Why I Oughta...

After months of planning and thinking and posting about my eventual workshop, we finally have progress:  the wall that divides the rest of our basement with my shop is getting installed.  In the photo above, you can see the wall being framed and the steel door - an exterior door - installed.  On the right side of the photo - through the framing - you can see the existing stairs and banister coming down from the first floor.  In the middle of the room, you can see an existing door/wall that built out by our builder to contain the mechanical room.  They used a steel, exterior door on the mechanical room, so we replicated that with the door for my shop.  They're going to be so close, so it was important for them to match. Right after the wall framing is done, drywall is going on the outside, but I'm going to leave the inside unfinished.  I'm still planning on cutting in a spot for a vent ( see here for inspiration ) and stuffing the joist cavities with insulation so we ca

One year ago today, I posted that photo above here on the blog to mark the milestone in building our #NewOldFarmhouse when we had our windows installed into the framed house.  Hard to believe that was a year ago as it feels like yesterday that we were making the regular visits to Downers Grove to check on the status of the construction job.  Welp...Nat was there EVERYDAY because she was a trooper who took our one of our kids all the way to Downers Grove for school everyday from Elmhurst.  Then made the return trip back to pick her up.  We're one year removed from the installation of the windows, but still in the thick of things in terms of getting the house situated.  I've posted quite a bit about the needs in the yard/garden, but there's also so much still to get set-up inside.  Like window treatments, furniture, wall-hangings and what-have-yous.  Nat has done a really great job of introducing elements a little at a time and we're this/close to our installation d

About a month ago, I showed the last pictures of our #NewOldFarmhouse where we were having our driveway poured out front.  More recently, the crew moved on to the landscaping and that includes the underground routing of drain pipes.  We're putting the downspouts and the sump pump drain into pipes underground.  You can see one of the big runs in the image above.  They're taking some of the pipes and running them towards a dry well and others...they're running into the yard and installing some 'pop ups' and then letting the grading of the property take over.   I took some photos of the drywells (yes...there's more than one) that we put in underground and I'll post the details of those over time.  It seemed that we had a few choices:  put in the drywells or include a water garden - like the one that the City of Elmhurst recently installed as a demonstration .   From a landscaping perspective, I had a really unique experience.  The subcontracto