We are ready for some warm weather!! After the 70 degree temperatures this past weekend I can offically say we have the spring itch. Steffi has been making garden plans, and we have been raking up the leaves, pulling weeds, and started prepping the raised beds for our veggies. After the flooding, the snow, and the cold temperatures we are ready to get back out in the yard.

In our raised bed we went ahead and put in some sweet Texas onions. We also ordered a couple varities of potatoes. Last year we grew way too many tomatoes, but I realized tomatoes don't store very well and we don't use them so much. Onions and potatoes will last for a while, and we use them frequently. We'll see how it turns out.

We put onions in our main raised bed in the backyard.


And we put more onions in the bed on the south side of the house.


We also demolished the old grill in our yard. It has been slowly falling apart since we bought the house, so it was time to go. It turned out to be more work than we expected. Who would have thought a few bricks would create so much debris?

So here's the grill before. When we bought the house it had more bricks, but they kept falling off.


After a little work with the sledgehammer it was a pile of rubble. Too bad it couldn't just grow legs and walk away.


We loaded it in the truck to haul it away. This was a lot of work.


When we tell people we demolished the old grill in the backyard I'm sure they'll look around and ask "What grill?" That is always the case when we remove things from the yard.

So our own house progess may be a little slow these days, but I just found out about an upcoming event that sounds really exciting! For anyone in the Atlanta area, this sounds like the place to be...

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The Decatur Old House Fair - March 6th

A day long seminar will feature a number of lectures about living in and restoring old houses. Some topics that will be covered:

- Historic Wood Window Restoration: Did you know that a properly restored historic wood window has higher e-value than most new windows on the market?
- National Register of Historic Places and Tax Incentives: The National Register of Historic Places is our country's inventory of the buildings, sites, and cultural landscapes that are historically significant.
- Researching Your Old House: Ever wanted to know when your house was built and by whom? Who lived in your house and how it has changed over the years?
- "Greening" Your Old House: The greenest house is the one already built. But, did you know that there is even more you can do to reduce your old home's carbon footprint?
- Design Solutions for Additions and New Construction in Historic Neighborhoods: Want to add space to your historic home but don't want it to look like an addition?
- How to Hire a Contractor: Interviewing and selecting a contractor is a daunting task and not having all the information can cost you many thousands of dollars.
- Maintenance Plans for Old Houses: Owning any house means maintenance. Owning a historic home means maintenance and preservation.
- Historic Landscapes for Old Houses: Historic landscapes tell us so much about lives and interests of previous generations. Each style of home and each time period has its own unique landscape associated with it.

Go to www.decaturoldhousefair.com for more information. Advance tickets are $10.

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Something I personally love - they emphasize historic window preservation so much that they have TWO seminar sessions about it! Go Decatur Old House Fair!

Happy New Year from Westview Bungalow! We had a fantastic time over the holidays. Both Christmas and New Year's Eve were wonderful. We also took a trip to Washington DC and saw a number of historical sites along the way - including Mary Washington's House (George Washington's mother) and Kenmore (the home of George Washington's sister). I promise we'll post some photos soon, and we should start some more projects, or finish some old ones, later this month! Sorry for not posting anything in a short while.

Since we bought our house three years ago the back section of chain link fence has been a mess. Our guess is over the years the giant oak tree dropped large branches that crushed the fence. We have been debating if we want to get a privacy fence (and one day we'll probably get around it), but for now we decided to spend a little money and fix what is already there.

Here is a photo of what we started with. See how bad it looked!


We had one post that had broken off near the ground, and all of the top rails needed to be replaced. The first step was to remove the top rails. It was pretty easy to do since they were all broken and rusty.



Once we got to this point we put the top rails through the old posts and realized we were going to have to first clean out all of the English ivy. The fence had been overthrown by vines, and we were not able to straighten it out without first clearing all of the plants and debris.



Once we got the ivy cleaned out, which took a while, we dug the hole to set the new post.



Even Buster wanted to lend a hand with the fence!



So after a day of hard work the fence is working again. It didn't end up perfectly straight because the posts weren't level to start with, but it is still a big improvement for a little money!