We have walls!

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

It’s been more than a month since I posted the first pictures of new drywall in the basement. Things definitely don’t move quickly when you’re DIYing–or at least Matt and I don’t move quickly!

I am pleased to announce that thanks to a big push this weekend as of Sunday afternoon all of the drywall is installed. Yay!

The new view in the long room

The total tally was 59 sheets. The entire bathroom, all of the exterior walls, and the ceilings in the main room and long room all got new drywall (click here for a refresher on the floorplan for the basement).

And taping is already underway. The bathroom has its third (and final) coat, the office has its second, the main room has its first. Matt has taken the lead on this part of the project, and my Dad has come up several times to help out. Between the two of them, they are motoring.

My Dad and Matt put the second coat of paste on the office

With three coats of paste plus sanding between each coat, this will be a big part of the basement renovation. Hopefully the next update is less than a month away.

Tool time

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Another Friday, another quiz. However today you don’t have to wait until next week for the answer.

It’s very simple. Only one question.

Name this tool.

We used this a lot when we were demolishing the basement.

If you said crowbar, I’m sorry, but you are very, very wrong.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a wrecking bar. My Dad trained us all very early. If we were working with him and we asked, “Can you pass me the crowbar?” or “Where’s the crowbar?” the response would be something along the lines of “What are you looking for?” or “What is it you need?” If he was feeling a little more generous, he would perhaps just say, “What did you call it?”

Don’t get me wrong, we used crowbars as well, but a crowbar is a straight bar in our family. A wrecking bar is recognizable by its distinctive hooked end.

The curved end of the wrecking bar can be used for prying, and the fork is also useful for pulling nails.

The other end of the wrecking bar is a chisel.

Like the hook, the chisel end is also used for prying, although you have slightly less leverage.

Wikipedia confirms my Dad’s label and offers an explanation of why this tool is so often called a crowbar.

In the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia, “crowbar” may occasionally be used loosely for this tool, but may also be used to mean a larger straighter tool.

Ahhh, so my Dad is calling on his previously unknown Australian heritage when he insists that we use the label “wrecking bar.”

How’d you do on the quiz? If my brother and sisters didn’t get this right, I’m sorry to tell you that Dad has now disowned you. Anyone else out there have a term that’s unique to your family?

Mystery marble

Posted on July 2, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Thanks to everyone who weighed in on what they thought was the answer to Friday’s mystery photo. Most people recognized pretty quickly that it was stone of some kind and guessed they were looking at tile or a countertop maybe. Close, but not quite.

Dave got it right: this is in fact marble for Matt’s bathroom shower. More specifically, it’s the slab that will go on the top of the bench in the shower.

It’s a beautiful piece of white and grey marble.

This was my first time buying marble, and finding the perfect piece was not as easy as I expected. We needed one solid surface for the top of the bench. No seams or joints minimizes our risk of leaks. However, none of the tile or home improvement stores that we visited dealt in large (but smaller than counter-size) pieces of marble. The top of the bench had to be 18″ x 32 1/4″, and the best I found was 18″ square tile. That would have meant a seam, so that was a no-go.

As well, I was picky about the colour and veining on the marble. I wanted something mostly white with smooth grey veining (not too speckled). Granite suppliers are common in our area, but in my experience they tended to have a very limited selection of marble. Plus, understandably none of them wanted to cut into a countertop-size slab and end up with a leftover that was too small to use on another project.

Finally, we found a granite supplier that had a larger selection of marble and a good collection of remnants. They let us go through their warehouse and pulled out many pieces for me to examine. In the end, we found a piece that was just the right size and just the right colour. They gave us a good deal on the price and cut and polished it to my exact specifications.

Here’s a sneak peak of how it looks with the marble mosaic we’re going to be using for the shower floor.

Marble slab with hexagon marble mosaic tiles

The slab is a great match to the hexagon tiles.

I love marble over any other stone, and I’m really happy that we’re going to be able to use some in Matt’s new bathroom.

Our tile order should be arriving shortly, so stay tuned for more updates.

Any other marble fans out there? Anyone have tips for sourcing natural stone? And looking ahead to the next stage, any advice for installation?

The reveal… aka how to strip wallpaper

Posted on June 24, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

As neat as it would have been to find an old newspaper hidden in the wall–as we’ve heard other renovators have–that was not the case for us.

