Brawn&Brawn

Projects Update #1

Gardens, trail-building, and making a bathroom less horrifying.

Brooke Condolora

Brooke Condolora

— 3 min read
Projects Update #1

Like our game updates, if you don’t hear from us for a while, it means things are busy! We’ve traveled a bit since our last post, and weather has occasionally slowed things down, but there’s a lot to catch you up on.

The Grounds

David and I have been building a raised-bed garden (the vegetable kind, for our non-American friends here), which finally pushed us to use the table saw I inherited from my grandmother. (Yes, grandmother. She was cool.)

I’d say some thoughtful things about conquering our table saw fears, but…well, there were a few flying objects and other close calls. Anyway, we got them built.

Had to get creative with our only sunny spot being a sloped triangle. Still so much more space than our last garden!

We’re also currently having a backyard fence built, where Ollie can soon return to his squirrel and sunbathing duties.

We’re fencing only a small area, keeping as much of our half acre open for wildlife as possible.

We had to remove a lot more Chinese privet along the fence, but we’ve got a hoard of trees and other plants waiting to take its place: most notably, blackberries!

And, finally, we were excited to break ground on our trail over the weekend! The trailhead had a couple of trees downed by winter storms, so we had a lot of cleanup to do.

Cutting trail, and planting a tree at the trailhead to replace one we lost. This one’s a native Chickasaw plum!

We recently had a geospatial ecologist (fancy, eh?) come by as part of a grant application, and we’re using some of what we learned about erosion and topography to design our trail. More on the grant soon, if we get it!

Guest Bathroom & Laundry Room

This bathroom has been in-progress for a while but frequently interrupted by other projects. We’re currently fixing some issues before we can finish installing the trim, but it's no longer a scary place.

Bathroom before and in-progress! We replaced everything.

We did as much as we could ourselves, but had help from contractors for the plumbing, drywall, and tile. In fact, we'd planned to install the tile ourselves, too, but I accidentally chose the most difficult shape to install.

One bonus is that since we continued the tile out into the laundry room, that room got a small upgrade as well!

Laundry room before and in-progress. Next, we replace the cheap paneling with drywall, then paint.
David did all of the demo work, including removing a wall to open the room up.

I have a couple of other in-progress rooms to share, but this is already a long one, so I'll save them for the next update.

A few nights ago, we’d just come in from a full day of hard outdoor work, were watching a family of deer pass by in the twilight, and a fox started to call. It made me realize we’d finally shaped the kind of lifestyle we’d been working toward all these years. Minus the farm animals—for now.

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