BIG PLANS in 2024: Renovations + Landscaping — Ep. 225

After sharing what we were able to accomplish in 2023, Sander and I muse over what is on the docket for 2024, which includes more renovations and landscaping projects. Now that the Meadow House renovation is behind us, we’ll be digging our heels into the barn and the Common House, fondly becoming known as ‘The Roost’.

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All right so continuing on we had done a video on some of our recap of our accomplishments in 2023 and um it wasn’t as many as we had wanted but I think that we have a much more realistic goal in mind for 2024 maybe

Not but I have our my notes Here of what I think we’d like to accomplish in 2024 I haven’t confided and saer in these yet so we’ll just basically have a conversation if it seems reasonable depends on how heart you work I know depends on if I help you with the

Renovations it might actually if I help you with the renovations it might slow you down it might slow me down that’s so true I’m always like I’m always like walking on eggshells like if if s needs my help or not because I don’t know if I would

Actually you going to be able to help or to I think we’ve pretty much known that now like I do most of the landscaping and S does most of the renovation at this stage we’ve kind of like gotten into our uh our um yeah let’s see when there’s tedious repetitive tasks that

That’s when you come in yeah I don’t mind to help he even asked if I if I wanted to take the lead on putting the little caps and the over the screws on the deck and I’m like that’s something I can do there’s probably 4,000 little holes that need a

Plug that needs to also be oriented with the grain of the board yeah need to be in let’s let’s actually start with that because sa has assembled you know 95% of the deck it probably won’t be finished before the end of the year because we need to actually work on the

Steps when I say we I really mean him that’s okay but you know there’s hammering do the hammering there’s quite a bit of steps the plugs and depending on the weather the weather is beautiful today maybe weather will be beautiful tomorrow we might actually start on the

Plug because right now there’s snow on the deck so I think well the stairs will probably get done because I like to get those done because I don’t want to see those having to go through winter unexposed or exposed the elements so but then the railing might not get done

Because I need to buy that wood and in order to paint the wood you need to have 15% moisture in the wood and I don’t know if I can get pressure treated wood that has that less of moisture I might have to dry for for a bit cure it let’s

Just say 95% of the deck done this year and then we and then 2024 we’ll finish that off um and then that will pretty much be the exterior of the house right yeah except for small details there’s some holes in the siding that’s right uh

I already fixed up one hole so I know how to do it um they’re Mouse doors you know yeah the the roof the windows the paint the gutters the deck it’s all brand new yeah and the door the doors the door not yet because the door will do at the end of the

Project because otherwise it might get damaged and that’s only one door the rest of the doors that we have we have are new as well there’s the deck downstairs that hasn’t been completed that’s correct so that’s that’s like as you can see this is going to roll over

Into 2024 and that’s what we’re covering today is like our 2024 project so that’s going to be a roll over from 2023 to 2024 and the other big thing which we really wanted to have gotten done in 2020 3 and just didn’t um is residing

The barn and I think what is really nice about winter months is that we then kind of stay inside a bit more we could work on Renovations indoors but we also spend some time actually even yesterday we spent some time thinking about design layout stained colors things like that things

That you know make sense doing in the winter months that you’ve worked out all the details so that in the spring you could really hit the ground running yeah we need to know as much as we can know about what it needs to turn into before

We get started you’re just not sure what you to order materials said we did look at stained colors for the barn and we know what needs to get done we need we know we need to go playing the boards well we need to use our magic tricks to

Make an image of what the barn will look like with that color on it and decide if we like it or not CU it’s different from seeing a little square sample of paint or stain versus decide like versus knowing what the whole thing and we should actually put our test sample out

In the elements that it get hit by the snow and in the in the sun good idea see what it turn into yeah and the barn the barn is really close to the meadow house as well I mean not super close but close enough that seeing what that color looks

Like in relation to the meadow house I think is also really important we could use that time and instead of rushing to try to reside the barn with something that you don’t want I think that it it’s good that we take the next four or five

Six months kind of working that out so that’s going to be a big one and that’s important because right now we have what’s that zip sheeting that we have on the outside only good for so long the wood shop is already I I need I needed

To heat it uh because the W part of the water there’s water in there and it can’t go below zero so I had to make it a heated space which means I had to make it airtight and I have the uh the siding that I used on that or the the it’s