The answer to last week’s guessing game, if you haven’t already guessed from the title of this post, is that the “antique newspaper” is wallpaper that graced the walls in the basement.

I work in communications. I appreciate good journalism. However, graphics of old newspapers pasted onto my wall are not good journalism.

While the wallpaper trend in decor shows no signs of going away, this particular pattern is not in keeping with our decor vision for the basement. The newspaper wallpaper was going away.

In my experience, removing wallpaper goes one of two ways. You either spend hours and hours scraping with a trowel only to have it come off in teeny tiny chips approximately the size of your smallest fingernail, or you smoothly peel the paper away a few minutes after you spritzed it with hot water.

Over the years, I’ve tried a variety of scrapers and scorers, tools and techniques, chemicals and solutions. I’ve suffered burns from heavy steamers and patched pock-marked walls when the wallpaper peeled away the paper on the drywall.

You never know how your paper is going to come off until you start trying to remove it. Fortunately for me, our newspaper wallpaper came off very easily. Fortunately for you, I’m going to share my method.

Unfortunately for some of you likely, this is not a tutorial of how to remove stubborn wallpaper. This is how to remove wallpaper that’s a single layer, has been installed correctly and isn’t sticking like bubblegum to the wall.

If your wallpaper has an attachment disorder, you have my sympathies. My best advice is to keep going and remember you can fix the divots and tears afterwards. Drywall compound is your friend.

Here is my very simple chemical-free method for stripping wallpaper. First, assemble your tools.

There is nothing fancy here. You need a scraper or trowel, a bucket and a sponge. Optional equipment is a spray bottle and gloves. If you’re working in a nicely finished area as opposed to a gutted basement, you’ll likely also want a tarp or a sheet to protect your floors.

Fill your bucket and spray bottle with hot water. You don’t need to boil the kettle. I find hot tap water works just fine. Just make sure to run the water for a few minutes until you have truly hot water.

Here’s what I started with. Just a small wall covered with wallpaper.

The easiest method I’ve found for removing wallpaper is a two-step approach.

Start by soaking your paper using either your sponge or the spray bottle. Just like drywall compound is your friend after the wallpaper is removed, water is your friend during the removal. Start at the top of the wall and work your way down. The water will drip and run down the wall, but making sure the paper is fully saturated will make your life easier in a few minutes.

Once you’ve completely soaked the wallpaper from top to bottom, find a seam and use your trowel or your fingernails to grab an edge. Peel back the paper.

You can let the water soak in for a little while, but I usually find at this stage I can go right from soaking to peeling without delay.

You’ll likely notice that when you peel off the paper you are only removing the outer layer, the one with the pattern printed on it. There is still a second layer that is stuck to the wall. Do not despair. Remember this is a two-step process.

Once you’ve removed the outer layer, your next job is to–surprise!–tackle the inner layer. This is the part of the paper that’s actually adhered to the wall. The patterned side of wallpaper often has a glossy or smooth finish on it that prevents the water from fully soaking into the paper and reaching the glue that’s holding the paper on the wall. By removing the outer layer first, you can then fully soak the inner layer and (hopefully) easily loosen the glue.

The left shows one panel of the outer layer removed. The right shows the inner layer after I’ve spritzed it with my spray bottle of hot water.

Again, you want to saturate the paper that’s on the wall. Don’t be shy with your spray bottle. Just like before, start at the top and work your way down. I usually find it helpful to let the paper sit for a few minutes to let the water fully absorb. Then, go to work with your scraper.

Catch an edge on the wallpaper. This time, instead of pulling the paper off by hand, let your trowel do the work.

Scrape with your trowel. I usually try to keep my trowel at a fairly shallow angle–less than 45 degrees off the wall. This allows me to easily get under the paper and scrape it smoothly off the wall.

If the water has done its work, the paper should scrape off the wall fairly easily.

Apply more water as you need to to keep the paper peeling off easily. I like to spray a large area so that it can soak while I’m working on another section.

Halfway there

Once you have scraped all of the paper, wipe the wall with your wet sponge. You’ll find small shreds of paper and a film of glue left behind. The remaining pieces of paper will usually come off with a few swipes of your sponge. Go over the wall a couple of times to remove as much of the glue as possible. Before you paint, you may want to consider washing the wall with TSP, just to make sure there’s no residue.

At this point, you should have a nice clean wallpaper-less wall.

The after.

