salleyway brite; fig tree

Baltimore is under a tropical storm warning. Apparently, Hanna has us in her sights - fortunately she's weak and not at hurricane status. A hurricane in Baltimore? Yep, it happens. Isabel came through in 2003 and from the way people talk about her, she was one angry b*tch.

I thought Salleyway Brite had a good ring to it - and when you see the pictures you'll understand why it's an appropriate title. I also thought it sounded like something Gwyneth Paltrow might name her child.

Once again, a job that could have taken hours (or days) was made super easy with the right tool. And once again, you get to see the tool after it's been used:

The paint sprayer is fun and perfect for painting things like masonry and brickwork because it can really get into the nooks and crannies. My lesson learned: the red (now yellowish) hose in the picture screws into the machine sort of like a garden hose. As I worked up and down the salleyway and kept turning and adjusting, the hose started loosening - much to my dismay. There isn't a safety mechanism to stop the paint from shooting out at a blinding speed if this is to happen. You get the point - now we have a nice mess to deal with. It was a comical mistake; yellow paint shot up in the air, all over me and the siding:

I think the pressure washer will clean it off - but we'll worry about that later.

Craig really wants me to start doing before and after shots, so - before:

After:

From the other end - Jaxxon came by to inspect:

It looks a little ridiculous in the picture. The yellow is more subdued in real life and brightens it up in a cheery sort of way; not a "hey, guys, come to our house to check out the sun" sort of way.

Now about this fig tree. We're quite fortunate to have a mature tree in our neighbor's back yard providing shade and some wildlife. I also like that it actually gets figs and the leaves are pretty:



The problem is that it attracts a billion flies per second (people who have visited can affirm this problem - it's disgusting). It also attracts a few too many birds - who LOVE to eat the figs and subsequently turn them into fig'poo. It wouldn't be nearly as bad if we had grass below the tree, but it gets uglier and uglier as the summer goes on. I was going to write about it and tell you all how I want to chop it down - but then today I took this picture of the birdhouse that we love. And look, a little yellow finch flew right by as I took the picture. He looks like a ghost, just to the right of the birdhouse:



Then he sat up here in the tree and made a "SAVE THE FIGS" sign:

Damn finches. I'll be oiling my chainsaw...

and we're back

We've been slightly more productive than it seems here on the blog. Sorry about the lack of posting; I was surprised to find out how many of you are checking back frequently. Thanks. We do have a good excuse - unfortunately, I don't think I can muster up the enthusiasm to talk about it here. Instead, I'll post this picture we got today.

Project Rowhouse has the porch light on.

Back to the renovation -

The brick-exposing is a multiple step job. We are now scrubbing the bits of plaster that were left clinging to the brick. This is the messy, labor intensive part. The original plan was to use variously sized wire brushes - imagine much stronger versions of the brush you use to clean your grill after making kabobs. The pros to using this brush is control and precision, the cons are that it sucks in many different ways. Speeding this up was imperative. I knew I could find a more productive tool.

This drill attachment did the job amazingly well. I was initially nervous that it would tear through the mortar. While I managed to gouge a few areas slightly, it's very easy to control once you get the hang of it.
A tip: as you switch arms, hands, kneeling positions - always keep in mind the direction the drill is spinning. Switch it up so that it's shooting the brick shrapnel away from you.
We're thrilled with the results - the portion on the left is before the scrubbing.

To keep the dust down as much as possible, I hung walls of dropcloth from ceiling to floor creating impressively thick dust clouds. I highly suggest this - along with well-fitting goggles and dust mask. Anyone familiar with this process knows I am not exaggerating here.

We also:
hung a new porch light (and allowed that hanging plant to barely hold onto life):


painted the doors (a darker blue than the back door... I like this one better); and removed the cover that used to be above the salleyway door:



Ta-Dah.

passion flower and blue paint

This is one of my favorite plants in the garden. The flowers are different and unique looking, the dark green foliage is beautiful and as a quick grower, it should cover a good deal of this wall before summer. The vine is on the left in this picture.

Here is the flower - this vine sometimes produces fruit, but I'm a bit skeptical of eating produce grown around all this, um, wildlife.

I love how the tendrils are always reaching for something to grab.




We also painted the back door and awning blue... along with our bench, that was looking pretty sad lately. At first the blue was jarring, but it's really starting to grow on me. I would like to replace that awning at some point.



Sorry the pictures are blurred... I'll be switching to Flickr after this post.

And one more - this is the Salleyway I mentioned in a previous post. We're looking for a gate to replace this old, dark wooden door. This picture, makes it look bright in here... it's usually dark and the air is stale. We pressure washed this past weekend and plan on painting it all a light yellow color sometime soon.

shopping :: housewerks

Housewerks is an "architectural werkshop" chock full of great items.

We're on a mission to find a few iron gates for the salleyway. This is a recently learned term - our house has a side alleyway, which is basically an outdoor hallway connecting the back 'yard' to the street out front. Because we're a middle unit and we don't have an alley running behind the house, this is a convenient way to carry trash to the curb.

We need two gates, one for the front to replace the current barn'ish wooden door and one for the back to keep the dogs out of the neighbor's space - who also has access to the same salleyway.

These look good, but too narrow:


I liked these more than Craig did, but they need some substantial modification to fit the space, let alone some serious cleaning up:


For now we'll keep searching, there are a few places to check this coming weekend.

Housewerks has all sorts of fantastic items, check out this sink:

And the main room:


Off topic, the garden is coming in nicely - and much less work than the yard at the previous house!