Goodbye to Mom, Hello Birdbath, and more Farmhouse Projects

On Saturday, we said our final goodbye to Mom with a live streamed service from her church in Florida.  It was emotional and we had a private gathering at our home with the siblings and a few grandsons too. One grandson flew in secretly from Pennsylvania to surprise his mom (my sister) on her last day of radiation and attend the live stream service with the rest of us.  It was good, sad, tragic and healing all at the same time. 

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A month or so ago, our daughter noticed that our old house in Green Bay was for sale.  She sent me the listing and I looked at the pics.  

It was a great house---  an investment property with an apartment in the upstairs that was income, to help me pay my mortgage when I was a single mom.  When Steve and I married in 1997, his parents had gifted us with a beautiful birdbath made from tiny pebbles. It proudly sat in the front yard under the pine tree. We started building our new log house that fall. We later sold that home in February of 1998. The birdbath was frozen in the ground, and we didn't want to destroy it by prying it loose.  So we left it there for the buyers.  I always regretted that.

Fast forward now 23+ years later.  The house is for sale. On a whim, I contacted the realtor.  I asked if either the sellers (it had changed hands a number of times over the last 23 years)  or the buyers cared about the birdbath at all.  Would either party be willing to let us have it?   The realtor said she would work on it.  She contacted me today, and said the property closed and YES... COME GET IT!   

We hopped in the Saturn and headed down to Green Bay right away. It was rainy and icky out, so what better thing to do on a rainy day???

We tossed it in the back of the Saturn as quick as a wink.

I wrote a nice thank you note, and left it in the mail slot for the lower apartment to the right of the door.  Nobody was there, and the house was still vacant.  I had half-heartedly hoped they would be there so I could go through the house one more time.  But just getting the bird bath was enough for both of us!  Here is a pic of when I owned it before we built the log house up on the river in Oconto. 

The bird bath is in the garage right now,

and once the rain stops, we will add it to our yard. 

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In my last blog, I wrote about how we finished up the inside window trim on the two new windows in the kitchen nook.  We managed to steal little Claire to come over and help dust off and put up all the collection of my blown glass paperweights. 

She went right to work

  

She arranged and rearranged and arranged again all of the little paperweights.  She had so much fun. I think each one was picked up and put down 10 times until they were arranged to her complete satisfaction. 

Good job, Claire! 

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Now that the inside of the windows were trimmed out, we needed to focus on the outside trim.  We got all of the materials ready and stripped off more of the siding, but only up to a certain level. We didn't want to rip off too high up, until we figure out the spacing of the matching window for the master bedroom.  That will be more intense figuring with a new header, king studs and inspection before we can even knock a hole in the wall!  

In the meantime, we gathered our tools and started to work on the nook trim and siding. 

We spent one day trimming out the windows and another day doing new soffit and fascia.  The weather got very hot, so we did what we felt like doing, and took a break for the rest of the day. 

Once the soffit and fascia were in place, Steve was able to put up new metal raingutter so we never have the problems of water intrusion that previously damaged the wall in the corner like before. 

While Steve was working on that, I was busy busy busy painting trim and siding boards out on the sawhorses.  Each piece takes three coats, one primer and two paints.  It was a gorgeous day with blue sky and puffy clouds.  

When he was ready to get to the siding, I had enough painted and dry and ready to work with.  We work together as a good team, and he handles the air nailer gun, because it really hurts my ears. Even with ear plugs in.  I think I am gonna get the full ear muff style protection.  Gosh, I feel old. 

I take care of the leveling and spacing and hold the other ends of the boards while he does the nail gun thing.  The long 16 ft pieces go up easily, and will butt up to a vertical trim board that will configure with the new master bedroom window. 

 

As he works on his cutting and figuring stuff, in between waiting for coats of paint to dry, I was working on planting flowers in my flower boxes and planters, as well as some other projects..

This one I really had fun with...  ever hear of a rain chain?  I made one last year for the front porch. Here is the blog from that one: 

making a rain chain from Dollartree Buckets

I went to Dollartree to get some more buckets, 

but they don't have them this year! 

I found these pretty iridescent buckets at Walmart in the party supply aisle.  Only 97 cents each. Deal!  Steve had a hunk of chain, and I bought 8 little S hooks from the hardware store. That is all I needed.  

I begged Steveio to put down his siding tools for a bit so he could help me.  I asked him to quickly drill 1" holes in the bottom of each bucket for the chain to run through.  Thank you! 

 

I assembled the S hooks and then bugged Steve again to screw a big hook into the edge of the fascia above the rain gutter.  We hung the chain up and then spaced out the buckets in a reasonable fashion to let the rain run from one to the next. 

The bottom of the chain is dangling down into the big rain barrel.  On the bottom, we will add a heavy old vintage window weight that my brother gave us.  We didn't attach it yet, because I want to get one more bucket for the chain yet. 

Today it poured rain for hours.  The chain worked great and the rain barrel is now full for my tomatoes that I am going to plant in a few days. 

Here is a You Tube I made last year on how the other rain chain works on the front porch: 

With the rain chain in place, now the rain won't splatter down on the siding or the tyvek house wrap.  Glad we got that done.  Also in the background you can see we got the siding up to the bottom edge of the windows.  Our weather has turned cold and icky, so we didn't get out there to do any more today.  (instead, we went and got a bird bath!) 

Once that part of the siding is done, I have 12 tomato plants patiently waiting in temporary pots.  Their garden spot is right where the new siding is going up.  Once that is complete, they can spread their roots in their new home... and grow grow grow to give us yummy maters! 

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Oh, last week, Steve had a little idea to brighten up a gloomy emotional day after everyone left after my mom's funeral service.  We weren't going to start the siding just yet, so instead he cut up some precious wood.  It was scraps from in the garage. If we went to the lumberyard right now, that would be $20-30 worth of wood! 

