A Memorial Day Weekend Explosion

This post is about an explosion.  Not the awkward gastrointestinal kind and not the 4th of July fireworks kind, but the regular old garden variety kind.

A holiday weekend of exceptionally warm weather made the tomatoes look like they doubled in size.  Most of them have blossoms and I spotted a few tiny tomatoes on the ones at the back of the bed that were in the teepees.

We are having trouble with slugs and earwigs completely destroying plants.  They stripped a few marigolds, killed a cucumber and a zucchini plant and did some serious damage to my first planting of Provider green beans (apparently a good early variety -- we'll see if they recover).

Behind the beans are cabbage and broccoli.  Neither liked the warm weather and I actually had to cut the broccoli earlier than I would have liked because it looked like it was going to bolt.

The snow peas seem to be very happy and are full of pretty pink and purple blossoms.  We have tiny peas starting to develop so hopefully we'll be eating snow peas for dinner very soon.

This is the shady bed where I had trouble getting things to grow last year.  It has become 100% experimental and I just throw in anything extra that I have.  Right now, a few spinach plants that started from seed, some dill, a few leftover lettuce seedlings and some kohlrabi. 

The only thing that did well in this bed other than impatiens were leeks (correction -- 1 leek) that looked pretty sorry last fall but did well over the winter and early this spring.  I figured I would try some more this year.

Some peppers, eggplant, and squash.

A small harvest of lettuce, broccoli, and snow peas.  I'm afraid the lettuce plants aren't going to last much longer.

 

And I managed to get in another planting of beans.  This time, Royal Burgundy.  I'm excited to see how they do.

Kodak was so tired from a long weekend of swimming at the shore and the heat that he took a nap in the backyard.  He never does this.

I was just annoying him with the camera.

A New Loo

We are one flush step closer to a fully functioning bathroom.  After the floor was finished Andy replaced the original copper flange and installed the new baseboard heater.

 

The toilet is not centered between the tub and the vanity, but it is centered on the window above.  This is the only plumbing fixture that we didn't relocate as part of the renovation.  We actually like that the toilet is centered on the window but gives us more space on the tub side for getting in and out of the shower.

This is a same Kohler model that we installed in the hall bathroom.  We were very happy with the first one, so it was an easy decision (possibly the only easy decision in the whole bathroom remodel!).  User beware -- we may still be missing one small detail -- toilet paper!!

Hob Knobbing

We have been enjoying our new closet doors sans door knobs since Andy installed them a few weeks ago.  The problem was that without knobs they were next to impossible to open, especially with a load of clean laundry.  We tried slipping our fingers beside the door to pull it open or sliding our toes under the door to pull it open --neither were fast or effective and it was finally time to pick and install some knobs.

Measuring the location...

Drilling the hole...

All better! Now we just need a little bit of trim around the doors!

Tomato Tomahto

Remember back in March when I went a little crazy and planted some tomato plants?

They looked something like this.

They survived some cold weather and last week they were growing out of the teepees.

I was afraid that if they got much taller I would damage them when I removed the teepee, so we went ahead and took them off.

Now they look like this... 

Our tomatoes get tall and leggy ( I think because of the light), but we still got decent tomatoes last year.

And they have blossoms too.  Here's hoping for some early tomatoes!

Threshold

We had our share of problems with the cabinets and counter tops that we ordered from Home Depot.  We are very please with the final product, but the process was extremely painful. It took a good bit of effort on our part for them to finally get it right (like reordering the linen cabinet 3 TIMES!.  Not only did it create a lot of loading and unloading of a giant cabinet, Home Depot didn't take back any of the ones that were wrong so we ended up with extra cabinets (without the doors)).  

One of the first problems was that they did not finish the ends of the backsplashes that match the counter.  Instead of having us return the first ones that they sent us to be finished they just sent us new ones (after 2 attempts).  That left us with extra material. 

This is what the sent us the first time (the darker one one top).  See anything different? Length? Thickness? COLOR???

Andy stayed in a hotel in Switzerland where the threshold between the bedroom and bathroom matched the countertops.  We figured it was worth a try to see if we could cut down the leftover backsplash and use it as a threshold.

Andy tried taking thin slivers off the length but it would have taken forever and was difficult to keep flush with the blade.  

Instead he made a lot of cuts across the bottom and them knocked out all of the small pieces with a hammer.

Installed!  I just need to clean the floors.  We will have new carpet installed in the bedroom once all of the upstairs painting and renovations are complete.

With the floor completely finished Andy was able to clean the floor with a haze remover to get off some of the additional grout and then seal it.