Quote:
Originally Posted by Piwoslaw
Hello, welcome to ER 
Before you started planting, what improvements did you do to the house?
And what is your goofy idea? |
thank you both for welcomes.
before planting:
-replaced downstairs carpet with tile, although that was probably more about the disaster of five kids in a dining room with carpet.
-bought curtains and lined them with two additional layers...the middle layer being pieced together from whatever i could find. all of them have one thick layer and two thin
-put cheap and ugly window shades between blinds and windows
-made exterior sun shades from a recycled sun canopy
-the usual caulk maintenance routine
-fashioned assorted temporary shades for air conditioner (it's not really big enough for the house--it died on us several times the first two summers), including sunflower walls to provide some afternoon shade for it. now i have an arbor there and need to figure out what will grow on it in summer heat. we only use the unit about six hours a day unless i can't keep up.
-climbed into both attics and stapled up an assortment of dollar store car shades, 1/2 roll of recycled mylar, aluminum foil...on the west facing side of the upstairs attic i used the insulated reflective rolls.
-added insulation to attic over garage
-put in foam sections on garage door
-where practical, added a back to shelves in garage.
-assorted windows have mylar--we have on hoa so this is tricky. we do it anyway in the back hoping they can't see it through the exterior sun shades.
goofy idea is not entirely well-developed--
i want to construct some sort of wall a few feet from the house. i'm considering making it the back of a raised bed and attaching a trellis. however, i want the back of it to have a couple of shelves to house my two bins of gardening tools without being attractive to black widows. what i really want is based on the shade system used by the metro phoenix light rail system-a durable living screen with attached raised bed. they use bouganvillas--i would prefer grapes.