Stained Glass Window Project

I do not remember if I ever mentioned here that my house used to belong to the Church next door. It was used for the rectory and in its day was a beautiful place. When the church gave it to a family from the congregation they were supposed to just pay the taxes on the place. They did not do that and tore the place up inside and out. When they were ready to loose it in a bank repossession they removed stained glass windows and pretty much anything of value. They even caught the second floor on fire. The fire resulted in damage to all three floors. The fire men had to remove parts of the walls and ceilings to put the fire out. The church gave the family money to make repairs but they took the money and ran. This left the house unlivable. The house sat empty for a few years and sold to another person who came in and tore the place up even more. I was once again taken in a foreclosure and again sat empty for several years. I bought the place in 2009 and it sat empty for 3 years as I did work to get it so that I could get the utilities turned on and live in it.

Since moving in I have fixed the plumbing, put light fixtures in all the rooms, painted, insulated, remodeled the kitchen, and first floor bathroom, replaced the roof gutters down spouts soffit and fascia, and landscaped the entire yard. I am now trying to reflect my wildlife habitat theme onto the design of the house. I have added a lot of lost details to the house and now I am working on stained glass window designs. I am unable to afford to have the designs done in real stained glass so I am creating designs and having them printed on clear PVC as window clings. 

I have done a Saint Francis of Assisi Window that looks out on my wildlife habitat and will be doing windows of ducks, fish, birds, deer, and raccoons.My first duck design has been completed and will be going up soon.

My Saint Francis design.

Saint Francis installed

Wood duck window design.

 Mallard window design. This will be part of a three piece window with mallards  frogs and turtles.

   

It is supposed to snow tonight so I took a few pictures of some of the flowers in bloom around the yard.

Spring is here

Now that spring is here I will start working on my blog a little more. This past winter was mild but towards the end it started to linger and gave us two last minute snow storms. I thought it was going to destroy a lot of my buds and stuff like it did last year. It only damaged a few lilac bushes and a few rose bushes. My Hardy Primrose was blooming and even after it snowed twice the blooms were still looking good. I really like the Hardy Primrose because they require little to no care and the flowers seem to just keep blooming all season long. They are also great for the shady side of the house. Over the mild winter I did loose a bird bath but since I have the pond now and another bird bath its no big deal. I might try to find another one this summer to replace it.

The pond looks good and because of the mild winter I just let the pump run the entire winter. I have been trying to get a jump on removing some of the string algae before it gets to warm and this year I will treat the water to control it. Last year the pond was brand new so it was not much of a problem. Yesterday I re potted the American Lotus (Nelumbo lutea) the native type of lotus that the Native American Indians relied on for food. I was a little concerned about weather or not it survived the winter because I planted it so late last year. I was thrilled to see that it is doing good and I moved it into a larger pot. There were three pieces growing together and I did not want to risk breaking them by trying to divide them so I left them together all in the same pot. This year I am hoping to add some Sacred Lotus (Nelumbo nucifera). I think instead of putting it in the pond I will grow it in a barrel and move the goldfish from the pond to the barrel. These are not native species so they do not need to be in the wildlife habitat area but can be placed elsewhere in the yard for my enjoyment.

I have ordered a few new plants for the yard this year. I have some Yellow Trumpet Vine, Sunny Knock Out Rose, A thorn less Climbing Yellow Rose, and others that I think will look good. I do not have much to do around the pond this year so I plan to be able to sit back and enjoy it more. Last year I was so busy with trying to get it all in I did not get to enjoy it as much as I would have liked. I am hoping the Crape Myrtle and other plants that were added last year will bloom this year. There is no telling what to expect but I am  looking forward to the new growing season.

Winter

So far we have had a mild winter. I had a chance to see the snow and ice cover the pond for a few days. We are almost halfway through winter here and I am hoping we will not have the same thing happen this year that happened last year. We had really warm weather from January, through March and then in April it froze all the buds and flowers that opened. I am looking forward to getting out in the yard soon so I can start growing things. My pond has been holding up nicely and I look forward to its second year. Everything took off and filled in for the first year so I am just anxious to see what happens next. We had a bit of wind a few weeks ago that knocked over one of my bird baths and it broke. I will have to replace it this spring.

Happy Thanksgiving

The snow we had last Sunday did not kill the plants that are flowering. Since I have the wildlife habitat and I am trying to plant more native plants I did not plant any mums this year. My recirculating pond pump is still turned on. I will be shutting it down soon and will fill both levels of the pond as full as I can. I will wrap up my hose and bring it inside to store for the winter. I am really enjoying the new windows because I can look out on the wildlife habitat area without going outside in the cold.

First Snow

We started our first snow fall yesterday around 7:30. I still have roses, cone flowers, moon flowers, peacock orchids, zinnias. and a lot of other plants still blooming. The house is going through a major transformation with new windows being installed. This is making the house look better and in turn the yard looks better. It is nice to be able to see out the windows to see the pond and my wildlife habitat. The front bay window area above my porch is also getting re framed and new siding put up. This was supposed to be done by Home Depot but they did not do it. The contract they wrote up even said they would re frame and wrap the bay area and the dormers with siding. They broke the contract then claimed that it should not have been promised in the contract because they do not do any re framing. I fought with them for almost 6 months and finally gave up, Never trust Home Depot to do any kind of install. Just look up all the complaints on line and you will see they do not do the work right and because they are not certified by the manufacturer of the products they use any warranty on materials or craftsmanship  is no good. If you confront them about all the complaints on line they will try to tell you that they are false complaints from their competition. I will not go on about Home Depots incompetence. But I did want to share how nice it is having new windows installed professionally by Apollo Windows. Here are some photos of the work being done. I also have a photo of the new kitchen floor that was put down by friends Fran and John.

 The inside of the new dinning room windows. Once they are finished off  with new framing and paint they will look great. These are top of the line windows so they better keep the house warmer,

 The new landing window is an awning window with tempered glass. It makes the stairway and front entry so much brighter during the day.

 The bay window area above my front porch is almost done. It is finished off with the siding Home Depot left behind. the windows are white and they are capped off with aluminum coil in clay. The siding is called desert sand.

 The house is looking a lot nicer with all the colors matching. it sed to have so many colors on it it looked like crap.

 My dinning room bay area from the outside.

 Dinning room

 Dinning room

 Landing

 Living room

New kitchen floor. Now I just need to put up all the trim and base boards and the kitchen will be finished.

The changing of the season.

Now that the season is changing and the leaves are turning colors I am putting my efforts into fixing up the house. Soon I will be replacing my windows.