Home Offices and Schools

 

Within a week we got news that the Emperor would be teaching from home this semester, our college students would be learning from home this semester, and our art student would be painting (and learning) from home this semester.

If you're counting, that's ten of us home full time for the next 4 months at least!

We've been spending part of the summer rearranging things to make sure everyone has space to work ergonomically since we've had a number of people who needed physical therapy after a cramped spring semester.

So the Emperor has this new office set up in our bedroom, complete with a privacy screen and a blank background for video teaching.

Mxyl moved downstairs into the office to have a better desk and more shelf space, now that he's real life working from home.  Klenda, Zorg, and Leena also have desks in this office.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also, we did a big clean up in the library to reclaim a quiet place to read, work, play, or socialize.

And we carved out a space for Choclo to draw and listen to music.

 

 

 

 Klenda has her watercolor/ink studio in her room and her oil/acrylic studio in the museum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And I now have my own desk again (with all my homeschool stuff) in the living room! 

I haven't really had a desk in a while, so I'm enjoying it.  

Between having a desk and only schooling two this year, I feel ridiculously organized!

Where the Sidewalk Ends

 We had been having problems with the little sidewalk that ran from our driveway to our house.  It was cracked and it flooded badly whenever it rained.

What a great summer project!

It's only 30 feet (10 meters) long, so not too big a job.

 Ha ha!

The first problem was that the original concrete was six inches thick.  That's at least double what I had expected.

And, while hard on the surface, the interior was crumbly, which turns out to be difficult when you are using a jackhammer (you only get little bits at a time instead of big chunks).

Honestly, we ended up out sourcing that part of the job after a frustrating half day.







Next up was laying a sand base.

Then tamping to flatten and smooth it.

Then it was time to mix and pour the concrete pavers.

 We decided to do pavers to give us better drainage, but an extra bonus was that it looks great with the garden!

And lastly we filled in the spaces between pavers with polymeric sand.

It took the whole week, but we're delighted with the new path!

Down the Garden Path

 It's an ill wind that blows no good, as my mother and grandmother used to say.

With a bit more time on our hands at home, we decided to do some household and garden projects.  So far, inside, we've cleaned the dreaded back basement, the office, the fridge, and the deep freeze. 

Outside, we've been doing a lot of weeding and pruning, but, by far, the biggest project to date was terracing the hill in the side garden so that the path and sitting area are level.



Fortunately, Zorg had some experience building paths on hillsides!  He spent a few weeks at Philmont with the Order of the Arrow building hiking trails for scouts.


 Basically, we used installed landscape timbers on the downhill side, then used the mattock to cut the uphill side down to be level with those timbers.  Then we installed more timber on the uphill side as a retaining wall.



Then we tamped everything down and covered the bath with bark.

It looks fantastic, and I am so happy to have that job done!

I still need to do a bit a of weeding in that garden because I have a number of plants coming in that I want to put there.

How to Build an Easy Ramp

Our house doesn't have a lot of steps to get inside.

The front door has two steps to get onto the porch and a sort of half step to actually get in the door.  There is no railing, nor any good way to make a railing.

The side door only has one step, but it's about 7 inches tall.  This is easier if you have someone that has trouble with steps.


On a good day, my dad can manage that step, but on a bad day, I don't want him to have to try, so we built a ramp.

If you haven't used a wheelchair, that probably looks like an enormous ramp for one step, but it's actually a tiny bit shy of the recommended "one foot of ramp for every inch of height."

The ramp itself is just over 6 feet long instead of 7 because I wanted to leave enough room at the end for him to turn his chair (the car port is only 10 feet wide).

I had a hard time finding simple directions to build a ramp, so I'm putting this out there!

Materials: I bought one sheet of flooring plywood, two 2 x 6 boards, some nails, and some traction tape.

How to (short version):

I had the store cut the plywood to 3 feet by 6 feet (keeping the scrap wood).

I cut the 2 x 6s into 4 (6 foot) diagonals.

I nailed the 3 x 6 foot board onto the diagonals.

I nailed the scrap wood onto the bottom of the ramp.

(optional) I spray painted the ramp and added traction tape.

More detail:

The hard part was cutting the correct angle on the 2 x 6s to make the supports. The easiest thing would be to start by cutting them to a 6 foot length.

I used 2 thumbtacks and a length of string to mark the angle.  I put one thumbtack at the corner of the board and put the other tack 6 feet away on the other edge (forming a diagonal line).  I rubbed the line with chalk and then snapped the line against the board so that it left a clear line of the diagonal.   I cut along that line with a circular saw (use a blade with large teeth).

Each of those cuts gives you two 6 foot diagonal boards, so, when you do the second board, you'll have 4 supports.

You space them evenly and nail the top board to those supports.

Now, the thing to remember is that the plywood flooring is about a half inch thick.  Your supports are 5.5 inches tall (2 x 6 is actually 1.5 x 5.5).  I needed another half inch, so I used the scrap wood to make a bottom for the ramp.  This gave it the correct height  (6.5 inches was close enough) and added stability.

Optional: I added a metal edge on one side as a guide to keep wheels from going over the edge). 
I also spray painted it to make it look more finished.  My dad has some trouble with his eyes, so I painted it white for high contrast, then oversprayed it lightly with blue to make dirt show less. 