And a pile of paper on the floor.

I get a lot of satisfaction from seeing the wallpaper on the floor instead of on the wall.

Even if your wallpaper came off with minimal effort, you may have a few spots on the wall that need smoothing out afterwards with drywall compound. In my experience, wallpaper can hide a lot of lumps and bumps. Remember, drywall compound is your friend.

Now, some of you may be wondering why I’m spending time stripping wallpaper when we don’t even have walls in the rest of the basement. Shouldn’t I be hanging drywall instead of flitting around with a spray bottle? The answer is probably yes, but I do have two good reasons for focusing on the wallpaper now:

Instant gratification: I spent 30 minutes stripping this wall. It was quick, it’s done, and I can now check it off the to-do list. If I spent 30 minutes working with the drywall, I would not get nearly as much done and I would have much less sense of satisfaction.
Efficiency: Once we finish installing the new drywall, the next step is taping and pasting all of the seams. I can easily patch any areas on the wallpaper wall at the same time. The end result will be a nice smooth finish on all the walls, old and new.

So, here concludes my method for stripping wallpaper. Anyone else have a method they’d like to share? Or any tips? A lot of people have horror stories of stripping stubborn wallpaper. Feel free to share your saga in the comments. We will commiserate with you.

Progress

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Greenboard and cement board in the bathroom

Greenboard and cement board are up in the basement bathroom

I’m a little bit excited to finally be at the drywall stage in the basement reno. It’s going to be a huge job though, so we’ve decided to break it into smaller projects to make it more manageable. We started with the bathroom.

We used cement board in the shower and then moisture resistant greenboard on the ceiling and the rest of the walls. We’ve also patched the floor where Matt broke up the concrete for the drains and put the new concrete pan in the shower.

Our new shower comes with a storage niche as well as a bench

Next step is taping all of the joints, and then we’ll move on to tile. It’s amazing what a difference the drywall makes. The room is already starting to feel more finished.

Things I love:

the niche
the bench
the precision cutting we were able to do around the electrical and plumbing–less pasting for us!

Hopefully the progress continues this weekend.

What are your plans?

Wiring woes

Posted on May 23, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

As you saw yesterday, work on the basement continues. In the meantime, I’m going back a few weeks to talk about some of the problems we encountered with the electrical.

Fried junction box in the basement ceiling. In case you were wondering, no, the inside should not be black like that.

We ended up discovering a total of 10 junction boxes in the basement ceiling, hidden behind the drywall. This is a big no-no. Junction boxes themselves are okay. But covering them over with drywall is not. You’re supposed to put a cover on them so that they are accessible.

The conversation during demo went something like this:

“I found another one.”
“Seriously? Crap!”
“Do you want to just pull the whole ceiling down?”
“We probably should. Who knows how many there are up there.”

One of my goals in hiring a professional electrician was to eliminate as many junction boxes as possible, because I didn’t want the covers polka-dotting our nice new ceiling. In the end, our electrician was able to get rid of all but two–much better than I’d hoped for.

The other unsettling moment during demo was when we’d open a wall or part of the ceiling and find a loose wire. The ends were usually cut. They weren’t capped or taped at all, and we had no idea where they went and whether or not they were live.

This was the moment when Matt would reach for his tester and point it at the offending wire. If the tester chirped, that meant the wire was live. It turned out that most of the wires were dead, completely disconnected at both ends. No one had ever bothered to remove them, so they just sat there behind the drywall waiting to scare future renovators.

Matt made it his mission to eliminate all of this useless wiring, and he spent a lot of time tracing wires through the ceiling and along the walls so that he could pull them out.

Pile of some of the old wires Matt pulled out in the basement.

We did as much of the wiring work ourselves as we could, but having the help of a skilled professional was absolutely necessary for fixing all of the problems. Electrical is not always straight-forward, and it can be dangerous if it’s not right.

I’m all about DIY, but only if I know what I’m doing. Thanks to our electrician, all of the problems have been fixed, the panel is organized and labelled, circuits have been tidied up and new outlets and lights have been added where we wanted them. Most important of all it’s done right and it’s safe.

Warm and toasty… and teal?

Posted on May 23, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

What do you think of our new colour scheme in the basement?

It’s a little bit smurf, a little bit cotton candy.

Matt was hoping for blue. I’d say he got his wish.

Last week, we had spray foam insulation applied to all of the exterior walls.

