This Flippin’ House – Painting Grand River
Ever priced out painting a house? Been taken back by the four figure number? Trust me, its not unjustified. However, if you know myself or my family, you know we’re not about to fork over fistfuls of cash when we could buy the tools, do it ourselves, have the tools when we’re done, and have a huge sense of accomplishment.
When we bought Grand River, we invested in a Wagner Paint Crew airless paint sprayer. The thing literally paid for itself in the first hours of use, and it has only gotten better. We have refinished the kitchen cabinets at Grand River, refinished kitchen cabinets at my parent’s latest flip, and embarked upon saving a healthy sum of money by painting Grand River ourselves.
The project began last Fall with a trial run on the back of the garage. It went well, but I wasn’t entirely certain about the color. We got a new color, and started again this week. Instead of arduously masking off every window, trim piece, inch of foundation, etc, I opted for using a piece of cardboard (pizza box to be specific) to mask as I went along. Long story short – I will never mask of anything with cut up garbage bags and painters tape again. In a few short hours, I was able to paint as high as I could reach on both the front and side of the house.
Assuming rain holds off, we’ll be renting a hydraulic lift to reach the upper areas of this mammoth 1916 Colonial, along with painting/repairing the fascia boards and possibly installing gutters.
Right now the color isn’t sitting right with me, it just doesn’t seem to jive well with the rest of the house. I’m sure once we’re done, have the shutters mounted and the foundation repainted that it’ll be perfect though! I’m certainly not shelling out $130 for another bucket of paint, nor am I going to spend the countless hours it would take to repaint the entire structure.
Gettin’ Stuff Done – Big Yards Mean Big Landscaping
The Grand River Manor has a massive property. Massive properties usually are accompanied by substantial landscaping, which leads to substantial challenges. Little marigolds and poppies wouldn’t be enough to get things in shape here, we needed big stuff. The front of the property was already adorned by shrubbery that has likely been growing here for decades. Last year we started getting it pruned up and back in order after letting it grow wild for a few years. This year, however, we’re making dramatic improvements to the property and landscaping.
The front yard got its shrubs trimmed up and a trailer load of mulch to make things look a little more kept up. The back yard, however, is a completely different story. With half an acre of woods, sloping spots in the yard, a cut-up, fallen tree waiting to be split, and lots of open space, we needed something drastic. Last summer, Greg took it upon himself to get a path built into the forest so it wasn’t dead space, but rather usable acreage. We’ll be expanding that path this year, and making a clearing in the middle of the forest for some shaded, yet open, space.
Last weekend, I rented a roto-tiller to build us some gardens along the border of the forest. Previously, weeds, vines, and other forest plants grew rampant and had slowly been encroaching on the yard; year after year choking out usable space. No more! The tiller made short work of that mess, and gave us a 2′ wide garden to plant things in. Some wooden borders finish off the look. Seeds are planted for 10-15 different varieties of wild flowers that should keep some color all summer long. I’ll post photos once things start growing.
Along the patio, we installed the border garden with the garden trellises. The garden is going to be a dual-purpose flower and vegetable garden. The patio itself is getting a facelift by removing/burning/killing all of the weeds growing in the cracks between the flag stones. We’ve also started piling the split wood up on raised boards to prevent rotting. There’s probably 8-10 face cord of wood waiting to be split, but that’s a project for another time.
The excess dirt from tilling up the gardens has been used to fill in some low spots in the yard. Some of those low spots are natually ocurring features of the yard. Others… well, others were created by the pent up energy of a 1 year old Husky Puppy. What a jerk. But they’re filled in now, and if I can keep her from digging, the grass should come back this year just fine.
Gettin’ Stuff Done – Garden Trellises
It has been a long term goal of mine to spruce up the back yard a bit, especially around the patio. The uneven flagstone and concrete patio definitely feels harsh when you first walk out, but seeing the piles of wood yet to be split, the broken concrete driveway, and the entire yard… I’m not going to say I was looking for a warm zen feeling when we walked outside, but rather more it always left me with a sense of being exposed and functioned as a constant reminder of all the things I have left to do.
A trip to Home Depot provided the inspiration of using Garden Trellises; but they were $15+ each! I estimated we’d need about 5-6 of them, which meant about $90 worth of supplies. Turns out we’d wind up needing 8, bringing the total cost to $120. Screw that! We bought some weather treated 2x4s and ripped them into 1x1s. Five 2x4s yielded enough material for 8 trellises which took a total of about an hour to build once I had a pattern down.
Installing them wasn’t very difficult either. A small sledge hammer, tall ladder and some elbow grease. I did use some spare 1x1s to run a string level around the patio to get all of them installed as close to evenly as humanly possible. Unfortunately, the 1x1s have little ability to resist any twisting forces from installation, so a couple of them are a little crooked. They’ll get supported soon.
Gettin’ Shit Done
Lets face it. I could come straight out and say ” no excuses, things will get better,” but we all know that’d be a lie. The degree of that lie is directly proportional to the amount of energy I have and how much GSD I’ve taken today. Before any of you freak out that I’m on drugs, GSD is the street name for Gettinshitdone, a new motivator I’ve found that works pretty well. Not available over the counter – so ask your pharmacist.
At any rate, since the last post, I realized a few things:
One, I’m a busy guy. Between working full time, taking care of ze puppy, maintaining my car, fixing up Grand River, looking for a house of my own, and the other various musings of mine, I have next to no time to work on this blog. I blame myself mostly.