I finished up by adding traction tape.

I keep saying "I" but this ended up being a home school project!  And a big thanks to my mom and dad for teaching my enough carpentry to make stuff!

Surprises

It was Thursday. We were hip deep in kitchen and household renovations when Leena mentioned that she was having problems with her newest pair of gerbils.  Percy was eating much more than his brother, Anton, and was actually getting a bit tubby.

Hmmm.  Well, I didn't have time to think much about it, so I suggested she put extra food in the cage to make sure poor Anton got enough food, and we'd figure it out later.

The next day Leena had me hold Percy.  He was definitely the heftiest gerbil I'd ever seen.  But the Emperor and the younger boys were due back in two days.  Clearly there was a problem, I just didn't have time to research it now.  Besides, Percy and Anton both seemed pretty healthy otherwise.

First day

Saturday morning, Leena came to me with the surprising news that Percy was no longer fat.

And we now had five wiggly pink jelly beans in a corner of the cage.

And Percy turns out to be short for Persephone.

Sigh.  I've been pregnant how many times and I didn't figure it out?!

This is our fifth pair of gerbils and the first error by the pet store.

7 days

10 days

Honestly, this was not the plan, but...

They're so cute!

And we are handling them every day, so they are extremely tame and sweet.

13 days

15 days

Percy turned out to be a good mom, except for the part where she stuffed all her babies in the gerbil wheel, then forgot (?!) and started running.

Fortunately, the babies were all fine!


We figured out we have 3 girls and two boys.

18 days

And then yesterday the first one opened her eyes!

All the Things Part 3: the Kitchen

First off, I should mention what you aren't seeing.  We filled our entire carport twice with trash and recycling, and gave away nearly as much stuff. I find this level of organizing equally exhausting and liberating.

 Anyway, the main problem we had in the kitchen was that we had literally worn through our (16 year old) counters.

The new counters should outlast me- they are engineered quartz, and we had them professionally installed.


Oob picked them out, but I love them too.  The pattern is called Ocean Storm, and to me, they look very much like the stormy North Atlantic of my childhood.

I liked the ocean theme so much, we painted the walls blue with creamy tan trim.

 Our biggest problem was the floor.Honestly the kids did most of the hard work on this.

We had to scrape up two layers of vinyl tile and sometimes a layer of vinyl sheet, then we had to patch the floor.

Then we installed vinyl planks.







It was our first experience doing a floating floor, and I have to say, I really love it.  It feels uncannily like actual wood, but it's completely waterproof.

Klenda expertly color matched fabrics and sewed pillows for the window seat.



I put a few favorite shells in the window.

And I hung my grandmother's painting of the ocean!

We even finished all the trim before the boys returned, but that was down to the wire.

I thought I miter might not make it.
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All the Things Part 2: Room Switch and NJ

 At the tail end of June, Mxyl, Klenda, and Zorg returned from North Dakota (to a hero's welcome).

Three days later, The Emperor, Choclo, and Oob set off on an epic two week camping adventure to the wilds of northern New York, near Canada.  More on that in another post.

What did the rest of us do while they were gone?

Watched Pride and Prejudice.  Then watched Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  Definitely the most horror like movie I've ever watched willingly, but a lot of fun with the oldest four!


And then we pulled the whole house apart.


The big project for the summer was updating the kitchen.

Shortly after that was underway, my Dad took a turn for the worse and we realized that my parents might need to move in with us on short notice.

In a bit less than two weeks, we completely emptied and resorted the office, the chapel, and the guest room, and redid the whole kitchen!

 The new chapel (old office) looks like this.

That's a monstrance in the center of the main altar.




This room would be my parents' living room

The guest room is the same (except, you know, the closets are empty and you can use the bed and see the floor).

There's also a small bathroom attached.

This would be my parents' bedroom.

 The new office (old chapel) is on the bottom floor, and is large enough for 4 desks.

We have Klenda's desk, then Lenna's, Zorg's, and mine.

And it still fits all the homeschool stuff and art supplies!

We also resorted the museum to make space for a small office for my folks, although we'd likely have to share that room. We need a certain amount of storage on the main floor and, currently, Klenda is using it to paint.


Near the middle of those crazy two weeks, I went off for a quick visit to New Jersey. Which seems a bit crazy now that I write it down.

My dad was a tiny bit better.

The tomato plants in the coal buckets had turned into trees.

The lake was gorgeous!

One morning I heard what sounded like an irate chicken, but, looking out I found it to be this pileated woodpecker, or, as I like to call them now, a tree chicken.

And then I went home and finished up the kitchen before the boys came back!  I think I better put that in tomorrow's post.

Clothing Switch and Basement Overhaul

Since summer, my basement storage has been threatening to cave in and bury me alive.




Between the library sort, the retreat, home schooling, traveling, and what not, I was just too busy to deal with it.






 I kept pushing back the piles, and decided that when I did the seasonal clothing switch in the fall, I would deal with it all then.

After all, I would have to excavate to find the clothes anyway!

Much to my own surprise, I was able to go through most of the basement!

And you can even walk though it safely!

And find things you are looking for!

And everyone has warm clothes!

Thanks be to God!

I got to almost everything except the Christmas section... I'll deal with that next month!