Basically plywood on the side of the building but it has the zip sheet uh waterproofing membrane on it and that cannot be exposed to the sun longer than 6 months oops and the tape uh but it’s been exposed for like a year it will probably be fine we there’s areas in the

United States that get a lot more sun and heat we do see people around around here that have zip sheeting up for forever forever and it works fine it has a 30-year warranty on it and it’s not the entire building it’s just a part of

A part of it so but that needs to get closed up in the spring otherwise we’re going to seriously damage the material and then and also there’s like gaps now in the building where we just you know if we have it open in the spring we’re

Going to get bar swall stff moving yeah so it’s not good finishing your Workshop which is really exciting doing a lot of 3D modeling and I think you’ve kind of determined what paint colors you might want to go with and floor color which is probably the most of the work yeah what color

Oh it’s like these little details or whatever but they’re important details because if you’re going to spend that time working in there so basically his Workshop is like the actual physical wood workshop and then there’s a section of it that you’re going to be doing more of your computer office work yeah deter

It really determines on what I need as far as an office space and that’s going to Define what it needs to become like it’s it’s also for the wood shop it’s like easy to just go online and see what what wood shop everyone else has and

Then just copy it and then when it’s done you’re like oh I don’t really use this kind of equipment it’s really like digging down deep and asking what do I need out of this space what am I going to be making like am I going to be using

This every day or I’m going to be using this once a week because that also determines what kind of tools you buy you going to buy the fanciest tools you can get or are you going to just buy something that will be fine for a couple

Years or a couple times that you want to use it so finally think I figured out what I need out of that space and also I want to keep the office and the workshop uh these two airspaces need to be separated so that requires different kind of heating and different

Ventilation in each space yeah you don’t want the dust coming over I don’t want dust paint Compu dust and you know if I if I spray some uh some kind of like uh shellac or lacquer in the wood shop in the winter I don’t want to be breathing

That stuff in the office yeah and it it takes a while to kind of like fine-tune it I mean even here you probably saw the video of us like saying here are the tweaks that we want to make with like the meadow meadow house there’s always

Going to be like these little tweaks um and I have to say you gave me so much for like bringing in like a lot of stuff in the meadow house before it was finished but you were like buying the tea kettle for your Workshop already the

Only reason like so another thing that was happening is was uh Black Friday yeah so you know if there’s one time to buy everything yeah thees it’s like that day I think I saved I must have saved at least two to $3,000 on just like appliances yeah uh all

Kinds of stuff for in that space and I mean it helps and I have it here it does because you thought through what you want down there and it’s the most important thing is you want to make sure that that’s the one you need and that

Size is going to work for the like cuz buying for example little fridge for in there there’s so many dimensions of fridges but if I have a desk that’s going to be like 28 to 30 in high off the ground so I got to make sure I have

Something that fits there yeah if you get a 36 if you get a 36 in fridge now your desk you’re going to be working like this just because your fridge need I mean even the tea kettle I joke about it but like he had to determine what the

Colors of his office were going to be in order to match the teac CLE and he was like should I go with the white one or the black one and so funny but but we determined that we went to Sharon Williams we started picking out paint

Colors we came out with like a dozen swatches and then you’re really good with that it’s it’s always a quick one to go to Sheron Williams or any other paint store get all their swatches out on the table and just start eliminating the ones that don’t work start with a

Couple colors that you really like and then find complimentary colors and obviously the stuff that you’re using like the wood uh the concrete colors that we have So eventually you’ll narrow it down and find a good 2024 you’ll see probably more of saer because his Renovations now that we finished with

The meadow house we have like the common house Ren ation we have the barn and we have the workshop which the workshop is in the barn so it’s going to be very exciting because there’s going to be a lot of like cool projects that each have their own flare I mean and also

Saunders’s design sensibility is like very different from my own or from the this Meadow house Vibe it’s different from like the common house Vibe um so it’ll be very exciting to kind of see like what we all do with like the design well I would say it’s complimentary to

Your like interior design kind of eye yeah maybe so and your color scheme but you’re more modern and minimalist that’s true yeah but I could work with any style and kind of continue with it yeah once I learned the language of the style

