Updates to come:

-Interior painting
-granite countertops

Thanks

Not to be outdone, here is Peanut just relaxin and being Cute..

Uh oh, she spotted me!

phew, now were tired!

Those are some of my favorites…to see more pictures from that day, look at our Picasa album

Peanut and Shea 5-7-201

So far this year, we have done a lot, from the sod, to pavers (post still to come), and many things indoors.  Amongst all of this has been more gardening.  You may remember our last gardening updates, here and lastly here .  You may remember in the first update we did, our Avocado plant hadn’t made it, we have an update on that!

Lets start with our updated Veggie garden.  This year, we went with three versions of tomato plants, five cucumber plants (yes…5), basil and cilantro again, as well as two different bell pepper varieties, and we recently planted a greek oregano plant.  One thing you will notice, is that the rosemary has made it through the Florida “winter” and is huge! Feel free to flip to the old posts to compare this year to last year, but it seems to be doing better, mainly because we planted before the dead heat of summer and rainy season.

These pictures are when we first planted in mid March:

five tiny Cucumber plants

Green Bell pepper to the left, tomato to the right

Hybrid Red/Green pepper on left, Tomato in center and last year's rosemary on the right

Cilantro on left, Basil on right

Ok, and now, here is how it looked yesterday

So there ya go, I’d say we are on our way, right?

Next, lets check in on our citrus trees.  We had waited for another large Avocado plant but with the rough winters, only smaller ones were arriving.  We ended up with a Lula Avocado plant that looks to already be budding!  Also, notice to the left, the Lemon tree from last year and its producing lemons!

Lemon on the left, Avocado on the right

On the same weekend the new veggies were planted, we made use of the flower garden next to the Veggie garden, which had been only weeds.. here is how it looked immediately after planting.

As of yesterday, they looked like this:

And finally… what we just worked on this weekend… our front yard.  We had not touched our front yard island much at all, but we totally redid it.  Here are some before, during and after pictures with completely new plants and flowers!

before..ick

Getting there..

Plants in, putting down mulch!

And the finished product

There ya go, a big transformation.  Hopefully there will be more to update throughout the summer about everything.  We still have some posts to catch up on, and hope to get to them soon.

We received a few quotes to have our sod professionally done, but they both seemed like too much to pay for what we could do it ourselves for.

After much researching, the venture started on a Friday night, by renting a U-Haul pickup truck and immediately heading over to Home Depot.  At the store, we bought compost, a “bagster” (shown later), a wheel barrow and other miscellaneous things.  The big thing we did was rent a sod cutter, the type seen below, $90 for a 1 day rental.

All of this was done Friday night, for the “fun” to begin on Saturday morning.  Saturday came and at about 7:30am, this was delivered into our driveway..

When we saw those 11 pallets of Floratam St Augistine grass (500 square feet each), it was real to us that we were entering into a MAJOR project.

That morning, M and some friends got going using the sod cutter, which is a beast of a machine, that is not the easiest to use.  While using this, we actually broke a line in the old potable water supply line and had a geyser in the yard!

And the next is after the City came to turn off the water… the aftermath.

After this disaster, the sodcutting and cleanup of old grass and weeds continued, all while our Irrigation guys came over for an emergency appointment to ensure we had drinking water again!

Saturday was completely engulfed in fixing these types of problems, trying to finish with the sod cutter before the rental time was up, and getting all the rentals, including the UHaul back in time.  Quite hectic.

On Sunday, it was all about cleaning up the old grass, and this is what it looked like about midway through in our yard.

Later Sunday afternoon, we finally started laying down some of the sod.  Similar to laying tile, we layed the sod from the far corner of the yard and went towards the front to minimize the amount of traffic that would be put on it.  We laid the sod in a staggered “brick” pattern as everyone recommended and put the pieces as close together as possible and finally running a roller over it to flatten it down.  The hardest part of this was bringing the sod to the backyard in a wheel barrow and cutting any odd pieces.  Some “during” pics are below.

