Even more help.

So Karen moved in, looked around, and said, "Why don't you use your backyard?"  I said, I dunno.  Because I love my front porch and always choose that?  Because I have to walk through two doors to get to the backyard?  Because I never see it?

This, incidentally, is a sore spot.  My house has two back porches, the outermost along the entire back of my house.  Which means that when I stand at my kitchen sink, I look into the back wall of a back porch, like so.

Those are my treasures, on the ledge.  Tiles from a trip to Spain with Anand.  A jar with garlic in it. Little rocks from a trip to the Marin Headlands with my family.  My stripe-y rocks, because a girl can't have enough stripe-y things.  Anyway, I don't want to get too heavily into gender roles, but I will say that the person who chose to put additional closed storage that covered a kitchen window is not the same person who generally cooks or does the dishes.  Considering how much of my time I spend at that sink, the fact that the window looks into a dark wall detracts pretty heavily from my quality of life.

I had talked about taking down part of the exterior siding, but Chris said he would help me, and that was five years ago and it was never a good time and I didn't have the motivation to do it myself, despite resenting my kitchen sink view.  So anyway, late yesterday afternoon, Karen was all, "OK, let's get started!"  I was all, huh, wha?  And she was all, "Let's do it!  Siding comes down from the back porch?"  So I said, um, OK.  Less than an hour later, it was done.  Five years after contemplating this task, it was easily done and fun.  Now I have boards I can use to frame my front yard, turning pointless untended grass into beds that I will garden.  Now I look out my kitchen window at a plain back yard.

The plain backyard isn't great.  But now that I see it many times a day, I'm sure I'll solve that.  Planting under redwoods is a real problem; they make the soil so acidic that even the ferns don't take.  I don't love rhododendrons, but I think I like them better than the stucco wall of an apartment building.  So I might go with those.  Except they want a lot of water, which is not the direction I want to take my yard. I kindof want to hang window frames inside the open space, because I've seen that before and loved it.

Anyway, the lesson is: task done!  Task done easily, even though I was too intimidated to do it by myself and it makes my life much better.  I love, love, love having motivated people around me.  I love living with people who think that projects are fun.  Next, Karen wants us to re-upholsher the rocking chair.

The white furry shag seemed like a great idea when I chose it when I was ten. But now it seems dated and no longer fits my "everything must have color" motif. I'd like something a little less restrained and tasteful. Perhaps red velvet?

Comments

[Jen]

So freeing when you just start something - new project, new book, new life, new man. All kitchens need a great view from the window - should be mandatory. The shag chair needs a strong black and white cover - stripes/paisley/geometric pattern - it will set off that divine aquamarine? pale green in the background.

[abl]

Love it. Welcome back backyard!

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1472783663]

we're house shopping, one of the criteria on my list is that the kitchen sink has a view. Currently I have: a dog-ravaged backyard, followed by greenbelt, houses and a church steeple or so, then the foothills of the Rocky Mts. So I'm a bit spoilt. It turns out that a sink with a view is one of the hardest things to find in a house.

[abl]

My kitchen sink looks out over my living room.

[Megan]

Hmm. The new light in my kitchen reveals that my windows are dirty. Maybe it was better before.

[PG]

Dirty windows aren't so bad -- we cleaned ours for the first time this past summer after having moved in more than a year ago. Turns out that the indirect light isn't so indirect when it comes through clean windows, even if they're a bit streaky. We ripped up his old undershirts and stuck the rags onto the Swiffer pole, and opened the windows and sprayed Windex onto them. The work of 30 minutes. It will probably go even faster for you since you seem to be roughly on ground level rather than in an apartment several floors up :-)