You can it’s easy to go with it yeah I I I Concur and know what will work and what won’t I think what’s nice about it now like now that we’ve have about a year and a half of renovation under our belts is that we now know who’s who in

The area who does what materials that we like to work with materials that we don’t like to work with like even just knowing that Home Depot is better at delivering than Lowe’s like you knowly enough yeah a lot of this stuff got figured out and you know part of the

Reason is like well why would you build a kitchen here like a tiny kitchen and spend all your time doing that part of that was also an investment towards like there’s so much more built in shelving that need to be built in the wood shop

And in that house up there that for me to invest in learning how to do this and make out of plywood basically an entire custom Cabinet stuff that that’s going to save us a huge amount of money yeah from not having to have a carpenter come

In and build us custom shelving and we did the banket seating here in the meadow house and I think we’re probably going to do seating on there yeah so there’s these skills that are just transferable again and you’re only going to get better at it hopefully yes

Because the cabinets here they had to kind of comply with this more uh cottagey Vibe here a farmhouse Vibe but up there it’s more modern so if you’re thinking of more modern cabinets the construction of them becomes a lot easier where you don’t have to do like

Face frames you don’t have to like do the picture frame doors you could just use a piece of plywood for that so it becomes easier and hopefully will F be faster to do and cheaper the biggest I think the most exciting renovation that we’ll be doing is the common house and

We really Envision that as kind of like what the name says is a place where maybe people will eventually be able to rent out rooms it’ll have a bigger places to entertain people I mean the deck alone is like it’s like a 12200 squ foot deck so it’s like a huge deck that

You could actually have a nice picnic table on it’s kind of a weird house and I’ve also spoken with people who’ve come to the land like the guy who comes to deliver propane he has a he had a gardening business and you know the previous owner of this place was like

Thinking of selling it to him and they were talking about it and then they were looking at that house for their family to live in and it’s just kind kind of like a weird house it’s got that large deck this large kitchen yeah the rooms but there’s only two

Bedrooms and there was like one bathroom and then this weird bathroom that like you can totally knock your head on in and like stub your toe and it you could you could die in the bathtub essentially essentially the house the house feels more like it’s a house where multiple

People can enjoy and and come together and cook and come together and like hang out it’s also in such a prominent spot on the property it’s basically like in the center it’s got the view of everything so in order for one yeah in order for some for one person or one

Family to kind of claim that as their own uh and and whatever other structures we might build in the future to be around that it it’s kind of a weight difference so in order to be able to share that with everyone is better versus having it as an individual house

Yeah so I see that we’re probably going to do a lot of our events there a lot of our like meetings maybe some of our workshops so like the downstairs area and we won’t get too much into this because we’ll do a separate video on it

Is going to be more of like Speak Easy Vibes cuz it’s actually built into the Earth Earth which is kind of cool and we think that there’ll be like a nice kind of te- room Apothecary maybe like a cheese Grotto so we could do like cheese honey tea tastings and maybe like a

Bunch of medicinal herbs back there books so that people could really enjoy reading and like having like a little bit of a library um Vibe and then uh having a little Cinema room down there that we could all gather and maybe like watch some of the films maybe watch one

Of our special edition flock videos we could watch this on the big screen on the big screen yeah so I think that’ll be kind of like a fun vibe and then you like literally walk out and you’re at the big half Lake and you could go dive

In the half Lake you know so there’s a lot of ideas that we have and I’m sure it’ll take us at least two years to get them done I mean if this took us 18 months to do I think that’s going to take us you know probably at least that

But that’s going to be some of the big the big main project in 2024 as far as as renovation goes cuz we really want to make an effort to have like a public facing bathroom for people like in the mud room so we’re moving a bathroom in

There and also places where our friends and family could like come and have rooms or we could rent out some rooms because eventually we want to do some creative residencies and ecological residencies here which we’ll you know talk about in another video so and that gives us an opportunity to have like

Bedrooms for people and like I said to somebody somebody asked about you know coming and staying here and I was like where are you going to pop but it’s like okay it’s that’s also the always the first thing I ask people when they want to come over it’s you you

Just have enough bathrooms and enough bedrooms for people and then on the Landscaping side of things uh which is kind of you know doesn’t really get started until maybe March of next year so there’s a lot of time in between then is one a better way to take down the meadow so we’re

