Friday, May 23, 2008

Some recent pictures

This is the way the "media room" has looked for months now. And that's pretty much the way it looked when I nearly cut the end of my finger off with my chop saw. The blood's still on that sheet of red resin paper (and my pants: rrrgh!) It happened while I was cutting barn board to fit over the inside faces of the SIPs panels (see this image and below). I was cutting a long piece and wanted to make a slight adjustment and instead of stopping the saw I paused mid-cut and pushed the board toward the blade slightly. Somehow my hand slipped off the board and went right into the spinning blade. I won't soon forget the sound and feel of what happened next...

Anyway, I ended up driving myself to the hospital with a bag of ice and a dish rag wrapped around my hand because there were, I think, seven kids in the house at the time and my wife had to stay with them. It ended up being only five stitches and I missed the bone. It still feels weird, but I am back to work. The reason this room isn't done yet is that I have had to shift my attention to the outside of the house. I will post some pics of what is happening out there, but suffice it to say, we need to remedy the disaster zone that is our property before the neighbors petition to eject us from the 'hood.

Since we have no topsoil (just hard-packed mud and rocks) we are having 50 yards of loam brought in and graded around the site. We will then seed and try to grow some kind of grass. But I am determined NOT to create a high maintenance country-club style greenway that requires tons of fertilizing, watering, and mowing. One of my side projects has been researching "greenscaping" - ecologically friendly landscaping that utilizes indigenous plant and grass species that are drought-resistant and require little fertilizing. Of course, I could spend TONS of time and money on this, but since I have NEITHER of EITHER, it's just going to be grass for now...something to hold down the dirt and give the kids a surface to play on. I am leaning toward fescue which is a drought resistant grass that is supposed to require less watering and fertilizing. We'll see. I'm also considering clover or field grass...

Hard to believe this is all going to be filmed in a couple of weeks...Boy, do we have some cleaning to do!

1 comment:

Debbie said...

I came across your blog by chance. What an awesome thing you're doing converting the barn into your home. My husband and I hope to build a log home someday in the mountains of NC. For now we reside in Florida.

Best of luck in your project.