In Over My Head...Part 1

Troll Stua

Winter is still in full force here in the Land of Utards...a few months of skiing, snow shoeing, and ice fishing remain.  Still though I am looking forward to Spring and what Lizzie and I will be planting in our garden.  Our "farm" is divided into two "fields"...we have the "Lower 40" and the "Upper Garden."

Lower 40

The Upper Garden didn't look like much of a garden when we started.  It was actually a typical side yard that was used as a dog run...even had an old tractor tire half buried for who-knows-what.  What began as a simple idea in MY mind to plant a garden on the side of the house in that wasted space, all of a sudden had SuperGrow added to it by the time Lizzie got hold of it.

Before you could say Jack-the-Bear, I was taking out a window and installing a sliding glass door...out onto a deck...overlooking the soon to be garden.  Sounds simple enough until you throw into the equation the house was built in 1955, was a sold brick house with post and beam walls and no idea how the posts were set.  So what does 'ol Digger do?  How about we start with cutting a huge hole in the side of the house!

I remember from my days as a carpenter to always measure twice, and cut once.  So to be safe, I measured the wall when I marked it, measured it again when the brick cutter got there, measured again when he finished, and a fourth time before he left.  I had plans to complete this job during the 4th of July weekend, so I tore out the brick, set my king studs for the door frame, and measured one more time...only to discover that all the times before I had failed to take into account the king studs; the hole in my house was 3 inches too small.  =(

Being the holiday weekend, the brick cutter had gone on vacation, but said he could come out the next weekend and cut the hole bigger...for just about the same cost as the first hole!  So out came the plastic. Now if I lived off of Hoo Shoo Too Road in Louisiana this would have been normal window dressing...but not in Holladay, Utah.