Probably going to do one of those like sickle bar mowers we’ll we’ll try that out maybe we’ll rent one and if it’s actually useful then maybe we actually invest in one yeah I don’t think we have the budget right now to invest in a tractor ideally it would be nice to have

One but it’s also not the right tool for what we want to do in the meadow because you’re basically there’s so many little obstacles in that Meadow and need like you can’t just send a tractor in there and just knock it all down no we have trees planted there’s trees planted

Everywhere so you got to be very careful so what we’re looking at now is like a walk behind tractor with a large sickle bar there is a seat that you can buy on it too it looks a little like and then you could just like you know it’s faster than a string trimmer

Yeah it’s easier on the arms it’s easier on the arms and you could just run that you could just just walk back and forth a couple times and then knock down the entire Meadow and it will clip it where you cut the stems at the bottom

Yes and then just gr up it just folds it over and the reason for that is that that’s still insect habitat like in the the reason why we’re actually only mow the meadow over once and it’s like in the early spring is because by that time

A lot of the bees or the bugs that are um nesting in the stems the hollow stems of some of these plants you don’t want to pulverize it too soon because that’s where they’re nesting so we we try to do it early in the spring and we just want

To knock the leaves down or the stems down and then just have them fold over and then then they can deteriorate that way um but that’s that’s our main goal is to do that because that was a lot of work that I was willing to put in hey

I’m willing to put it in and it takes many days to actually do it but well it’s good that you put all these giant uh White po poles everywhere that there’s have tree planted so we now know where they are did you no oh you didn’t I have so

How do we know where oh that this yeah how do we know where where the trees are going to be I mean we have lost some trees because of that situation that we don’t have I mean we don’t we haven’t even invested in big white poles we

Don’t have big white we need to get those reflector poles or something driveway are tall and then see where the trees are until lot of the trees now have um uh fening around it which is something that unfortunately we had to do because again we haven’t fixed the entire deer fence

It’s so expensive to do that we just have to do a piece of the deer fence like one side of the deer fence each year is basically what we determined so we did one side of the deer fence and the gate and now we’re going to do the

East side of the deer fence of the gate and then we’re probably going to work on the south side and then the north side but we can’t do it all at once unfortunately it’s almost 3,000 feed off fence I think total yeah so it’s a lot

And we had another mom deer come in and she had her babies here again so there are like three or four deer that have been walking around on our land luckily it’s not like the 15 or 20 that we had the first year yeah think about it it’s

Just one deer yeah it’s not like 10 to 20 deer that we used to have we wouldn’t have any plants if it was that if that was the case so but it it’s been uh it’s been pretty decent but we now are taking you know the effort and we’re trying to

Budget in for deer fence and we’ll probably do temporary fence sa and I will get out there and put up some temporary fence as well to make a double fence yeah so the obviously the expense is the metal fencing if you were to use the plastic fence that’s a lot easier

Yeah and if you could use trees or old fencing to kind of hang that on yeah I mean there’s a fence it’s just not as strong anymore cuz it’s kind of degrading yeah and the other thing too is probably reinforce it the deer will just every day they’ll go around the

Fence and they’ll hit it hit on it and then we had a door a gate a little literal gate with like a wood around and like in a door yeah that you could actually go in and out well we locked it and and S was like maybe go see if

That door is like swung open or whatever and I went there and it was busted it was like literally it was hanging in the tree over there yeah it like was literally in the tree and like and and warped and everything it looked like there was like a bomb went off but you

Know it was just a deer that ran right there they just put one of those magnet things on it and went behind the tree and just like yeah so it’s um it’s hilarious but it’s a it’s a constant battle um and then on other part of landscaping and

Hardscaping is one of the things that we kind of got into our mind even though that there’s like four massive like ponds here the funny thing about big p Hans is like yeah you’re going to find like it’s going to be habitat for fish and blue heron and and noes and

Salamanders and and things like that um but birds really want shallow water birds and insects want shallow water so we thought like maybe putting in a small Frog Pond up near the common house the problem is where we’d like to cite it is actually where the electrical lines run

Under the ground water electric great it’s just so weird though because what’s nice about it is we don’t have any electrical lines above us it was actually buried and that was one of the one wonderful things I think that the um owners of this land prior to us did that