We layed the sod for parts of 3 different days, it was brutal.  All together, the project took 4 days, but at the end of the day, the lawn looks great.  Here are some immediately after pictures.

It looked pretty good in my opinion, and before I show some more recent pictures, here is another  picture of the cleanup.  It shows our “bagster” which is a large Waste Management bag that can take a large amount of waste and cost $30 and an additional $99 or less for pickup.  We filled two of them with yard waste, plus about 50 large yard bags of waste.

These last pics were taken about 3 weeks ago now, and it looks great!

We still have a few more projects to post we are behind of, thanks for coming around!

We had made plans for some landscaping and pavers to be done, but first, we had some LARGE ugly plants, which had to be moved.  We got quotes from some landscapers to remove them, and they wanted between $150 and $200.  I was trying to be stingy, so I figured I’d try myself…little did I know it would take hours and I would break a shovel along the way.

On the same weekend, we decided to move the fence on one side of our property up towards the street about 15 feet.  This would then give us 15 more usable feet in the backyard and our Air Conditioner would no longer be visible from the street.

Not to get too much into detail on a cut and dry project, here are some pictures of the plants to start.

This picture above is the before of both how our fence (and A/C) looked before moving the fence and shows a huge, ugly plant next to the A/C.

Here is “crazy, out of control and ugly plant two” before being removed.

This is the third ugly plant

Now, to do the fence, it was fairly simple, we went out and bought a post hole digger, a few post holes, and a couple bags of fast setting concrete.  All in all, it was maybe a $60 investment and half of that was getting a decent quality post hole digger.  I simply measured the length where I wanted it to go, then began uprooting the existing fence.  It was actually easier than I thought since some of the posts had rotted and others weren’t concreted well, which explains why it was wobbly.  When I moved it forward, my distance between the house and the neighboring fence was smaller, so I actually cut one fence piece in half.  I dug the new post holes about 2 feet deep.  Once I did this, I filled the two outer posts with the concrete, and got the posts in there and made sure to hold it level until it dried.  You may notice, the inner posts in the final picture are not level, and therefore also not  concreted in yet.  I used existing fence material and doors which are warped and I made due to ensure the fence gate would close.  In the future, it will be replaced.

Here are some pics.

The post hole digger itself

This is the first post concreted in.

In this one, half of the fence is complete

And here, is the final product! (until we replace it)

Here is a view of the fence from the backyard.  Also, if you notice to the left of the air conditioner in this picture is some fresh soil and used to house the first ugly plant shown!

This picture also shows the fence, but the soil to the right here also shows the remnants of the second ugly plant.

This is a final picture (blurry) but showing where the third and last ugly plant was.

As I said earlier, we did a lot this month, so I will try to get the other outdoor projects posted this week.

Thanks!

Because we were going to put this in a bathroom and laundry room as well as kitchen, we went with tile throughout.  The tile we went with was a 20″x20″ Mohawk brand tile(We have not been compensated in any way for using this product) in a Sandy Desert color.  Before we show the tile, here are the only “before” pictures I could find.. obviously we didn’t like our previous flooring much to take pictures of it.

This shot above is the cleanest our carpet ever was after we rented a cleaner for it, you may remember this from our Quick Carpet Cleaning post.

These next couple of photos give an idea of how our laminate floor looked.

Ok, so the laminate wasn’t so bad, but it just didn’t work out to keep it.

Now, we’ve done our “before” photos, how about some “during” shots?  We used the help of family members to get the laminate floor brought up and save some money before the tile installers destroyed the old carpet and floor… here’s the fun!

Underneath the laminate the the vapor is a green tile that just made the house REALLY dark.

Now, on to the destruction of the old tile on the first day the tile installers were working..

All of this was done by the time I stopped home for my lunch break… the next few pictures show how the house looked when I got home from work for the day.

Pretty good for one day, on day two the tilers were able to complete most of the tiling, except a few spots to allow us to walk on.

On day 3, virtually all of the tile was grouted with a grout color named “Irish Cream” which also has Grout Boost(we were not compensated in any way for using this product) in it, which guarantees against stains for 20 years, we will see.

