We’ve gotten pretty behind with posting about house updates but fortunately we have continued to make (slow) progress on the house. We finished the first round of bathroom painting almost two months ago now! We started with salmon walls and ceiling (the color really doesn’t come across in the photos, but trust us – it was PINK).

We picked white for the ceiling and blue for the walls. Trying to tape off the window framing was challenging as the frame did not sit flush with the wall. Jake thinks whoever installed the sheet rock used the wrong size, leaving a gap and leading someone to fill it with foam. We made an on the spot decision to tear off the framing, uncovering a nice mass of dead flies and other general nastiness.

We then went ahead with priming and painting, which was pretty uneventful aside from having to maneuver around the bathtub.

We are really happy with the color! We’re planning to move on to painting the bead board soon…

 

The garden got a little neglected during the past month while I was on a busy inpatient rotation. We have been having great lettuce for a while now, but it has recently turned bitter and I pulled it up today to make room for spinach and arugula. We could harvest the beets at any time and I pulled up a carrot today that was very tasty.

I think the zinnias are my favorite thing to have come out of the garden so far:

 

We have learned a lot with this year’s practice garden. Our biggest mistake was probably getting behind with watering. Next year we will have to do soaker hoses.

Having a whole house to decorate and update has been overwhelming. We’ve spent a lot of time talking about what projects we’d like to do, some big (e.g. completely redo the roof to make it less steep and allow us to expand the footprint of the second story) and some small (e.g. hanging coat hooks). We are finally feeling ready to tackle a whole room and have decided to start with the ugliest: the bathroom. It’s our most colorful room, but we’re just not fans of the former owners’ choice of combining hunter green (tile floor, bathtub and trim), brick red (counter top), and peach (walls and ceiling).

We do like the teak toilet with its funky flush mechanism and the claw foot tub. We’re talking about repainting the tub since it’s covered in paint bubbles that have been bursting and we’ll have to move it anyway to get to the paneling behind it. But we’ve been back and forth about whether to put the tub back in or use the space for some more storage.

We’re not planning on any huge overhauls but we think some paint will go a long way in here. Our current plan:

• paint the wood paneling, trim and cabinet white
• paint the walls some undecided color (probably a shade of blue)
• paint the ceiling white
• put in a white tile backsplash behind the sink
• change out the formica for a more neutral color
• remove the old heat lamp by the shower that doesn’t work and patch the ceiling where it was
• fix the fan that has never worked

I noticed that the beet leaves were looking discolored today. I seem to have quite a green thumb for pests… We’ve got leaf miners (according to the internet).

Jake and I squashed all the eggs we saw and I tore off the discolored parts of the leaves.

I wonder what I’ll find on the lettuce tomorrow….

 

Hard to believe we started with this:

 

 

We were having a great night, finally getting an invite from one of our neighbors to come over for a drink on their patio. I kept hearing scampering behind me and the neighbor’s friend seemed distracted… Turns out there were rats running along the top of the fence that runs between our yards! The neighbors’ fig tree seemed to be their destination. There were only 3, and they seemed to be relatively small. In the light of day we checked around our yard and did not see an obvious site for a rats’ nest. We’ll see what we discover when we dig out the back for landscaping. For now I’m just grateful that there is no evidence of rodents inside the house. Just to stay ahead of the game I’m re-reading Rats to remind myself what clever creatures we’re dealing with.

Unfortunately the pest discovery continued! I had been noticing a white butterfly taking a lot of interest in our kale the past couple of days, and there were some chewed up leaves.

After some quick internet research I realized I was dealing with cabbage worms. I inspected all the leaves and killed all the worms I saw, but the butterfly taunted me the whole day and was always quick enough to get away so I know this will be an ongoing battle. While I was looking for worms I found yet another infestation…

So while squashing worms I also sprayed the aphids with soapy water and knocked them off with the spray from the hose. The kale has been doing very well so I hope these pests will only be a minor setback now that I know they are there and will stay vigilant.

 

I was working long hours at the Harborview ER and didn’t even notice the plants emerging 10 days in.

 

We were a little late to the game for planting this season after all the work it took to dig out the old weeds and put in new beds. I’m still learning about vegetable planting here in the Northwest, but with the help of some local resources I realized that we could still get some use out of the garden this season! We decided to start small and easy and use this first year to experiment. We went to the nursery and came back with basil, dill, cilantro, chive, thyme and kale starts as well as beet, carrot and lettuce seed and I got to planting!

 

Although at first I thought we should get rid of the old stove in a favor of a modern one, it’s hard to find fault with an oven that can produce a beautiful souffle! After figuring out the quirks (and realizing that we did not have to move the cabinet every time we want to use the oven) it is working great. It will be even better once we get it leveled to avoid uneven cakes and brownies and we fix the thermostat.