What the heck is a zone anyway?

Thank you for the positive feedback on my family meeting posts!  I love hearing that people are considering implementing this habit and I'd love to hear how it works for you and your family!

The most frequent feedback I got on my worksheets was "What is a zone??"

Hmm, people aren't familiar with the weird jargon we use in our family meetings?  Noted.

I have a very strong dislike for cleaning.  I'm not that good at it, and it doesn't come naturally to me what needs done when.  So, like the scheduling freak that I am, I made a type of schedule.

This list is very specific for our house.  So unless you have the exact same house, pets, and concerns as me, it will need some modification, but maybe it could serve as a launch point.  Personally, I think everything would be just a little bit better if we could somehow get it down to 5 zones.  By the 6th week, it's usually extremely obvious what zone is next.  One whiff of the dogs breathe and I'll know she's up next week.

That probably leads sane people to wonder why I need a list.  If I can tell the dogs breathe is bad, why can't I just brush her teeth?  I don't have an answer to that.  All I know is that before I had this system, I lived in a constant state of feeling behind and stressed out.  Everything seemed messy and out of control.  Now, instead of worrying if everything is perfect, I can relax and know that everything has a time to be dealt with, eventually anyway.

Some tasks simply can't wait 6 weeks. That's what the purple box in the bottom right quadrant is for.  Every Sunday there is a list of tasks that we've decided need done weekly.  Toilets, laundry, etc.  We've recently adjusted how we handle those tasks, actually, but for a long time this system worked very well for us.

So, that's what a zone is.

Green Carpet, Yard Remodel Part 4

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

One Sunday, we hoped in our car and drove off.  We came home to an emerald carpet in our street!

Before we could install the turf, there were some necessary drain modifications and prep work.

First, topsoil had to come out and base had to go in.  So our driveway was a temporary stockpile for both.

I made some minor modifications to the old grass layoug (including a new treewell for my eventual lemon tree).  I also marked out where I wanted to add drainage.

Trenching for drainage.

Base installation and header board.

Grading and compacting

And finally, it was time to turn it green!

 Turf installation went remarkably quickly.  I took most of my pictures from inside because the kids really wanted to go out and I was trying to stay out of the way.

Hiding sems.

Edging.

 Placing Infill.

Spreading infill.

By far turf was the quickest and most rewarding part of the project; in one day it went from dust and dirt to green 'grass.'  For the first time in weeks, we could use our yard again!!

Art Display

We love art!  We frequently paint, write, draw, color, and adhere stickers during play time.

Very quickly I've run out of places to display projects, at least in a manner that I could enjoy. (Long term selection and storage is an entirely different story!)  Our refrigerator is not magnetic, so our playroom cabinets and art easel have housed most of our favorite pieces.

I like the clips better than the cabinets, which required tape and often the very difficult task of tape removal.  I've been playing around with several ideas for art display: a large cork board (don't love the idea of that many tacks floating around our play room), a large magnetic board (the size I wanted would likely be too heavy to be easy to safely hang), frames (beautiful, too hard to change and a bit too formal for what I wanted, not to mention dealing with the irregular sizes of preschool art).

Finally, at a girlfriends house, I found the perfect idea.  She had purchased a display for Christmas Cards and eventually re-purposed it for art.  I decided I could make one for myself that fit my space perfectly!

It seemed like it would be super easy, and for the most part it was!  Best of all, the supplies cost almost nothing.

 

SUPPLIES

Household Twine

Two 3/4" x 3' wooden sticks

Small clothes pins

Step 1: Measure for holes.  I decided to put my strings at 5", I left 3" on each side for mounting. 

Step 2: Drill Holes.  The only tricky part here was making the holes the right size.  I didn't want them too big, but I did need to be able to shove the twine through.  I tried several different bits and settled on 9/64".  I also drilled a hole in the opposite direction on both end for mounting.  After drilling, I sanded the holes and the entire rods to make them a little smoother and take off any rough edges.

Step 3: Paint or Stain Wood: I tried several different stains, but I wasn't happy with the results.  In the end, I slapped a quick coat of white paint on.  I was hoping for a slightly more rustic look, but the paint came out fine.

