SHADY BUSINESS

The hot weather is here a bit early that usual, but we’re loving it.  We are golfing twice a week on average and have been walking the course even though it gets warm by the end of the round.  We are usually finished by 1:30 so that leaves some time to do things the rest of the day.

The garden is doing well and we’ve harvested many zucchini, some beets and had our first cucumber yesterday.  They are easy to grow and are thriving in this weather along with our tomatoes and peppers.  Looks like it will be a good crop this year.

In our house, we have a small storage room under the stairs to the basement.  One side of the room is the wall behind the TV and the previous owners had built a “bump out” to house the TV components.  Since Stuart built the TV stand that holds everything, we decided to dismantle the “bump out’ and reclaim the space for more storage.

Once it was gutted, we decided that shelves would be a great thing to have to store paint and empty wine bottle boxes.

  Stuart customized the shelves so that they fit between the studs and don’t protrude past the doorway.  We took out the scrap of carpet that was no longer the right size and I painted the concrete floor.  Now it’s a lovely little room and can be used for house guests who stay too long!!

A few weeks ago we had the brilliant idea of purchasing a gazebo to install on our small 12 ft by 12 ft deck to provide shade both there and on the big deck.  We have an awning over part of the big deck but the sun shines under it in the late afternoons just when we want to BBQ.

We ordered the gazebo from Costco and it was delivered to our house last Friday.

So early Saturday morning, we got busy assembling it before it got too hot.  It went up fairly easily (we only had to re-do one thing) and even though it was recommended to have 3 or 4 people doing the job, we managed it by ourselves.

It is a sturdy gazebo, looks great and provides the right amount of shade.  In the winter, we’ll take the canopy off and it should be fine.  Fun to make useful improvements.