Cooking at the Tiny Bungalow Part 2

I can't believe we never tried this before. Tonight we decided to make pizzas on our grill. A few years ago, we tried this after seeing it on an episode of Martha Stewart. Martha grilled the dough directly on the metal grate of the grill and then added the toppings and re-heated. When we tried it, it was a disaster. This time, we decided to throw our pizza stone on the grill, stoke up the coals, and see what happens. There are still a few temperature issues that we need to work out but all in all, I would consider it a success. We were able to use several tomatoes from the garden (we have tons) and we used quite a few herbs. We have tons of fresh herbs as well. I never thought I would tell my wife to just throw the leftover basil and oregano in the compost bin but we can get so much more out of the garden. The pizza came out great.I have spent another week doing nothing on the house. I am studying to take the LEED AP exam on Monday so I have been a hermit. The more I study, the less confident I feel about passing. Nice feeling. I have a couple of days and hopefully it will turn around. Studying, I've spent a lot of time in my dining room. This has compounded my angst as I am surrounded by pealing paint, broken plaster and poorly finished wood - all that I need to fix some day.

It has been raining in Chicago for a week straight. Serious rain. Inches of rain. Our garden may appear happy but it isn't. Everything is pretty much falling over. I spent a day staking up the sunflowers and other plants. The clematis is blooming again - though the plant looks a little anemic. Maybe these are supposed to be miniature??? The plants are all filling in and have taken over. I have given up on trying to control things for the time being.
We do have one pleasant surprise that seemed to come with the rain. Down the alley (about 6 houses), our neighbor has the nicest morning glories - massive leaves and stems and deep violet flowers. Very cool looking plants. The other day when I walked by my back fence, to my surprise, I have the exact same morning glories blooming there. These were not here last year and my wife and mother in law cleaned out the entire fence area on the alley this spring. It was once covered with choke cherry, baby ash, and raspberries. Now we have morning glories.

Is there such a thing as a caulk fetish?

I think that everyone I know that reads this blog has asked me, "how is the bedroom going". 'Slowly", is my only response. I turned a corner, so to speak, this weekend and I now have a majority of the baseboard stripped. I have also been hunting around stores for some window stops so that I can begin stripping the window casing.

I need these because (hard core restoration folks, avert your eyes) I am seriously thinking of throwing away the ones currently on the windows. They are painted and would need stripping but worse, they are cracked and chipped all to hell. I intend on restoring the old windows but stripping all of these stops is just a bit much. I may not have a choice though - I have yet to find anything the right size - gotta love old homes.

This morning I pealed one stop off, to take with me to the hardware store. I made what is becoming my typical discovery in this house when I remove something - caulk. The previous owners must have had a caulk fetish - it is everywhere. When I took down the molding/rail at the ceiling, it was there, they had it at the toe molding too, I can't believe I didn't find it holding down the wall to wall carpeting I tore up last year. It is everywhere!!! Were they afraid of something getting in - were they getting infested, was there a draft??? I can't believe this stuff really helped. I have convinced myself that this was the only thing that the PO could do well so they did it a lot! I have images of this couple, their array of caulking guns, spending the weekends filling every crevice of this home with that wonderful white goo.

Enough with the caulk rant. I have finished the first three coats of plaster on the south wall of the bedroom and will begin working around the remaining walls. It will kill my mother in law, who is visiting in a couple weeks (and who reads this blog) to know that she will not be sleeping in a finished bedroom. Mom, you can now go scream.

It has been beautiful here the last couple of days so we decided to take advantage of it and "HGTV" (verb) our backyard. I gave myself a strict budget and a time limit and came up with something to dress up our garage. I believe we have the ugliest garage in the OP. It seems like almost everyone's garage looks like a cute garden cottage - even the small homes in my neighborhood have them. Unfortunately, ours is a mess. As part of our dress up, we spray painted our trellises and put them up against the garage wall. We planted clematis beneath them and put hanging baskets on the walls above them. If everything starts to grow it might look nice - for now, I am just glad it looks better than it did.

Everything is primed for my mother in law's visit. We have tons of empty containers, planting bed space, and a huge sink in the backyard waiting for plants. This will be nice - we didn't start planting flowers until July last year - maybe we will actually have things looking nice before the summer is over this year.