I’m sore this morning. My back is stiff my knees are aching and I think I may have successfully developed carpel tunnel in both wrists but I feel great! Why, you might ask? Well my yard is finally filled with turf.

Friday evening our landscape architect (Dustin Halverson from Village Green) and his crew finished framing up the landscape edging and planned to complete the final grade of our lawn early Saturday morning. Our sod was scheduled to arrive on Saturday between 12 and 2pm. I hate when companies give you a window of time when something will arrive, “…yes sir your item should arrive between noon on Tuesday and 5 pm Wednesday, will someone be there to sign for it.” and inevitably they are almost always running late.

We had made plans to begin laying our sod sometime after 2pm and were going to use the morning to do our prep-work. Then around 10am I looked out the front windows to see a semi-truck from Jirik Sod Farm parked in front of our house, they were early, and we were nowhere near completing our prep-work. After getting the driver to quickly unload the sod to various parts of the lawn, Dusty finished grading the front yard while I and one of his workers focused on clearing out the circles in the driveway. By 11am we were laying sod. At first it seemed like we were flying and it was only going to be a few hours before the three of us were completed with the front yard and onto the back but that wasn’t the case. The front yard went deceptively quick as it was one open area with little to no cuts. I will admit that this was my personal assessment of the work at the time, however Dustin seemed to have a much great sense of urgency to his work, some 12 hours later I would realize why.

The sod arrives a bit early.

A daunting task.

Our early system was two people carrying (Dustin and Carson) and one rolling it out (yours truly). Our hired help left around 6 but another friend of mine and one of my very gracious neighbors chipped in for the next few hours to get us to the finish line.

Sunday morning things are looking good. I tossed down a few more rolls of sod and we were done. The dirt area to the left of the driveway will be the frame of our rain gardens which are under construction this week.

The circles in the driveway were something that both Dustin and I were really looking forward to seeing completed. I must say we were both pleased and it made all the hours of the work a little less painful.
When it comes down to it, 9 pallets of sod is a lot of turf (roughly 675 square yard to be exact). We had given Dustin a set of plans to work from that he then used to place our order for the sod. We had decided that at this time we were only going to do the front and side yard and would deal with the narrow strip of lawn that is our backyard at a later time. However, on our plans we forgot to mention to him that it not only shows our yard but also the easement area, a 5 foot swath around the entire lot. This coupled with the fact that he ordered a little extra for waste (usually resulting from cutting around landscaping and other obstacles because of the curved shapes). However in our case there was almost no waste at all since everything is based on right angles (except the driveway circles) leaving us with a bit more than we had planned. Although the extra sod meant we had to work extra hours to get it all down, it does mean that our yard is completely covered for now, and that’s a relief.

I must say, knowing a good Landscape Architect is certainly nice. Dustin Halverson from Village Green Landscapes is helping us to develop our plan and was gracious enough to allow us to provide some very early design thoughts, along with indulging some of our more unconventional ideas. Our landscape plan will include the use of several rain gardens and a great deal of native plants. We hope to contrast and complement the natural elements with strong geometric forms and rugged materials like concrete and steel. One of the bigger things that we are dealing with is the fact a concrete driveway provides a great deal of run off, dumping water (and whatever comes with it and as it goes) into the street. In order to off-set this effect we’ve done a couple of things to ensure we manage our run-off. The first is the that we pitched the driveway. We have an equal amount of sloe running both down the driveway a we do across. This will make sure that we traffic the rain water less towards the street and more towards the yard and ultimately the rain gardens. Yet there will still be a fair amount of rainwater running down the driveway towards the street, which triggered and idea in my head. What if we placed barriers in the drive way that would absorb some of that water before it made it to the street? As a result I asked Dustin if would be possible to place several large circles in the driveway that would be filled with grass. After some calculating he determined that if we made them roughly 36″ in size and planted them with rich potting soil with a good deep sand base we would most likey be able to grow grass in them. Additionally if the grass was unable to grow we could certainly place some loose stone in the holes and achieve a similar result.

A top down view of our landscape plan. The large circles in the driveway will be filled with grass to manage some of the run off from the driveway

Blame it on global warming, dramatic climate shift or whatever you may but for some reason this year, spring and summer are having a heck of a time getting here. As another day of snowy rain approaches tomorrow, I am longing to sit on my new deck with an ice cold beverage and enjoy the view of our new lot and the various creatures that inhabit it. Maybe that’s why both Stacy and I have spent the last couple of weeks thinking, and talking about outside projects and products to fit into our new spaces. Although, we have a nice collection of Michael Graves furniture (that Stacy bought at Target a few years back) that will be used on our lower patio, our upper deck is void of any sort of seating.