As you’ll recall, the original plans for the basement reno were mostly cosmetic (replace carpet, remove paneling, relocate cabinetry, leave all the drywall in place and just patch and paint). Simple, easy, quick!

However, we’ve had a few surprises in the form of inadequate insulation and improper wiring. Our solution was to remove the drywall and the existing R7 insulation from all of the exterior walls and start fresh.

The old insulation was actually stamped R7. I don’t think I’d admit it if I was that inadequate.

However, we couldn’t just simply put the new insulation into the old walls because all of the studs were laid flat on the concrete. This meant we only had 1 1/2 inches for insulation. We had to fur out all of the existing studs with new 2x4s.

We screwed new 2x4s onto the existing studs.

The count was close to 100 studs for the whole basement. Each one had to be plumbed (make sure it’s perfectly vertical) and then toenailed (screwed on an angle) with three inch screws to the old studs. It took two people to do each stud (one to hold and one to screw), so this stage has taken us a little while to complete. Matt and I found it took us about two hours to do a wall.

It would have been easier to put the new studs flat onto the old studs, but we wanted the higher R factor that additional depth allowed us. We ended up with 5 inches of space and we had the option of R20 or R27 for the insulation. R20 application meant we’d have 3 1/4 inches of foam and R27 would be 4 1/2 inches. We chose to go with R20 because there was nearly a $1,000 price difference for just 7 more R factors, which wasn’t worth it for us. R20 is still a really good rating.

I’ve never done spray foam before (and to be clear we couldn’t find a DIY option for spray foam, so we hired an insulation contractor to do the work for us), but we chose this option over the traditional batts for a couple of reasons:

Traditional insulation requires tar paper (or some other membrane) between the concrete and the studs, and there was no way we could do this and still leave the existing studs in place. We then would have to run a plastic vapor barrier over the insulation before we put up the drywall.
We found about 6 mice (all dead) and numerous rodent highways in the old insulation.

Spray foam is tar paper, insulation and vapor barrier all in one. Plus it’s more rodent resistant, which is comforting given our discoveries.

The spray foam covers the wall space between each stud as well as the joist headers at the top of the walls. In the main room and long room the ceilings are all open so the sprayers had easy access (click here if you need a refresher on the floor plan for the basement). In the office we left the ceiling in place, so Matt cut back about 12 inches of drywall off the ceiling on the two exterior walls so that the sprayers would be able to access the joist headers and we’d have a good seal all the way around.

Spray foam insulation in the joist headers

These joist headers (which were completely uninsulated before) can be the source of a lot of drafts

To prepare for the spray foam we made sure all of the electrical and plumbing work that we wanted to do was completed in advance. Spray foam fills all of the nooks and crannies and hardens very quickly. It’s great for efficiency, but you can’t really change your mind and say, “Oh I really wish that plug was over here” after it’s all done.

Electrical outlets encased in spray foam insulation

This is the corner in Matt’s office where the desk is going to go. From left to right we have a double box for electrical outlets, a plastic conduit that will eventually house the internet wire (we’ll use the string to pull the wire through the pipe) and a phone jack.

The spray foam crew took a full day to do the whole basement. While the spray is being applied, it is toxic, so the crew wore respirators and my Dad (who was on-site supervising) couldn’t stay in the house. When we got home from work that night there was a slight odor, but we opened the windows and it dissipated quickly.

Insulation is a major step in putting the basement back together. As much as we love the teal, we’re anxious to move on to drywall… Or maybe just anxious about drywall. This next stage is going to be a biggie. We’ll keep you posted on how we make out!

How to install a pot light

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

The original lighting in what will be the TV area of the basement consisted of four pot lights, two ceiling fixtures mounted on the walls and one ceiling fan recessed into the ceiling so that it didn’t decapitate anyone. These three different sets of lights were controlled by three different switches in two different locations.

The original lighting in the basement.

We decided to keep just the pot lights, so Matt took apart the ceiling fan, and my Dad pulled out one of the wall-mounted ceiling fixtures while I dealt with the other one. We removed the boxes and wires running to each of the lights as well as the switches that controlled the ceiling fan and the pot lights. Then we reconnected the pot lights into the switch that originally controlled the ceiling fixtures.

Everything was working well, but we felt we needed a little more light, so we decided to add an extra pot light in the middle of the ceiling.

