When we first moved into our house this past December, there was so much to do. The exterior of our house was wrapped only in it’s vapor barrier sheeting, the Hardiboard siding was yet to go up and the awning at the front door was not even on our radar. What all of this meant, was that at some point down the road we were going to have to do some painting on the exterior of our house, to get it completed.

For several months as we waited for the snow to melt and then the rains to finally stop (we could use a little now), looking up at the unpainted sections of our house and knowing it need to be painted made me ill. The pieces of Hardiboard were divided into gridded sections separated by metal Z-channel, which seem to mean hours of time consuming trim work. When we finally got started with painting it a few weeks back, we were really surprised at how quickly it seemed to go. The divided sections actually proved to be a bonus as it allowed us to paint one color of the two-tone design at a time. Additionally, we could do a couple of quick sections in the evening or over a couple of hours on a Saturday without having to commit the enitr weekend to working on the house. We’ve now completed almost all of the front of the house in both colors but will need to get a small section of scaffolding to reach some of the very top pieces and most of the 4ft overhang and we’ll be done.

Painting the siding presented us with another design issue. The two-tone brown color, coupled with the silver of the UniClad siding looks really nice, but it seemed to be lacking something. I was feeling it and then Stacy said it, it seemed a bit pedestrian, so we decided that it might be fun to bring in a little punch of color to the underside of the front awning. Stacy went out and pulled a couple of dozen samples of colors we could use, and we settled on a crisp citrus green color. If you know anything about color, you know greens can be tricky. A little to yellow and they become acidic looking, a little too much blue and it can start looking primary, not the color we were looking for. In This case, the color proved to be a little to yellow and neither of us were in love with it. We decided to pick another green color to paint (Green Tease), and this time I think we got it right. The color is a nice contrast to the neutral silver/gray and rich browns of the siding, and a nice little unexpected twist to our house when people come to the front door.

From what I understand reel style mowers actually provide the healthiest style cut for your lawn and there appear to be a couple mowers that offer this option. the SunLawn EM-2 model (a cordless option) got high reviews from Wired Magazine and weighs in at roughly 39 lbs. one of the lightest mowers I could find that wasn’t powered soley by my legs. Unfortunately, for me one the drawbacks to the Sunlawn is its rather “Wally and the Beav” design, which reminds me of something that you might find at the back of your grandparents storage shed—not horrible looking but certainly not really very nice looking either. The other option for reel mowers that caught my eye, is the Brill ASM380 Reel Mower (another cordless option) with a more updated design style, and a remarkably light weight of only 29lbs. However, as I dug deeper in my search the ASM380 model has been discontinued by the manufacturer with the release of an new mower in June of 2008. The German Engineer, Brill mower can actually be operated as a traditional push mower if the battery were to run out, before the lawn was completed. Since it’s recommended for a lawn of about 2,500 sq. ft. or less this push mower feature might actually come in handy.

The other option in electric mowers, is the more common rotary style cutting system. The apparent darling of this category is the Nuetron Electric Mower. with it’s stylish fresh green exterior making it appealing to look at. Plus, it features a wonderful little features like a push button start (with safety key), relatively long run time of 45-60 minutes and boast being the most powerful battery powered mower you can buy (360 watt-hours of battery energy.) Its draw backs, in this case are its rotary blade and weight of 69lbs. Another one of the rotary options is the Desa® Remington® Electric Mower, which boasts being the first and only 60 volt battery mower with 60 minutes of run time and corded option. The design of the Remington looks a bit more like a traditional gas mower, nothing really “wowing” here but not bad looking either. The great feature of this mower (in my opinion) is the option to either run it from the battery or as a corded model. I can imagine that there may be a few times that I might forget to plug it in before my next use or run out of juice before I get the lawn completed so this would be a great little feature.