He cut the strips and I got out the paint. (he hates painting)  and soon the 2 coats were dry and ready to be assembled. 

A new trellis for my clematis plants! 

It didn't take him long to whip it together for me.  The store was selling plain old wooden ones for $40 and painted or vinyl plastic ones for $50.  I think I prefer home made.  Especially when made with love.  Awwwww

I think it looks so cute there and kinda fills up the gap on the wall. The big electrical service meter is there, as well as the gas meter further back beyond that.  The more we can beautify up the space, the better.

So that is it for today.  We will see what tomorrow will bring.  As for now, it's still raining well into the night. At least I know my rain barrels will be filled to the brim. Ready to water the flowers and 'maters once they get planted. 

And maybe fill a certain bird bath once we figure out the perfect space in the yard. Maybe back by Finnegan's grave, with trees nearby for the birds to perch on as they wait their turns to bathe. 

Making a Rain Chain from Dollartree Buckets

The past winter was, of course, our first winter in this home.

We quickly realized that there was lack of a rain gutter over the front porch steps. This created a lot of rain water, snow melt runoff, etc and excessive ice ended up on the front steps. It made for a dangerous situation, so we had to liberally sprinkle it with a lot of sidewalk salt for the winter. We use the front steps a lot, not only for visiting company, but also we go up and down them each day to get the mail from the mailbox.

So this summer we decided that it was time to put some kind of a rain gutter on the front porch, after we fixed up the metal roofing and porch edging with new soffit and fascia.  That part was completed two weeks ago.

We really only needed an L-shaped piece of gutter from the corner of where the two porches met, that spanned across the stairs. It really didn't need to go the entire length of the front porch. This area has a deluge of water from half of the large pyramidal shape roof on the south side of the house as well as half of sloped farmhouse roof on the north side of the house.

That is a lot of water to come down in one specific spot.  We figured out what we needed and Steve was able to put together the L shape rain gutter after getting a curbside pickup for the supplies.  Little Claire was eager and willing to help.

My only hesitation about a rain gutter, was that I didn't want an ugly downspout impeding our view as we sit out on the front porch.

So instead of a downspout, I came up with the next best thing...

A RAIN CHAIN!

I had seen some examples of these on a couple different landscaping sites and HGTV type shows. I found them fascinating and wanted to make one of my own.

I Googled and Pinterest'd and searched and looked on Facebook Marketplace and Etsy.  I didn't find anything I liked or could easily afford. Finally I came up with a good idea...

I had seen some cute little metal buckets a long time ago at Dollartree.  They were metal and small and were affordable. Combining that feature, along with some of the ideas that I had seen, I figured I could do something really reasonable and not invest a lot of money into it if it didn't work...

The next day I snuck on into Dollartree where my friend Barb works. I got in there as soon as they opened, I grabbed 14 little buckets and quickly checked out, keeping to myself and wearing my mask. Then I sanitized my hands liberally as soon as I got into the car while the buckets were tossed into the trunk. (I was seriously shaking with anxiety while doing that!)

They didn't have enough of one color so now it was time to take out my trusty can of matching red spray paint. Granddaughter Chelsea helped me with this step.

Easy Peasy!
We gave a few coats both inside and out.
Now they all match.

Next, I dug out a 15 foot a hunk of heavy nylon chain I had bought to hang planters (but never did)  that was about $15, and a variety of S hooks from Steve's tool bench stash.  The chain is solid molded nylon links, no seams or splits.  You could use metal chain, but I was trying to avoid rust.

Now it was time to let Steve give me a hand. He took out his drill with a 1 inch hole saw that is able to drill through metal. He carefully drilled a circular hole, centered in the bottom of each of the little buckets.

For this step, you have to be careful. The metal edges can be sharp. You could use a de-burring tool to take down the sharpness if you wish.

Steve hung the top of the chain with a strong eyelet into the fascia above the downspout opening part of the rain gutter.

Now we could carefully thread the chain through the center of each bucket and hang the S hooks into the appropriate links. It took a few times before we figured out the exact spacing to make the buckets reach evenly from the top down to the ground.

The bottom of the chain is resting in a large black rubber bucket with drainage holes on the bottom. We will later fill that bucket with white landscaping rock on our next curbside pickup at the hardware store.  For now there is just a little bit of sand in it.

None of the rain will go into the basement because it's far enough away from the foundation plus the dirt slopes away from the house. It will just go out into the front yard and absorb into the flowerbed and the lawn. Much better than landing on our steps!

I like how they are lined up with the pillar. 

In this next pic, you can see the portion of roof on the right has a valley that dumps half of that rainfall right onto this section of the porch roof. Then about half of the section of roof on the left also falls in this same area. The L-shaped rain gutter will take care of that problem and run it down the rain chain and out into the flower bed and lawn.  Better than dumping right onto the steps!

Of course, in the winter months we will take this down and we can replace it with just a piece of plain white downspout that will be not too noticeable as it will line up with the pillar behind it.

I was excited to see how it would work once we got it hung into place. Steve volunteered to set up the ladder and crawl up to the end of the rain gutter with a watering can. Here is a little video of our results:

Yaaayyyy!!!!

That project was completed last week and. Today was the first time we had a real rainstorm so I was able to video tape it actually working with a regular rainfall.

This is this is so cool!!!
 Here is a video link from today:

For the initial investment of about $35 which covers the cost of the buckets, the chain, the paint, and the S hooks, I was able to get a really cool rain chain.

I didn't count in the price of the rain gutter because that was something we needed no matter what.  

Steve said it's one more step to "Prettying Up The Place", and it balances out the American flag on the other side of the front steps.

I think he's right!