Two, this blog has taken a scary turn for the worse. As I look back, I used to post lots about projects and doing things. Lately, it’s been all about cooking. Don’t get me wrong, cooking is great and all, but everyone and their grandma’s has a cooking blog, and that’s just not what I want to do. Sure there’ll be the occasional smattering of how to cook this, or something interesting I found to eat, but largely I’m going to wrangle this sucker in to being more concerned with projects than cooking.
Three, everyone needs a healthy dose of GSD. It does the body good.
So where do we go from here? Whenever I’ve had a spare minute, I’ve done a brain dump of something that I think is a potential candidate for a post. I’ll email it to myself, and by the evening if I’m able to find photos of the things I’m working on and get them updated ASAP so I can do another internal review prior to posting.
Long story short, I’m rolling this blog into my GSD train. Don’t fret, that train never stops. It may slow down and let you casually tuck and roll into the station but it’s never gonna stop.
Man Is What He Eats – Friday Night Steak
I love steak. There, I said it. Anyone who reads this blog will instantly realize that I am far from a vegetarian, or any of the sub-sets of vegetarian. That’s just who I am. But, my love of steak is often thwarted by my love of keeping money in my wallet. That, and I haven’t perfected grilling steak – last time I did, the $30 of ribeye I bought turned out tough, dry and overcooked.
But I recently watch the Good Eats special where Alton shows how to cook steak in the oven with a cast iron skillet. My cast iron skillet just picked up a new trick to add to it’s already impressive repertoire.
Jannett made some fantastic asparagus with some Parmesan cheese, salt, pepper, oil and breadcrumbs. Combined with a baked potato, this was a very hearty meal. And the best part? I bought the steaks on clearance from Meijer. $3 and some change for two half pound steaks – Amazing!
Man Is What He Eats – Slow Cooked BBQ Ribs
Ribs are a tricky thing for me. Its really easy to make tough, dry ribs. Its also fairly easy to make ribs that just fall off the bone. Neither of these scenarios is desirable though. Rather, what I always shoot for is meat that pulls cleanly off the bone. The slow cooker was the secret for zero effort ribs that fit the bill. This summer, I’ll perfect it on the smoker but at 12ºF it’s too cold for me to even care to try outside.
Ingredients
1.0 Slab Ribs
Ground Pepper
0.5 c. Port Wine
1.0 c. water
0.5 c. white vinegar
BBQ Sauce
Instructions
1. I marinated the ribs over night with a simple pepper and wine mixture.
2. Turn the slow cooker to low and add the ribs and add the vinegar and water.
3. Wait 6-8 hours. I cranked the heat to 180ºF for the last hour before the next step.
4. Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Brush on BBQ sauce to taste.
5. Cook the ribs in the middle of the oven for 20 minutes.
They turned out great. Messy, but great. Ribs have a tendency to do that.
Craftography – Custom Etched Beer Glasses
My brother’s birthday is tomorrow. My brother loves beer (as do I). Uh… duh? Of course I should get him some nice beer glasses, but I really despise going to the store, buying a boxed up thing and wrapping it. No love, right? Well, my mom received a Cricut Expression for Christmas and I saw a tutorial online for using it to cut stencils for etching glass. A little bit of artistry with the paint brush and a bottle of glass etching cream, and viola, we have this:
Overall, I’m very happy with how it turned out. There definitely is room for improvement, but that can be said about a lot of things in life. So, for now they’re packed away inconspicuously in their original box. We’ll see how he likes ‘em. I’m betting he’ll like ‘em even more once they’re filled with some microbrew!
Man Is What He Eats – Homemade Bagels
Bagels always seemed like one of those things that just occurred naturally. Something you picked off of a tree or harvested from a shrub. My foray into bread making lead me to learn otherwise. In fact, making bagels is quite easy, though more involved than many of the breads I’ve made.
The Fresh Loaf has a post detailing the bagel recipe from The Breadbaker’s Apprentice (a book that I’d love to have randomly appear on my door step – hint hint) which I followed to the letter because I just so happened to have malt powder just chilling around (home brewing).
I’ve decided that bagels will be a weekly thing. Jannett pushed me to make the proof and shape the bagels last night so they’d be ready after a good 12-hour cold ferment. We woke up early and started boiling the bagels. This time I didn’t stretch them so wide, and I like how they turned out better, though that was purely an aesthetic thing.
Toppings this time included Asiago cheese, poppy seeds and kosher salt. After they were boiled, I generously applied the toppings and then popped them in a 500 degree oven for about 12 minutes. The crust is crunchy and the insides nice and moist and chewy. Just the way I like it. And with some egg, sausage and cheese? Well, McDonalds, EAT YOUR HEART OUT!
Man Is What He Eats – Slow Cooked Brisket
My girlfriend’s parents bought me a nice Hamilton Beach programmable slow cooker, and despite doing a chilli and green bean casserole, nothing had been the main course yet. I changed that this past Sunday.
Following a recipe adapted from this Epicurious Brisket recipe.
Overall, I was happy with the meal, though subconsciously I was expecting smoked brisket which, while never having enjoyed I longed for. This brisket was more roast-like in taste and texture, but was absolutely sumptuous. With the sauce that the meat cooked in, the flavors popped even more.
With only about a half hour of prep time, and 8 hours in the slow cooker, this will be something I’ll do again. The “set it and forget it” nature of slow cooking is nice, especially when working all day.