Step 4: Thread the Twine: I really wanted this to be a one day project, but I had to wait for my paint to dry, so the next day I threaded the twine.  Even with the bigger holes, it was still a little tricky.  I ended up using a small drill bit to help push it through.

I tied small bows and knotted them on one side and then fed the twine through the other side.   Because I wasn't sure how big I wanted it, I left the other side untied.

Step 5: Hanging: I originally wanted to use a french cleat to hang them, but in the end decided to just nail them.  I taped them up first so I could decide how far apart to place the poles.

I didn't tie the other side until after I had attached the poles.  I knotted them, but left a little slack in case I decide to tighten the twine.

Then it was time to display our art!

If you don't want to get as much sag, I think you could tie them before hanging, although you'd have to be very careful to mark your strings or you could hang them closer together.

Overall, I'm very happy with the project and I think it will be a great place to hang our arts, cards, and pictures!

 

Cement Mixer's Whirly Song: Yard Remodel Part 3

Part 1

Part 2

Now the fun part, concrete!!

I can't provide an accurate measurement of the cubic yards of concrete I've placed in my life, but it's a lot.  Still, I can't help but be excited everytime I see the first concrete truck of a pour pull up. Thanks to "Good Night, Good Night, Construction Site" my oldest son  loves concrete trucks and their 'Whirly Songs" so it was pretty exciting when one, with flames on it no less!, arrived at our house!

I was a little surprised that we were using at 3250 psi mix.  I've poured lots and lots of sidewalk and flatwork in my career and I've pretty much always used a 520-C-2500, but alls well that ends well.  Plus reinforcement, so there's that.

Several neighbors who came by asked me where I was going to put the boys hands and feet.  I rolled my eyes.  I'm a Civil Engineer, we don't randomly bedazzle our concrete (recent crafts excluded, of course).  But then a woman came by and mentioned how her boys were so little when they did their yard and now they're quite grown.  She wishes she'd put a quick stamp just to reflect on...

Many thanks to our very patient finisher for floating, and refloating the area many times while I tried to get decent prints in!


In the end,  I was once again amazed by the ability of a few yards of conrete to completely change a physical space.  Once a muddy pit, now a solid, cleanble usable space.

Bang, Crash, Boom, Yard Remodel Part 2

I didn't expect 'demo' to really involve much.  We were taking out a few trees that weren't doing too well and removing some grass, but really it shouldn't have been that big of a deal.

Except it kind of was.

There were apparently an abnormal amount of roots under our grass.  I can't really vouch for the validity of this statement since removals in my line of work invovle heavy equipment and roots don't really affect the speed of work.  It did seem like the guys digging spent alot of time fighting with them while doing electrical repairs, irrigation repairs and drainage upgrades.

So long not so healthy palms!

So long non funcitonal underground!

So long grass!

Demo was when we had our first real challenges.  Communication was a problem the entire project.  We rarely had notice of when workers would be on site and who they were and what they would be doing.  It was a short job and I didn't have much time to build a relationship with most of the crews directly and I was frequently frustrated.  Lesson learned.  Next time, I will require a preconstruction meeting of some sort and a list of the name and contact information for each worker who will be on my property.  It's not fool proof, but it's a start and I think it would have made my life much easier.  I work in construction, so I understand that things change and schedules have to be somewhat fluid, but having two babies in the house and random noise at random times was just too much.

But besides the general issues with communication, we had an acute issue  Our project was running behind and they requested to work over the weekend.  We agreed with the condition that the there be no noise.  So we were immensely unhappy when they began jack hammering at 7:00 am Saturday morning.   My husband immediately stopped them, but not before our neighbors (rightly) freaked out on them.  I spent my entire morning on damage control with our neighbors and embarrased and upset. Turns out the jack hammer was due to some abandoned concrete they encountered. (Thanks alot Taylor Woodrow and original contractor, are concrete washouts really that difficult to have and use?)

Our final problem was damage to existing facilities.  While everything was repaired, it was really frustrating for them to keep hiting and breaking things.  I asked one of the works several times if he had located the irrigation mainline prior to digging and he said yes.  After they left for the day while inspecting the work I found out he had indeed found it, and severed both it and the communication cable.  Very frusrating.

With everything out, we hoped that at least the noise part of the project was done.  We were mistaken, but that's for another update.