Plants and Floor Projects

Finally, I’m sitting down to write about the major projects we’ve been working on for the past few weeks. First there was the landscaping project. The ideas for it have been rolling around in my brain ever since we bought this house. I have always known just what I wanted it to look like, but didn’t have the resources to put it together until now. Our friends became the push we needed to get started. Because they wanted to re-do the landscaping in their own yards, we suddenly had the opportunity to acquire a huge load of up-rooted bushes. We also got our tax refund (very helpful)! So the dirty work began… Our house is built on a slope, so we were having an erosion problem along the sides. Like many houses built these days, our land was cleared completely and sod placed with no other landscaping done. By the time we bought it from the first owner, most of the grass had turned to weeds and there were holes running along the sides of the house from rain washout. We decided to build some retaining walls around the new plant beds to help with this problem.
As you can see, it wasn’t much to look at.

The next photo is the front of the house after it was finished. The big dead looking bushes are Loropetalums. They had lovely green and purple/red leaves all over them before they were uprooted. Alas, the leaves couldn’t survive a day out of the ground. I chopped ‘em so they wouldn’t fall all over my freshly planted flower bed. Elaine swears they’ll grow back before we know it. The small green bushes are Dwarf Bordeaux Yaupon Holly. I also planted some decorative grasses, vinca flower vines, and coleus.

Down the left side of the house is another Loropetalum (you can see the dead leaves still on that one) and a whole row of Indian Hawthorne bushes.

I planted these perennials under the loropetalum, but I can’t remember what they’re called. Anyone recognize them? Elaine? I think it starts with a “g”. I thought they were really pretty anyway.

Here’s the right side of the house. Another Loropetalum (not shown) and some Indian Hawthornes. Also planted Purple Hearts. They are the purple plants (duh) and they get these cute little light purple flowers on the ends of them. Love it!

The project took about 4 or 5 days to complete. I was exhausted and dirty…but I loved it! I’m a gardener at heart.

Then came the floors. Seth decided he was capable of installing hardwood flooring and came home one day with a truck load. We had wanted to get rid of the wall-to-wall carpet in this house since the moment we moved in for several reasons:

1. Our dust allergies are here to stay. Carpet and dust are best friends. Both are the enemy of people with allergies!

2. It was the original carpet from the previous owner. Stains. Burns. General yuckiness.

3. There were several places were carpet creep had occurred and there were long ridges running across the room.

We quickly ripped the carpet out of the entry hall, the living room, the back hallway, and the master bedroom. The resulting allergen plume left us scrambling for our inhalers and Claritin.
The kids liked to help us by wedging themselves under our noses, dropping hammers on their toes, and dragging power tools across freshly laid floors. Good clean family fun.

The floor is actually bamboo. Technically, bamboo is a really large grass and not wood at all. However, it is just as hard or harder than the types of trees used for flooring. It’s bamboo through and through, so it can be sanded and refinished multiple times (not that I plan on living here that long!). The experts say that bamboo floors emit a minute amount of VOCs (volatile organic compounds), much less than any of the other major flooring choices like carpet, laminate and vinyl. In simple terms: it’s healthier. Anyway, I learned all of these fun little facts AFTER Seth brought it home, but I still think it’s kind of cool.

With the proper tools (thank you John Hess!) everything has gone fairly smoothly. Mostly, you just cut the strips (to make a pattern), tap the tongue & groove edges together, and nail the edge of the board down to the subfloor. Currently, everything is finished except for half of my bedroom. We even put in new baseboards (because wood floors have to go under them).

Well, I’m off to go sleep on my new floor.

Anyone got an air mattress?