This weekend was busy but relaxing. Saturday was supposed to be a day for outside tractor work and various yard things we all seem to have to do on the weekend, but, it RAINED. Who’da thunk. We haven’t had rain in the southeast in what seems like years after last summer’s drought (in fact I think it has been a year). It was a nice rain shower and didn’t last long enough to rain out the entire grass cutting day.
The rain did let up enough for us a have a nice fire in our fire pit on the patio. We had this built into the patio when we moved in and we use it all the time. There is something about being able to sit outside around a “camp fire” that makes for a great and relaxing time. We sit around the fire pit on our patio all year round and enjoy it very much. If you don’t have one built into the concrete then you can do what we did before we moved in.
Get an old washing machine tub from a junk dealer (they will gladly give them away) or just dig you a nice whole in the ground and surround it with bricks. When we were building this house, the fire pit in the patio was one of the must have’s of the house, but really it is just a circle in the concrete. You would think such a thing would be an easy thing for a builder to get his hands around but nothing seemed to go that way with this house (see the category for house if you are interested).
The photo to the left here is actually a self portrait. Something I don’t do all that often but I had the camera flat on the ground and used the timer to trigger the shutter. The photo below is one I took of Deborah later on Saturday night. It is completely dark except for the fire in the fire pit. The image doesn’t show the fire because it would be to bright for the exposure, but you can see the spark trails of the fire just to the right side of her face. I did have her sit a little closer to the fire than she normally would so she was ready to move since her knees were a little warm.
She did real well to sit there through a 15 second exposure without moving. Thanks hun. It is a little spooky (not Deb of course) with the fire glow as the only light source but I love how it turned out. If you haven’t tried sitting absolutely still for 15-20 seconds at a time shot after shot after shot, you should try it some time. Deb did great as a subject with fire on her legs.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
We had a very nice service that completed the current series on missions. The rest of our Sunday was spent enjoy one of the most beautiful Spring days here in the lower south. We can now finally eat out on the patio without freezing to death. There is a new moon tonight, and I will try to take a few star trail images and see how they turn out for tomorrow’s post.
Posts Related to This Topic:
We own a 4wd vehicle that has, in our opinion, no need for a driveway (or garage for that matter, but that is another story). Taking this sentiment into consideration, we looked at the driveway possibilities and decided to relocate the concrete that would have been used for a longer driveway. By designing and staking out a large and much more useful patio area off of the screened in porch we were able to maximize our $$$ spent on concrete which is very expensive these days. We used wooden stakes and orange string to layout the general shape and size. After tripping over the string for about a month we decided that we should use some of the outdoor paint that is made for creating lines on the ground (mostly for sports, I think) and paint over the lines then remove the string and stakes. We added a special design element that facilitates one of our favorite things to do, a fire pit. Since we love to have camp fires, not only for warmth, but for beauty we decided that we would put one permanently in the patio. Prior to this time we had been using a steel washing machine tub for our “campfire” in the evenings, which is great for an occasional outdoor campfire by the way.
Patio Framing
Pouring the Concrete
What a mess!
Front “driveway”, sidewalk, and landing.
Our first fire in the new pit.
Beautiful!
This says it all.
The mirrors for the bathrooms were put in within the last week or so and I just love the one in the master bath. It is above the entire bathtub and makes the bathroom seem so much bigger. Check it out.
Yes, that is me.
An inspector was at the house a couple of weeks ago and left a list of things that needed to be fixed or whatever according to the building code. One of the things he identified that needed to be done was a railing needed to be installed at the top of the landing. (Can you say duhhhhh?) Because of the way things work with the inspectors all of the things on the list had to be fixed prior to the electric power being turned on at (or even run to)the house. SOOOO, the banister railing was installed at the top landing. The guy installing the railing also did the stairs. No, we still have no power.
Upstairs railing, now OSHA compliant.
Finished stairs.
View of railing from top of stairs.
The wood floor has been installed upstairs and it looks great. The floor contractor was more than a little freaked out when he arrived to find that there were already cabinets installed. He also strongly discouraged us from putting wood flooring in the bathrooms where there were bath tubs or showers. In addition to all this, he said that he should have installed the floor months before so that the wood had time to acclimate to the temperatures in the house. So, we took all this new information and after mulling it over for about an hour we decided to go with tile in the two full bathrooms. This meant another trip to the tile store and more waiting while the tile was installed. Regardless, the floor upstairs has been installed and it looks great. There has been no sanding or poly coating as of yet and no downstairs flooring to date, but we are hopeful this will happen soon.
Oak stairs.
Both upstairs offices with wood flooring installed.
Scott’s office floor.
My office floor (this room gets great afternoon natural light.)
View of landing from offices.