You know not to have electrical lines up above your head is just such a nice thing um so we you know did the hard task of actually burying like the the our fiber optic cable underneath the ground too right and so the internet cable so we’ve we’ve kind of went on

With that theme so it’s nice but we have this box now that’s kind of in the front yard it’s called Transformer box yes it’s a box Transformer that looks like a box and um but near and around it is all very wet and so we’re like oh that’s

Kind of weird place to site it because it’s really like wet and Marshy and it made me think like that would be a really nice place to put a frog pond but I don’t know if we were actually able to do it so we might have to site it

Elsewhere but um yeah I think a shallow little area where Birds could bathe and insects could enjoy that’s nearish to the common house so that people could actually experience that and see that I think would be really enjoyable be enjoyable for me so that’s one thing on

On the list for 2024 high on your priority it’s high on my prior left wait does it got birds in it does it have Birds go up to the top so the other idea is uh the three I have these three mini Meadows and there’s an area of land right here by

The meadow house that I have actually covered on a former video already that is has this really weedy grass and it’s pretty much only that grass and so what we’d like to do we actually got some really big tarps they’re like old recycled build Billboards actually that were way more affordable than like

Regular tarps we’re going to lay those down and basically kill the grass for like a whole year here and then over in an area in our lawn by the common house that’s above the Gazebo that is pretty much vet and um and I think that we

Could actually make it into a much nicer Lawn Meadow esque area maybe working with a little little bit more sedges because what I’d like to do is use this land as a test case for alternatives to lawn and this is a really good opportunity for us to do also I think

The meadow could look a lot prettier it could also be much more functional than just just having one kind of invasive grass genotype out there and if you’re sitting on the front porch here in the meadow house it’d be really nice to see a very floriferous um grassy null you know and

With lots of beautiful herbaceous perennials and and whatnot so that’s a project I think that I’d like to tackle in 2024 another project but I don’t know if I would get to it because it’s a big one I hate mowing the lawn here in front of the meadow house it’s not even nice

Grass it’s a fast growing grass it’s a fast grass and then a couple days later you’re back at it it’s really thick in a bad way it’s like not nice to walk on it’s like and the ground is all funky monkey so I think what I’d like to do is

Just take up all of that grass and turn it into a garden all these trees in the middle oh you planted I planted the trees but the trees will be in the planting oh yeah and um and we should probably measure how big that grass is because it’s probably what like a

Quarter of an acre it maybe less than that it’ll be really a nice um project I think another nice project to see what you could do with just a small bit of plot of land and and I think that would be an interesting project so 2024 maybe fingers crossed and then uh Dave

Promised us Dave O’Brien from O’Brien masery promised us to finish the path way around the Gazebo which would be the big Stoneway and steps downaz it’s bit on an elevation in the split middle of an elevation from the lowest part of the lawn to the highest part halfway down is

The Gazebo so we need some kind of steps to come down into it and maybe come back out of it and then if the steps are complete then it completes our kind of walk paths like there’ll be a destination to go to yeah instead of just being at the Gazebo and then not

Knowing where to go yeah because you kind of like trip down the side of it to get down to the to the half lake so once you have a path you could start to put in more plants on the side of it’s the start of everything it’s the start of

Everything it’s really the start of the Landscaping projects and I did start to landscape around there because I can’t help myself and it takes a while for some of these plants to actually take so you know that’s another thing too but I think once once that path is done just

Like kind of like the gardens here like once we did the path around the gardens it’s like oh that’s what you were creating you know what I mean the vision really GS together yeah another thing is as the renovations get completed they’re done so they only need maintenance from that

Point on then you could help me with the Landscaping s actually says that he really likes the landscap Landscaping is quicker than renovating it it you get this you can get a lot of D immediate you know satisfaction but that being said I think with the with the meadow areas we’re

Probably going to seed maybe we’ll get some plugs and plug some things in there unfortunately when you seed you don’t get immediate satisfaction but if you get like plugs or some older plants then you could get some immediate satisfaction but we have to put in all the landscape edging actually next year

That’s not something I didn’t include yeah the Corton steel edging the Corton steel edging so which who knows how much of a work it will be to bend those shapes yeah we Tri it if it’s flexible enough or not or if it needs to be like really dink dink dink dink we might

