Pick Up The Pieces

 So I promised to show ya'll a few photos of some actual work I have done around here.  I was never really enthused about the idea of painting this bar wall, so when it hit me to sheath it in pallet wood I jumped on that. Allen had been scrounging pallets for me for months and I had stripped a lot of them down to usable wood where they were just waiting for finishing.  So, I finally bit the bullet and sanded, stained, painted, sanded again, and patched for two days to get enough planks to do these 2 walls.  I didn't make a lot of effort to hide any patches, dents, or bangs in the wood.  I mean, it's obviously pallet wood and obviously reclaimed, so there's the "charm".  Ha! Anyway, I thought it came out rather well.  The corners are done in 1 1/2" angle iron and these make helluva good corner guards..  The iron is just stuck on for now because I'll have to take it back off and cut to fit when I run the finish floor and baseboard.  In person it looks better.  The color is a bit washed out in this photo because, due to low light in the warm months in my house, I have a devil of a time getting decent photos.  I often have to use a flash and it just doesn't look right.

 This photo is a little better but it's a little washed out too.  Anyways....I finished this counter top and back splash and wanted to run a little of the glass tile just to see how that was going to look.  I'm very pleased with this but please note; the tile has not been grouted yet, so it will look a little different when finished.  This gives me a lot of motivation to keep going.  I'm very anxious to get the kitchen finished because I think it's really going to be awesome.

 However, I had to take a break from all that and take advantage of the fact we are in an extended drought.  I have needed to fix this basement wall for years after I discovered just how much rain floods down the mountainside during the winter rains.  If the rest of the house were built this area would remain dry but.....we all know that has not happened yet so....I have to treat this as if it is forever an exterior wall.  Which meant chopping the bottom 2 feet off of the wood framing, forming a 4 inch thick wall and pouring it in concrete.  Here you can see the girls inspecting my forms.  It came out real well.  I even played around and did a faux board formed look on the outside.  This 11 foot section is a little less than half of what I need to pour but it's the worst part of the problem.  I admit I should have done this to begin with..but I did not realize the amount of water etc. around here.  And I was under the supreme delusion that the rest of the house would come along soon enough. Ha!!
Anyways, this form has been dropped, the wall sheathed back, and also insulated and covered on the inside.  Snug as a bug!  I'm now running multiple shelves on the inside in an effort to better organize the basement and my studio there.  I'll rub the exterior of the concrete here, below grade, to produce a smoother finish, then waterproof heavily and backfill.  There is still no sign of any rain anywhere in our near future so I shouldn't have any issues finishing this in the dry.

I also thought I'd take advantage of the drought in other ways!  We have ample dried foliage, leaves, flowers, grass and any things else you can think of here, so I gathered up a armful of stuff, a couple handfuls of feathers via some molting chickens and threw together this autumnal wreath.  Not too shabby I guess.  Certainly was cost effective.  haha!