Apologies for the quality of the following photos. So many circuits are off in the basement due to the electrical work that we don’t have very many lights. We have construction lights set up, but they’re a little harsh. I played around with some new actions in Photoshop, but I can’t tell whether they made things better or worse.

Our original four pot lights

Electrical work can be intimidating, but installing a pot light is a very straight forward job that can be completed in about a half an hour, even by those of us that are not licensed electricians. We did have a lot of other issues with the electrical in the basement, and for those we hired a professional electrician.

Here’s my pot light installation method, complete with lots of photos (of varying quality). Note that in the tutorial I’ve assumed that the wire that is going to be feeding your new pot light is already in place.

1) Turn off the electricity to your light. In this house, none of the circuits are labelled, so our usual method of finding the right one is to turn on the light (or plug something in) and have one of us watch it while the other person flips the breakers until we find the right one. Then we label it!

2) Determine where you want your new light. I used the oh so scientific method of tying a piece of twine to each of the existing pot lights. Where it crossed was the centre.

3) Now onto your light.

Some pot lights can be installed in a finished (drywalled) ceiling. However, this type of pot light has to be installed where the ceiling is open.

4) Pop the cover off the wiring box to reveal the wires.

Preparing your pot light for installation.

Cover on (left). Cover off (right). I also cut off the push-in connectors because I’m used to twisting the wires together instead.

5) Now attach the pot light to the joist. For my light, this meant adjusting the brackets, or bar hangers, so that they were the right length to span between the joists and then nailing the bracket into the joist.

Installing a pot light bracket onto the joist.

For reference, holding the light in place while taking a picture is not the easiest. A third hand, or better yet a second pair, would be helpful.

6) Take a break because your husband has arrived home, and he brought dinner.

Pot light housing installed. Time for dinner.

7) If necessary, trim your feed wire to the required length and strip back the casing to reveal the individual wires. The easiest way to do this is to use your side cutters to snip a little split in the casing, just enough so that you can access the ground wire (the copper one). Grab the ground wire with your pliers and pull to rip the casing. You want to remove the casing for about 6 inches so that you can access the black, white and copper wire. Once your casing is ripped back far enough, clip it off with your side cutters. Strip about a 1/2 inch or so of the plastic coating off of the tips of the black and the white wires. I usually do this with a knife, as though I’m peeling a vegetable.

Remove the casing from the wires by pulling on the ground wire. For reference, the ground wire is pointing up to the right, the black and white wires are pointing down to the left and the empty casing is pointing down in the centre.

8) Knock out one of the round metal covers (coincidentally called knock-outs) on the pot light housing. I used my awl to bend it up and then wiggled it back and forth until it snapped out. The wire isn’t supposed to float loose in the hole, but the pot light didn’t come with any clamps or conduit, so I pulled one off of an old electrical box and put it in the hole.

From left to right, removing the knock-out, the clamp that will hold the wire in place and the clamp installed.

9) Insert your feed wire into the pot light and clamp it in place.

Sorry for the slightly blurry photo. The plastic casing should be just inside the pot light housing.

10) Connect your feed wire to the wire in the pot light: black to black, white to white, ground to ground. Twist them together with your pliers and cap them with marretts.

You don’t have to get fancy with different coloured marretts. These are simply the two I had on hand that fit the wires properly.

11) Once everything is securely connected, tuck your wires back into the housing, put in a light bulb and flip the circuit back on to test your light.

It works!

12) Put the cover back over the wiring area. Make sure the light is positioned where you want it on the hanger bars. There’s a screw that you tighten into the bar to lock the light in place. Stand back and admire your handiwork.

Let there be light!

The five pot lights look great, and throw a sufficient amount of light. I initially thought we might need some wall sconces or extra lamps, but I think the pot lights will work well for us.

Oh and you might want to take down your measuring twine, unless you really like it as a decorative element.

ETA: The final, final step in installing pot lights is installing the trim, which I did after our ceiling was drywalled. I’ve posted my instructions of how to install pot light trim.

Reflections on a DIY lifestyle

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Last week two of the blogs I read regularly did posts on the theme of DIYing vs. Living In Your Home & Enjoying It (that’s Young House Love’s title. DIY Diva had her own reflections). Reading their posts got me thinking about my philosophy and how we live in our house.