I’ve tried to read a few online reviews as well as pick up on what users are saying in various forums, but the feedback seems to be greatly varied. People either totally love whichever model they have, or they completely loath it. All of them claim to cut tall grass and give a long run time but at the same time, without first-hand experience, I can’t separate marketing hype from manufacturing performance. What I’d really like to do is line the various models up across my front yard and test them side-by-side, to see which is best for me. Since that is not so likely to happen, I’m asking if anyone out there can share with me their first hand experience with their electric mower.

The Sunlawn EM2

The Brill ASM380

The Nuetron Electric Mower

Desa Remington Electric Mower

In April, Stacy had placed our order from Costco.com for a sectional to be used on our upper deck. She had spent a fair amount of time looking for one that would not only look good, be durable but also not cost a fortune. The sectional was scheduled to be delivered in 4 to 6 weeks from the time of order but this was not the case. In mid May, when the first delivery date was anticipated, but the furniture had not arrived Stacy called to locate it. They gave her a scheduled delivery date for the following week, this would prove to be 1 of 5 delivery dates that we would receive over the next 4 weeks.

During one of the calls that followed yet another false delivery date, Costco actually told Stacy that she should call the delivery company herself since they were a subcontractor of Costco. After a long and frustrating series of calls and scheduled delivery dates, Stacy finally received a call back from the delivery company, only to say they would not be delivering the furniture that Friday after all, but that it was being shipped to another delivery company because they would no longer be handling this business. Back to square one. The series of continued exchanges grew very frustrating as we couldn’t get an answer out of either Costco, the manufactuer (Soma International,who Costco again told us to deal with) or the finally identified “new” delivery company. After waiting at this point 9 weeks, we were afraid to cancel our order as the other sectional options we had looked at, were either sold out for the season or meant an additional 4 to 6 weeks delivery, putting us at the end of summer. Finally, after we received the 5th false delivery date and no call explanation from Costco as to what was going on, we canceled our order and membership. Then miraculously, the next day, we received another call, this time the delivery person was very helpful. He told us he wants to schedule a delivery for the next day, however he didn’t feel comfortable doing so since he didn’t actually have the piece at this time and this was not the normal procedure (since it might require that we take off from work to be there to receive it). However, he was finally able to tell us the location of our sectional and promised that it would be in his hands in the next few days, at which time he would schedule an actual delivery date. Ironically it seems our canceling the order is what prompted it’s delivery. Maybe we should have done that the same day we ordered it.

Ultimately the sectional has proved to be of really nice quality and to our surprise, arrived in fairly good shape, less a couple of scrunched pillows. I can’t say I’m impressed with my first Costco experience and will have to think long and hard before I make any other Costco purchases.

If you’ve looked at the exterior photos of our house you will note that on the second floor, two of the large windows are a different color from the rest. This was an issue we had noticed immediately after the glass was installed and had pointed it out to our Accurate Drowin Window rep (Above and Beyond Construction) and our General Contractor. They had already made note of this between the two of them and agreed that we would need to change the glass on those windows to match the rest of the house. We decided that based on the extremely cold temperatures at the time we would wait until spring before we tried to replace these pieces and decrease the risk of them shattering.

Over the past several months I have been in contact with my rep about the windows as well as to inform him of some issues that we have had with several of our doors. In the meantime Above and Beyond Construction and Accurate Dorwin have fallen into a bit of a legal battle, that I wish to stay as clear of as possible. However, their strained relationship has meant that we have had to wait to get the correct glass for our windows until now. Our local rep from Above and Beyond has kept us informed that there was going to be some delays in the process and we have appreciated that but it still has been frustrating.

Our glass arrived on Monday of this past week, after our local reps made a personal audit of all our glass and got in contact with the glass manufacturer from our original order who then did a second audit of our glass. As it turns out it wasn’t just a few windows that were incorrect. Almost all the windows on the front of our house should have been a blue tinted Low-e, suncoat glass. The tan glass that made-up the majority of our south facing windows was of a lessor quality than we had ordered and it was the blue glass that was in the minority, that was the correct glass. The installers from Above and Beyond came out on Thursday and began to replace this glass on the big sections of our windows. They will return this week to complete that glass replacement. I am sick to my stomach to see the glass going to waste, as apparently Accurate Dorwin does not want it back. Stacy and I spent much of the weekend trying to figure out where or how we could salvage the glass, but we really don’t have the space and or use for it now.