The bucket covers up our electrical for the kitchen island

And on the fourth day, they finished!  Over 1000 square feet of tile, just under 500 square feet of tile to remove.  They also did a diagonal pattern and painted and installed new 5 1/4″ baseboards.  Here are some final photos!

The green tile on top of the kitchen to the right is what used to be on the floors

We couldn’t be happier with this and this opens the door to more decoration, and more upgrades in the future.  Tell us what you think!

]]> http://roseydisposition.com/2011/01/12/down-to-the-floor/feed/ 4 http://roseydisposition.com/2010/12/06/happy-holidays-from-roseydisposition/ http://roseydisposition.com/2010/12/06/happy-holidays-from-roseydisposition/#comments Tue, 07 Dec 2010 00:30:57 +0000 M http://roseydisposition.com/?p=630 so its our first Christmas in our new home.  We went out, got an 8-9′ Frasier Fir, and all new decorations for it.  Here is a peek!

Wasn't in the house 10 minutes, the dogs wanted to eat it!

Oh Christmas Tree....

We actually had a lot of ornaments already, First Christmas we couldn’t use last year, some sports icons, initials, its a pretty full tree after buying some of the just colored ones.

LED lights and a blow up dog!

We again got LED lights for most of the outside. The lights outlining the house are BIG LEDS kinda like the old big bulb lights but are much more energy efficient (supposedly) and are much more durable.  I can attest to the durability since getting them up on the house was no small feat. The blow up dog was given to us and we love it, being we have the two dogs.

Another angle of the front

And finally, Peanut in her Holiday sweater.  With the short hair, she hasn’t enjoyed the cold weather this week, its actually going to be into the 30′s tonight!  So when we take the dogs for a morning walk, Peanut wears it to stay warm.

Happy Holidays and hopefully we will post more going forward!

Thanks!

Anyway, our AC was 15 years old when we moved in, but worked.  We actually had a home warranty company send a repair man out back in April to check on it and although he had to add freon to it, he told us it showed no signs of dying.

It also showed no signs of not eating our wallets on a daily basis!

Don’t understand the title?  Read on, you will understand by the end…

Our initial AC was a Trane unit, the original put in the house and it was 4 ton unit, which I believe was also a 7 SEER unit.  SEER stands for Seasonal Energy Efficiency Rating and is defined here.  The lowest SEER rating an HVAC unit can have now is 13 SEER, so that should help tell you how old ours was.

So,  with a bunch of tax credits, and another possible Florida rebate on the horizon we finally decided to take the jump.

Here are the pictures of the old AC, and  of course you can see the old thermostat here.

So, as the pictures show, in addition to being inefficient, its old, dirty, disgusting… any other adjectives you want to add in?

So, we searched, got some quotes and took our time, as usual with a big decision.  We ended up going with a Carrier Infinity System (now do you understand the title? Its partially from Toy Story).  From the multiple vendors we went to, most of them recommended this unit above all others.  It is a 2-stage, variable speed unit with great humidity control as well, and living in Florida, humidity control is important.  The 2-stage part of the name means that 80% of the time, even though it is a 4 ton unit, it only runs at 2 tons to save energy and the variable speed is basically a constantly running fan that will ensure our 2nd floor is almost as cool as the downstairs where the unit sits.

The unit we went with is a 4 ton unit again but this time is a 16.8 SEER unit, over a 2x’s difference from our initial system!  The operating costs estimated on this unit are only $900 a YEAR here in Florida and that is on a bigger household than we have, huge savings. Another great feature of this system is that the thermostat is very advanced.  It has great settings for vacation mode, temporary holds, and even tells your when the filter is dirty.

Its been installed for a bit over a week now, and ironically, its been cold here in Central Florida, highs only going to the mid 80′s and lows at night in the 60′s!  Either way, it will save us money when we need to use heat and next summer in the blazing heat outside.  We are looking forward to saving money for years and also being more comfortable in the home.  The pictures of the new unit are below, notice the size difference, but also how much cleaner and better it looks.

Thanks for checking this out!