Guest house update

This has been such a nice hot summer , we have never spent so much time on our little backyard deck , last year we had a big beautiful table but went with a more loungey set up this year which I have loved so much more , so relaxing .

Well here it is , our little guest house as it looks today , nearing completion , well there is still a lot to do , the deck for the front of the house , but that will wait for now , I know I hate those support blocks but they are a must, we will hide them under a little porch eventually.

Here is a close look at the inside , look at those nails , it's a house of horrors in there , in desperate need of bead board panels to cover this mess , I found out the hard way how bad falling into these nails feels .

I am getting to impatient right now , I want the interior finished so I can rent a sprayer and paint this baby all our white , and then I am toying with a little color on the ceiling or flooring .

Tiny but cute , this is going to be a fun addition to our house.

Are you as in love with this ceiling as I am , it is going to come to life once it is all painted and lightened up.

I just needed to paint out some of the inside to see the effect of white , I love white , and how much it brightens everything up.

Boy is this yard ever in need of some landscaping in front of the guest house , I am planning a nice country style path from the deck to the guest house and eventually some nice healthy grass but there is no point in thinking grass at this point ... thanks for stopping by , I will try to keep things posted as they progress.

Flooring finishes

So we are working away a little at a time on the guest house , We have the roof shingled and it is now officially water tight , the siding shingles are about half way done , the inside just needs beadboard panelling and flooring and trim ... Not too far now . The flooring will be pine v- groove and now I am wondering what finish , it could be stained but I only like dark stains and I think we want to make it as light as possible , so do I do simple white floors or white and blue stripes ... ? It's so hard to choose ??? Your thoughts would be appreciated , thanks
I promise to take some pictures for the blog soon , it's just not quite ready for it's close up!

Summer at the beach and ourguest house progress

When I saw this photo recently on House of Turquoise I knew I had to change my plan of painting the bunkie ceiling white , this is sheer perfection. There is still so much work to be done on our bunkie , I think I may start to call it our guest house since it will be just that , we are currently working on the roof , ourselves , roofing is not fun on a 100 degree day , sticky tar covered sheets are a nightmare on such a hot day , but you do what you gotta do sometimes.

As you can see our bunkie is no place to welcome guests, yet!

My daylilies are all in bloom.

It was so hard to decide on the roof materials , I love cedar and metal roofs, but I didn't want to spend the earth on a roof that we would never really see, so we went with architectural asphalt shingles in driftwood color which from a distance have the appearance of shakes. Thankfully we have a friend who is a roofer and he climbed right up there with me and showed us how to do it right , I even got my husband up there and he hates heights, I on the other hand am getting quite comfortable on the roof.

I need to try and finish the sides and back of the bunkie with the cedar but the heat wave we have been having leaves me with little time that I can tolerate to install , then I will move on to staining the shakes the perfect grey.

the inside is quite a mad mess , lots of debris and tools and supplies , inside two crucial steps are adding beadboard to the walls and pine flooring .I took the day off from bouncing between my three current jobs to spend the whole day with my girls at the beach , this beach is 30 highway drive away from our house in a little port town , the beach was so wonderful it felt like we were actually away on vacation ... can you tell which child had more fun , 13 year olds are too cool... look how dry that poor grass is , we have had almost no rain at all .

I took these beach shots with my iPhone , not bad eh! charming right! I will be back to this beach again and again .

The sand is so fine and clean , they rake it every morning .

It was truly a beautiful day at the beach , we are hoping to camp right there at the beach front camp site , I'd say that's pretty rare a camp site right on the beach , gorgeous , and I'm not a camper but I would do it here , we would love to rent a camper for a week ... we could use a little get away were we could bring our dogs and spend time just the four of us , we don't do it nearly enough.

Cedar shakes

I have been waiting to show you all how the bunkie is coming along , it is slow going right now , with limited time and with the hot humid weather I have been taking my time ... I have been focusing on the front of the bunkie since that is our new view.It will look great with a little porch across the front , next year maybe we will get to that.

Isn't it looking so cute , I love it , just a few more pieces of cedar for me to finish in the peak , this is very fussy work , then I will stain it all a soft muted grey , then onto the roof and eaves.

Cedar shakes from what I have found locally come in two grades readily available , the one on the left is the king of cedars , it is fine and deep dark natural cedar colour , it is about 5 times the price of the cedar on the right , which I am using , I am staining my cedar so no need to over spend here . I find my New Brunswick cedar at Lowe's for $15.00 a bundle , I can not beat that and I have had great success with cladding exterior accents on the main house , we love the charm it adds.

I make sure to choose a bundle with nice wide pieces , take the time to be a little picky here , it is worth the effort , then I sorted the shakes for easier selection , I am just a novice at shingling so things aren't perfect but I am as always ok with imperfection.

The garden is filling in nicely , I am craving more new plants , it has become some what of a passion , from detesting gardening to loving it , it is a test in patience and effort.

I am hoping to find a great tree for this corner where the playhouse used to be , doesn't look like such an empty corner anymore does it ?

Loving all the beautiful hostas my friend has handed down to me , I'm just waiting on my brown eyed susan's to start blooming some time soon.

Hope your having a happy summer .

progress and play

I am so excited to show you the progress we have made on our backyard bunkie , with this past long weekend off we were able to tackle the roof , the weather proofing , installing the windows and hanging the door and adding trim and yesterday I ticked off the list painting the door the same blue as our front door on the house, I even found a very well priced locking door knob for the bunkie so it is secure , its leaky but secure.

This is a view from inside the kitchen , it is a really welcome focal point, I can't believe how it pretty much blocks out the house behind ours , not that we don't like our back neighbours , but it makes our yard feel much more private.

Its really coming along isn't it ?

Still to do - water proofing the roof

- shingles

- shakes , installed and painted

- trim edges for exterior

- closing in the soffits

- interior walls clad in beadboard

- interior trim

- interior flooring and staining

- porch for the bunkie ( may wait till next year)

- lots and lots of painting

- Todd wants to build a cupola ???

I did all of the roofing , I do not like heights and really the bunkie is 11 feet tall so its not huge but falling from that height would hurt I'm sure , but better me than Todd to climb up there on that roof . I used tongue and groove planks, v-groove 1" x 6" planks, that way all I have to do is paint the interior ceiling and it will look just how I want , charming . But this kind of wood takes a little finessing , so I would have to climb out there and "encourage" each piece to fit together , I made sure Todd got some pictures of this , because you won't find me on the top of any roof any time soon.

As you can see I've lost a little more weight , that's 50 lbs now , it feels so good and worth all the work it took to get here.

I have been meaning to sand down this family room coffee table , and when I did this past Friday these stripes started to appear , I love it , how fitting I think , I nice sanding and a coat of wax and buffing and it feels good as new!!!

Yep that's me again . I think you can see that nice look of the v-groove , won't it look great painted out white? now should it be solid of semi transparent?

All the while I have been balancing a few balls , like this kitchen update I have been doing for a lovely lady , installing beadboard right over some old ugly tile , I used No More Nails for this , doesn't the faux tin panel look great behind the stove , they painted the cabinets white , what a transformation !!!

We had a lot of nice family time this weekend , I hope you did too , Happy 4th of July to all my American friends , we did a lot of city marshmallow roasting , see we aren't supposed to have fire pits or open fire in these suburbs , but this works ...

Outdoor projects , BBQ's , roasted marshmallows and Miller time , I love summer don't you ?