The doors are a completely different story. Our three panel sliding glass door came and looked great, however it had a very unique feature, it has two operating sides to it. Almost imedialtey we were displeased with how it operated. I am 6′ tall 215lb. former bodybuilder and this door is hard for me to operate, let alone my wife and kids, who are fraction of my size. Additionally this door had issues with water infiltration along the frame in some places and the track froze up as a result. We also have had issues with the front door and the upstairs deck access doors that appear to have warped. Neither of these doors closes correctly and the upstairs door has is warped so that it is almost impossible to close—UGGH. Above and Beyond construction has offered to replace these doors for us with a door from another High-end Fiberglass window and door manufacturer that they now rep. I’m pleased that they are willing to do this, since from my understanding Accurate Dorwin doesn’t appear to be willing to make this right. The biggest frustration with this is that the doors are framed in by our finished siding material which means that we will again have workers at the house replacing this material as well, what an ugly cycle.

As it stands now I feel like our reps from Above and Beyond Construction are doing the honorable thing and replacing everything and anything that is incorrect, and right now at their expense. Accurate Dorwin in my opinion makes a great window (our energy tests showed this) but seems to greatly lack on the quality control and customer service end. I’m glad to be getting our issues taken care of but at the same time I am frustrated that this is the process that has taken place in order for us to get it done. Additionally I can only hope that anyone else who may have taken my research into consideration when selecting their windows and purchased products from Accurate Drowin does not have any of the same issues.

The reclaimed, Douglas Fir Timber, Credenza, stands 23″ tall, 16″ deep and 48″ long. The wood came from the Duluth Timber Company and was reclaimed from Albina Homestead School in Portland, Oregon. I can’t help but think how nice a similar but slightly larger piece would look in my house.

One of the Lutz boys knocks out the foam they used to create the overflow spouts in the forms.

I loved seeing this photo that Stacy took, because when I went out to look at the back rain garden this afternoon their was no dirt around which means they cleaned it up and laid the sod down along the side of it.

Next step, planting.

Fred puts the finishing touch on the second of two rain gardens, off the back of the house.

Our concrete guys (Fred Lutz and his sons) were back this week to frame up and ultimately pour our rain gardens. Typical rain gardens are kidney shaped, organic depressions cut into the ground. However, in an effort to keep with our geometric theme, our architect Michael Huber had designed the rain gardens to be a series of step downs poured from concrete.

The rain gardens purpose is to manage rainwater run off from the two largest surface areas of our house, the roof, and the driveway. By trafficking the water from these two areas into the garden we help to minimize erosion, flooding and pollution that reaches ponds, streams and ultimately our drinking water.

The gardens had been designed with an overflow spout at the front of the forms but as we started forming them up, one of the concerns we had was that it would need to be very deep to hold a fair amount of water and not dump it back onto the driveway, before they reached the overflow point. In order to do so the overflow spout was starting to look a bit too exaggerated in my opinion. As a solution, one of Fred’s sons suggested we use a piece of rigid foam insulation and create a scupper like opening in the mouth of the garden, an idea that I love and can’t wait to see, once the forms come off this weekend.

The International Interior Design Association is offering a version of this years NeoCon event in Chicago called Minne-Con. The event will be held at the super cool Chambers Hotel from 8a.m. to 4p.m. on June 26th and feature over 30 vendors showcasing a wide variety of new and hot products. There will also be a happy hour from 4p.m. to 6p.m. so you can rub elbows with the interior design fashionista of the Twin Cities. For more details check out the event site at iida-northland.org.

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.