! That’s why we have idiots in political office and in key positions in companies and government positions there is definitely a decline going on and it may come to a tragic head in our generation if things don’t change. A lot of this is driven by inefficient fascists concerned more about image than substance. Don’t believe that fairytale that fascists are efficient their structures are a deck of cards!

Oh well this is all for the future and I couldn’t pass up the deal on this house as a future investment. I’ll start kicking off my personal business a bit stronger I do on the side.

I picked up a new refrigerator (Kenmore Elite Side by Side) at the Sears clearance center at a very nice price yesterday. My other refrigerator is in passable shape but the compressor was a bit loud. I 'm sure all my former fridge needed was some cleaning underneath to get it in good shape but since I may be getting one in about a month or so anyway I made the purchase.

My new place will have all white appliances so I wanted get that plus the same features I currently have like water in the door and ice. Well the new fridge has that plus auto lighting in the ice & water area, counts the amount of water dispensed with your choice of measurement, ie.. ounces, cups or liters.

The new fridge also has an ice bucket you can easily take off for parties drinks etc.. and a ton of other great features in the refrigerator area that someone who cooks quite a bit like I do would enjoy like a see through bin in the meat locker so I can remember to cook the meats there or freeze it.

I also finally trimmed the bottom of the cabinet that the refrigerator sits underneath so it could fit fully beneath the spot in the kitchen it was intended to sit in. When I installed my slate rock flooring in the kitchen it raised the floor level just enough so that my former or current fridge would not fit beneath it.

Thank goodness this cabinets is at the end of the wall so the cuts were easier but not easy.

Anyway I now have my former fridge in the garage and my new fridge has taken over after its 24 hour acclimation period.

Now I don't have to listen to a loud compressor while trying to watch TV or listen to my late night slow jams on my Internet radio show @ http://www.dhoytt.com/snake-ice-radio-blog/

Some more pictures of the finished floors that I laid. The floors came out very well! Only thing left is what baseboards to use or use portions of the slate tile.

Ok finally finished my floors. Had to do the floors in fits and starts around other projects that had more of a immediate need such as major pool maintenance so I would not have to deal with a pool full of algae garage sale, several computer issues etc… I also was really sick in there as well.

As I have stated earlier on this blog I also had to do the floors in modules not only for technique testing but because the kitchen is right between my den where I watch TV listen to music and relax and the garage where I have tools materials etc..

I did a lot of clean up especially after I put in the mortar between the tiles. I thought also that if I could scrub the tiles as much as possible before putting down the wet seal that would give it more outstanding final luster & sheen.
Well I could get no shine before the wet seal but tested a few pieces of extra tile from previous cuts by applying the wet sealant and they came out looking just ok. I was a bit skeptical about taking that final conclusive step at this point, but could find nothing else to scrub off of the tiles so started on one corner of the floor and it looked really good after the initial application of the wet sealant!
I proceeded to do one half of the floor so I still had a passage to the den and garage from the other part of the house and wow. It looked great! Tonight I finished the rest of the floor after returning from a nice run at the local Junior college and I’m done!

Believe it the floor is done and looking excellent!

I have already been studying up and researching for my next two projects, what color to painting the kitchen and redoing the cabinets and putting in another sink and possibly getting new kitchen appliances.

Some pictures:

Here I am after completion of putting down sealant on floors and after evening run still dressed from run.

Tiles still wet from tonight’s application of the sealant.

Showing last night's application with half the floor not done to allow passage from one part of the house to the other portion of the house.

Floors and garage sale how do they go together? Well I moved things out of my house plus acquired a few new pieces of furniture the past few months to replace or sell and moved that furniture to storage until my floors were done.

            Well I ended up a bit sick and also my tile wasn’t available in the store when I took the time off to install the tile or at least the main portion of the install.

Well I then ran into some killer furniture deals at auctions and knew that these windows of opportunities at those prices so gotta take advantage and then decide which pieces I wish to keep.

I always take advantage of the storage specials of half a month off or 1 dollar a month when doing things like this and this was no exception. This time however my timing was off because of the tile not being in stock and my getting sick.

            So to move these things out I had a garage sale so I could get things out of storage without costing more money and keep things off the floors since I’m not totally done. I just have to clean the grout haze and seal the tile. Then I will place the pics up on the site.