The sink is now hooked up and the mirrors are hung and painted to match the vanity. We were not able to modify the drawers of the old buffet to fit around the plumbing lines, so Jeff built two doors. At least at this point we have a fully functioning bathroom. Looks like finishing the rest of the room is on the “back burner” for now, as our new grapes will be arriving this weekend and fruitfarm/vineyard work will take priority for a while.
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| Lars installs mirrors |
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| finished vanity |
Today I filled up the first wheelbarrow load of weeds for 2013! After the snowy weather on Saturday, I felt like cleaning up the herb garden and planting some pansies. A lot of the herbs needed to be trimmed back, which generated the bulk of my wheelbarrow load. A surprising number of daffodils were already poking through in between the herbs. It will look pretty in just a few weeks when they bloom!
I also moved the overwintered geraniums from their make-shift shelter in the barn. We had pulled out all the geraniums in the fall and put them into pots on a large table at the back corner of the barn. The downstairs of the barn stays relatively warm with all the thick stone walls. We covered the table with plastic sheeting and then placed two lamps, with the light bulbs pointing upward, underneath the table. The two light bulbs supplied the only heat throughout the winter, but it must have worked, as only 2 out of 32 plants did not survive, though some of the plants looked pretty rough. I trimmed all the dead leaves off the plants, watered them thoroughly and placed them on a table by the large window in the barn.
Half the bathroom is now painted purple – well, technically, it is painted Smoked Mulberry – which is the same shade we used in the barn. Once the bathroom paint dried, Jeff re-installed the toilet and also put up the two sconce lights above the double sink. Tina then painted the “vanity” the same shade of green, “Mossy Aura“, as the guest room accent wall. It sort of looks like a grape themed bathroom – imagine that! Today, we purchased the remaining plumbing fixtures to actually hook up the sinks to the water and drain pipes. Once that is hooked up, we can finish painting the cabinet drawers (which have to be adjusted for length, to allow the drain pipes to fit) and then we’ll have at least a functioning bathroom.
Jeff got a wine-testing kit for his birthday – it was like the grown-up version of a little boy getting his first chemistry set. We bought the Vinmetrica combined pH/TA and SO2 analyzer kit and it worked beautifully. The three wines we tested were surprisingly close to ideal ranges for all the readings. Now we have to figure out how to accurately adjust for perfection 🙂
Pruning! That’s mostly what we did this weekend – blackberry bushes and grape vines.
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| Pruned Chambourcin vine |
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Sammy and Tina trimmed blackberry bushes, while Lars ran the weed-whip alongside the finished rows. We are almost done with the brambles, but still have a way to go with the grapes. So happy that we finally changed time – that will give us one extra hour in the evenings to work outside.
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| This is what the finished bramble rows look like! |
Jeff plowed a new plot for the grapes today (the 430 new vines we ordered and which should arrive here just before Easter). We had planted peas on that spot last spring, spread lime and then planted winter wheat as a cover crop last fall. The grape vines should be happy there.