Actually try to find some help with that I don’t know but the renovations are going to be the main focus but since I would only slow down saers work well not always I know not always get those plugs in um I would probably be doing a lot of

Landscaping but yeah and then I I could help out the downstairs too because it’s going to be winter and I’ll be twiddling my thumbs when I could be like helping carrying out boards or you know doing some things I mean we work honestly hand inand with the design stuff like we’re

Constantly throwing spaghetti on a wall and like not literally but like we constantly have to think about it because I had a builder friend come over Sue who is from uh doing amabelle emmabelle we featured her she’s amazing and she came in the first thing she said

Was like I hate when people put the stairs in the middle of the room should be over there and it was just like z z super fast in my head was like it’s got to go there and she’s like yeah you can easily throw those boards up fit it

Between the joists like move the heating cable like she already had it all planned out and I was like oh yeah you can so then if someone says that you know the first thing I do is like I don’t want to hear about this and then I felt the same way when

He told me well hold on the first thing I do is I don’t want to hear about that like we’ve already set everything up uh I don’t want to have to move this the stairs but then as I as it kind of sinks in I have to take it serious because it

Might be a good idea and if I don’t take it serious then it might be done and then I realize that it may have been a better location for the stairs to be so what we’re going to do at that point is that it takes time but from that point we’re going to

Look at okay what if we actually did move the stairs here what will that mean for everything else you have to run through everything else we went through the scenarios you have two viable options and near what are the pros and cons of each of those moving the stairs

Is extra work so that becomes a con so you know there there’s a a bias short so sa shared this with me and my initial reaction and this is just I think human reaction where most of us are like nah we’re not going to go with the extra

Route well sucks because you got it all figured out and throw a wrench in the plan and now we got to rethink at all yeah and then he he shared it with an like that’s not that bad of an idea actually so you start to realize this about yourself where you’re like no

We’re not going to do it and then you’re like bit more open-minded you entertain the thought but that being said we did go through the pros and cons and the thing is it would maybe make a better layout on the upper part of the house but it kind of compromise the layout in

The lower part of the house yes and this is why why also the reasons why I took it serious because on the we had trouble making the layout work upstairs because the stairs were in the middle of the room but downstairs it was a great feature a great feature to have

The stairs there because it it gave like a coziness created these interesting Pathways you could create like a bookshelf that’s in the center of the room underneath the stairs so there was all these benefits downstairs but then upstairs it became hard to work with you

Couldn’t have as much of a a big of a dinner table as you wanted to so you have this huge kitchen huge living room and then this tiny little dinner table so the that’s where if if we were able to like figure everything out and everything was fine we probably wouldn’t

Have considered it but since we had trouble laying out the living room and the dining room upstairs we gave it a shot and I think we’ve decided that it’s good where it is it’s good where it is but at least now we know that it there’s

No other that theirs could be for us to have a better layout in that house for what we want to do with exactly and and I think that you know especially working with what you have like if we were to build the house from scratch all over

Again maybe it would be a little bit different but it was it’s kind of I don’t know I like working with a pre-existing I like working with pre-existing stuff too it’s weird it takes longer to renovate than it almost takes to build new but it depends but

You know there is something about and especially when you’re learning how to build and do things it’s interesting to start renovating first then you kind of get the hang of how things are done see the bones of the building yeah you know you start to understand how and also

Living in things it it forces you to be creative with what is already there yeah it brings these limitations in because whereas if you you know I noticed from my creative uh work if you have a blank canvas and anything is possible you could be sitting there for days trying

To figure out what to do if there’s a clear Direction with clear boundaries and limitations it becomes easy because then there’s only so many things possible and you’re trying to make the most out of what you have and that’s always what I Define creativity to be is

Doing the most or getting the best result with what you have and that doesn’t matter it does you could you could have very little or have have a lot it doesn’t matter you can still be creative you don’t need to have a lot of things to be creative yeah so but it was

Really good fun exercise it was go really good to go through that exercise of the stairs great example of somebody just coming in and shaking it up and then what I think what we also determined is as we started to play with furniture and where the furniture would go we made amends with

The fact that like okay the kitchen’s going to be smaller but then we have some bar stool seating we have that big outdoor space and then downstairs we’re actually going to have a lot more serving space it’ll have a completely different vibe like it’s so interesting because the downstairs is actually built