The elevated view from our upper deck has the feeling of a rooftop patio at some cool summer hot spot in any one of a number of cities across the country. In my head I imagine low, simple, yet comfortable furniture made for groups to gather and socialize. Small high-top style tables, surrounded by sleek but comfortable bar stools serve as a resting place for peoples favorite summertime drinks. The only problem, is generally the furniture I am picturing in my head comes from the pages of design magazines like Metropolis with price tags that come as shock to my system. So with that said I have to give great credit to Stacy for doing the due diligence and putting in the research to find some really nice, modern furniture options that work to meet our goal of a nice little summertime retreat without breaking the bank.

available at Costco.com

available at Costco.com  I think this is my favorite one. I think we might want to die the cushions on these to something that will hold up a little better to wear and tear (maybe a nice orange or an apple green).

available at walmart.com

available at outdoorgardenfurniture.net   this one was also available at overstock.com in a great orange color but was only there for “about 5 minutes” before it sold out right before our eyes.

available at overstock.com 

I’ve been trying to decide on what chair to buy for our downstairs living room desk. The cabinet style desk is mostly used to sit at when we’re sorting through paperwork or paying bills so the chair will likely be pushed off to the side rather directly at the desk most of the time. My hope was that we could find something that would work both as as comfortable and functional working chair but also to integrate nicely with the rest of our furniture without looking out of place in the living room.

After dozens of searches on the web and visits to several furniture stores I came to the conclusion that there was really only one chair that I felt worked — the Eames Management Chair by Herman Miller. I loved the look of the shiny aluminum frame and the sleek lines of the leather back. However I was less in love with the price, at around $1500. I set out to find to the chair at a more affordable price and with a little time on the web, I was able to stumble across a great looking replica called The Premier Leather Office chair from Zuo Modern at Exclusivelyhome.com. Although slightly different, it was certainly a well made tribute to the original Eames design. Plus, unlike many of the other replicas I saw, it not only featured an aluminum frame but had an Italian Leather seat as an added bonus. I am putting my order in on it tonight already waiting with great anticipation for its arrival.

The officially licensed Herman Miller Eames Group Management Chair.

The Replica version I found on Exclusivelyhome.com cost about 1/3 of the officially licensed one.

Not being able to throw away any scrap piece of wood is a quality that both Stacy and my oldest son seem to share. It’s certainly an admirable quality when it comes to a reduce, reuse, recycle world but at times things start to accumulate and something has to be done to put them to use. So I have started a series of projects that involve utilizing the leftover pieces of birch plywood.I cut down the remaining and scrap 3/4″ stair treads into thin 2″ strips. I then cut a channel in each on the table saw, miter cut the corners and and then fasten them together with a little wood glue and some finished nails, to make some really nice looking pictures frames. I’m going to stop at my local hardware store and have them cut down some glass for me so I can frame a couple of cool art pieces that we have.With a few sheets of leftover 1/2 plywood flooring and some scrap 2×4 lumber I fashioned some box style shelves for our entertainment area in the living room and another set for storage in the laundry room, all these need is a little poly and they’re done.There’s something really pleasing to completing a project that turns out well but even more so when the materials you used were something that normally would have ended up in a dumpster or at best in someone’s fireplace.Now I just need a cord wrangler.I’ll sand the edges of the frame to make it smooth and to clean off a little of the excess wood glue before I finish them with a coat of poly.

This morning as I was getting out of the shower I heard my phone ring. I couldn’t get to it in time and didn’t recognized the number off the bat. Since I use my cel as my work phone I assumed it was an early morning client eager to open up a new project and figired they would call back shortly. Just 20 minutes later as I was enjoying my morning oatmeal it rang again. This time I was able to answer it before the caller hung up. The voice on the other end was the ever cheerful Curt Stendel of Panelworks Plus our SIPs supplier. He was at the national SIPA conference in New Orleans and just called to tell me our house had been honored with the Award of Excellence for homes Under 3000 sq ft. And on top of the that was the runner-up in the Open category taking second place to a much larger home (from Michigan I believe he said) that featured an extensive list of green features including solar panels — what a nice way to start the day. Congratulations to everyone involved Especially Panelworks Plus and Benedict and Associates for a job well done.