Matt and Dad dig out an old window well while our mason works at bricking up another old window

It’s been just about two months since we moved into the farm. Our major motivation for moving to the country is to enjoy a slower pace and really savour life, but I feel like we really haven’t taken much time to sit down and enjoy being here. We have moments–Saturday afternoons before dump runs tend to be a time you’ll catch us sitting outside for a few minutes… usually just on the ground or a rock, usually with the kitties around us.

Matt on a kitty break. Notice the work gloves are still on.

As much as I love DIY, it can be a tough lifestyle at times.

Last week was a bit rough in spots. We had a couple of late nights working on the house, a couple of evenings out for other stuff (the rest of your life and work continue even when you’re mid-reno) and a couple of last minute shopping sprees/construction blitzes to prepare for trades who were coming the next day.

We tend to sacrifice sleep to get it all done and there are lots of mornings that we are dragging and some days where we feel a bit droopy.

Cuts and scrapes, bumps and bruises are all part of DIY

I can’t imagine not working on our house myself and making it what I want with my own two hands. But there comes a point in every project where I just want it to be done. We’re not there yet. It usually hits sometime around the drywall stage.

A big project, like the basement reno we’re in the midst of now, causes a lot of chaos. Everything that would normally be in the basement is in the living room. The kitchen island is covered with tools and materials and manuals and notes for trades. There’s a fine skim of dust everywhere, both upstairs and down.

The yearning to have a clean and organized house and be able to sit down for an evening without feeling guilty is powerful motivation at this stage of a project.

The partially gutted basement

We do try to keep a balance. We’ve learned we don’t always have to be working on the house. Yes, taking a night off makes me feel slightly guilty and pushes the finish line a little farther away. However, hanging out with friends, sitting on the couch watching TV or just taking a walk rejuvenate me so that I’m more motivated when we get back to work.

Also, we tend to only take on one big project a year, so we have lots of time off to recuperate and relax in between–and forget!

Vistas like this just outside the front door can make us shift our focus pretty quickly from DIYing to relaxing.

This basement project is not our first DIY reno, but this is my first time blogging about it, and I’m finding the blog is very motivating as well. Keeping a record of our progress and posting pictures of what we’re working towards help to keep me moving. I know at the end it will be beautiful and completely worth it.

As well, knowing that we have all of you out there supporting us, reading updates and looking forward to seeing the finished product means a lot. People have been promised an invitation to play games and watch movies in our fun basement hangout. We have to deliver!

Now it’s your turn. Whether you’re a DIYer or not, how do you stay motivated?

One snake, two snake

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

My Dad had an interesting moment this past weekend while working on the downstairs bathroom.

We were putting in the venting for a new exhaust fan, and he had gone outside to pull off the cover so we could slide in the new pipe. He took off the cover and stuck his hand in to clear out the opening.

Unfortunately, there was more than old insulation and wood shavings in the hole.

There was a garter snake in our foundation wall. In the background Dad watches from a safe distance.

Sorry for the dark photo. Here’s another view from the outside.

Matt examines the intruder

Dad’s not a fan of snakes, so he was not the best person for this to happen to. He left operation snake relocation to Matt.

Fortunately, he’s just a little guy… the snake that is, not the husband.

Technically, I guess you could say the snake wasn’t actually in the house, but that isn’t a lot of comfort to me. Especially since when we walked around the back of the house a few hours later we discovered he had returned and slithering his way along the window sill.

Matt made a grab for him, and the snake headed right for his old hideout in the vent. He climbed the lattice and the vines on the foundation wall just as easily as though he was gliding along the flat ground.

Matt’s second attempt to nab the snake was successful, and the snake was re-relocated. Then we went to work pulling down the lattice and vines so as to avoid any repeat of this scenario in the future.

I’ll admit the back of the house looks less attractive now with the bare concrete, but it’s a small price to pay.

As you may be able to tell from the title of this post, this was not our only thamnophis encounter this weekend.

I was walking along the border of the far field on Friday evening when I heard a rustling in the grass. It took me a little while to spot him, but I was able to identify the source: a huge garter snake (much bigger than Matt’s new friend). He was also much more shy than Matt’s friend, and as soon as I moved closer to get a better look he slid away and hid in a pile of rocks.

At the time, I was wishing he’d stuck around so I could take a picture. Now I’m pretty happy he was so anti-social. Here’s hoping he prefers his rocks to our walls–and he’s looking for a small garter friend to keep him company.