Into the ground and built into the Earth it’s like really grounded it’s a little darker and it feels like a hug whereas the upper part is like you know curtain Windows great views a lot of light Skylight and it’s like then you go downstairs and you’re

Like good like it’s just it’s it’s a completely different VI I hear Angel singing all the time when I go up there that’s crazy yeah so that’s our 2024 project well let’s do this which projects do you think you’re not going to be able to get to or complete well I

Think a lot of the Landscaping projects like one of the things that I think would be a big plus if I finish it is removing all that lawn and I think I think you’re not even going to touch a a blade of grass other than mowing it here

I hate mowing that lawn it’s like the worst and you know what the reason why I bring that up is because it is our goal hopefully if they get back to us the fence Builders to finish that east side of the fence so the reason why I bring it up is because

The lawn kind of continues over to the edge and that would be the time to actually take care of it when the fence is down yeah but that’s only going to be for a split second cuz the fence comes down and the new fence goes up yeah I

Know but you a lot can happen how fast you can landcap I mean what would your landscape well at least at least getting it mowed and clipped and done you know what I mean like so you want to tarp it off okay we’re getting into some of the the discussion of we’re literally

Getting into the weeds yeah so so what would you want to do with that edge I would ideally you tarp it off kill the grass yeah I would ideally like to plant some other stuff in there that would Stu like take over no would take over some of the grass like I down

Area I started to plant some more manard which is like that mint that starts to spread you had noticed it you’re like oh look at those red flowers I don’t know if you noticed you did you you pointed it out you’re like oh there’s some red flowers growing there and I planted like

Manard which is like the okay yeah I’ve seen those and yeah so I’d like to plant some things that will spread that give flowers that like aren’t so it’s just like the grass is like a really bad grass um definitely not a native grass and I would love to see this whole Space

Turn into a garden like just a something so enjoyable to sit out on the patio and be able to go on either side of the patio and just like really enjoy and really experience like that so even if I I just do parts of it like it could be

Done in stages yeah you know like how I did here up up on the top where first it was the pollinator garden and then it became the herb garden and then you’re like I think we should put in another Garden that became the Shrubbery keep escalating keep on doing it slowly and

Then eventually 2025 we’ll do the rock garden I think I I was really thinking that we would do the rock garden sooner rather than later but that rock garden is eventually going to merge into the front yard Garden but I might not get a chance to do that the the Frog Pond

Might not even get done I don’t know I don’t know cuz we have to site it properly yeah so there’s a lot of things up in the air depends on priority and how long those things take yeah it’s true like the roof took a lot of time

This year from us yeah partly because I don’t know if we got into this I started the roofing with a material that we didn’t end up liking yeah which I thought that I would like uh like I didn’t even question it and that’s also the reason why when someone comes in and

Says hey the stairs got to be there it’s important to take that serious because to a certain extent cuz otherwise you might end up doing half the well you know the other thing that we decided not only just taking things seriously but like uh photoshopping more like we just

Didn’t Photoshop enough we were so convinced that a product would work and would look good that you don’t consider like Reflections from the sky what would that material look like yeah uh and things like that the biggest issue with the roofing product that we thought we

Wanted to go with is that as SRA was saying there was a lot of Reflections it made the roof stand out so much that it took your eyes away from the garden and initially when you would go up to the top of the land the house kind of just

Faded into the background you almost like didn’t even know that there was a house there which is something that we really liked and then the gardens really stood out but as soon as you started to put that roof on and the reflections were glaring at you you’re just like wow

Look at that roof and like everything else kind of fell off the the point is you have all these beautiful gardens around the house that’s the Focus the house is just kind of there as the observatory in the middle of it all and now you’re putting this big bright like

Reflecting uh layer on the part of the house it’s very visible when you walk up to it and it just like throws off everything and we did get samples we did put it up there yeah and it matches the stones but it just is more reflective if

You put it up that way and I never thought that it would look that way s put half the roof up essentially and then get a really bad feeling should I continue with I kind of don’t want the funny thing is is that I said I think we actually

Should go with a black roof and I was so convinced oh this is going to look good it’s slate it’s going to look great our you know our Stone path is going to be Stone this will be Stone looking yeah and then eventually we needed a darker

