I smell grass

First off, Happy Birthday to my brother Ian who is a constant source of support and cheeky comments, thank you Ian!!!

Earlier this year Maria and Pete kindly gifted us a lovely, little used, mower. At the time Pete suggested that we take it in for a tune up as it hadn’t been used for at least a year, maybe more. We had always planned on taking it in for a tune up, but due to C-19 we decided to see whether we could start it ourselves. I was really hoping we could start it ourselves, even if we had to pull the cord a hundred times, so we checked the oil, added some petrol – first pull, nothing, second pull engine sprung into life, couldn’t believe it, so thank you Craftsman and Briggs and Stratton I was really, really impressed and this wasn’t a one off, we shut the mower down a few times to adjust the height and it pretty much started up on the first pull every time.

Good news from our freshly sown side area, the new grass seed has finally started to grow and we have a week of wet weather ahead so that will be perfect. We also put to grass, the sloping area to the back left of our garden.

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Just as the C-19 was taking grips in the US we bought a lovely rocking chair (craigslist) from a nice chap, Josh, for a similarly nice price of $35. Josh was happy to hang on it for a while and this weekend we decided to pick it up. Aimee now has a decent chair to sit on as previously Aimee was using a kiddy sized rocking chair. The only downside to the chair is that a dog mistook it for a bone which you can see in the photos. It doesn’t effect the how it rocks and we can always replace the rails when we have time. I believe it’s oak and the style Amish. I have to say it’s very comfortable and it looks great 🙂 So if you’re ever in the area Josh come sit on your rocking chair and share a glass with us.

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Inside the house we are working on building a new front door for the ground floor. The current door is pretty beat up and doesn’t vertically align with the door above it. Later this year our friend Derrick who is doing the parging of the ground floor walls will take out the existing door, including side panels etc., and add a bit more masonry to center everything. At that stage we’ll need to ready with a new door, hence we are starting now.

The plan for the door is to make a plywood/foam cored slab door and then add stiles, rails and trim so it looks like a traditional paneled door. We’ll have two panels on the bottom and two windowed panels on the top. Our friend John Paul who is building a house on the site of an old bluestone quarry has the equipment and the trees to mill his own lumber (mostly oak I think), so we’re going to get some oak from John Paul for this. It will be freshly cut, so we’ll have to leave it for a few weeks whilst it dries.

It’s nice making your own door as you can make it as wide as you like, we’re going for a nice 40″ wide door so it’s easy to carry stuff through. Also building a door from scratch is a lot easier than restoring an existing door which we did last year. Lastly we bought this nice old brass letter slot for $20 (including p&p) on ebay which looks great, just hope it’s a decent size.

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