Color a more matte color so it doesn’t reflect and it should have been more of an A-frame I think that Ro would better would on an a frame so where this original roofing material would look really good would be on an A-frame where you’re looking more flat at the roof

Versus like yeah up against it yeah because you saw all the um you saw too much detail in the Stone Edge and it all looked like a lot of detail when the house is actually really modern and doesn’t have a lot of detail if we photoshopped a little bit more

Considered what the materials were how reflective how what angle you’re looking at the materials you get a better sense if something will work or not and it’s often you know because on a on a cloudy day it would look good MH but on a and and the same for this black roof this

Black roof was actually very reflective in the beginning that I put it up right so on a on a non- cloudy day on a sunny day it would look very uh blue because it just reflects the sky but then on a cloudy day it would look better because

It would just like kind of and eventually you know we we talked with the but eventually turns more mte it exactly because it just like kind of wears and and so this is something to consider cuz like blue is not really in the color palette of the entire

Environment around it you have these deep Reds you have Browns you have greens part like blue is not part of that the sky takes it the sky and the water takes up the blue part but these are just really good things to keep in mind because that was probably one of

Our costlier mistakes that being said we decided to actually keep the old Roofing product because we’re like we know that we’re going to be building more buildings and things down the line and we could probably end up using this and build the place around it it’s a really

Beautiful Roofing product anyway so uh so I think that you know these are things that you Lessons Learned but that’s why I think that we do the extra effort that we do with like the design you know and part of the cost too it’s like when you decide to build everything

Yourself you do most of the work instead of hiring someone else you actually have room in your budget to go for materials that are more expensive and better quality and you’re able to afford yourself a couple mistakes because if we were to hire someone to do it then it

Would have been uh you know a more costly eror either either more expensive or the same amount of money and you’re also less flexible when you’re working with someone else because if I hired a contractor to put up that roof and we decided that we wanted something else you know that

They’re going to roll their eyes that’s just like it’s it’s it’s not worth it to them no and it’s not worth it and they probably already have another job lined up they back it’s going to be it’s going to be a decision that you just can’t

Make and a roof you don’t want to leave a roof exposed in the elements without a roof on or a roof without a roof on so there are you know there are real limitations sometimes to like how flexible you know up to what point can you still decide to change something and

That’s what we tried to minimize we tried to like Photoshop as much as we can now to really make sure that what we choose is going to look exactly like how we want it and with the deck for example is a good is a good showcase for this I

KNE I had a really good like uh feeling about the deck the way the color would reflect well we also went and we were bringing we were matching we brought Boards of our pre-existing house and we held them up in different forms of light we took them to the shop and the shops

That we because even the artificial light in the store versus the daylight would change a color D dramatically and even the angle at which you hold it at if you compare your house side in color with the deck color side by side and they’re both reflecting the sky you’re

Going to get a different color than if you take the color of the house and put it on a on an angle which is most of the time how it will be combined so there’s just a lot of little that light can play on you and you really have to make sure

That things work and the deck is a great example it looks the color is just perfect it’s yeah it’s I’m very pleased with how that came out and I’m I’m glad I’m like I’m eager to now have like throw an event there and get like a

Grill and start grilling like I I could see it all happen um you know down the line and and and that was a really great decision and that deck will last hopefully like knock on wood like 50 years you know and and then and then the roof will

Probably last 50 to 80 years so you know we used a actually a recycled uh truck tire rubber for the roof that is made to look like kind of shugi ban style it’s a burn Cedar Shake charred Cedar Shake which is also more appropriate for the house cuz it’s a

Cedar house and here I was putting Stone and slate looking stuff on top of it which the ca Shake might have been more appropriate yeah so anyways there’s probably three more hours that we could talk about design and specific nerdy details that we often care about but you

Know we’ll take you through those things when we walk you through the homes and you see some of the before and after you’ll you’ll see how that came together like in the meadow house how we how we kind of looked at like what it looked like before and after and we’ll do the

Same with like the common house in the barn and then will start to become more usable at least for us and that will allow us to then have like more events more like workshops more things to do that we could do with the community as well which will be really exciting so

That’s our 2024 and we’ll see you in the next video bye