Fixing Damage to Wood Trim

A year ago I adopted a new dog. 

Then over Independence Day this year I watched my mom's new dog, Loretta, who it turns out is terrified of fireworks. Between the two of them both the door to my garage and the doorway of my spare room are sporting some impressive gouges.

Damage Rowena did to garage door.

Loretta was staying in the spare bedroom to keep her separated from Rowena since Loretta had picked up kennel cough the previous week. As a result I couldn't let her out in the house during the fireworks and she damaged her crate and scratched up the door in the spare room.

Since I have a new roommate moving in this weekend I decided to fix the gouges in her door frame (and while I was at it the door to the garage that Rowena damaged) so the room is more presentable. My dad recommended using a wood filler then repainting the trim, which turned out to be a pretty simple project.

Applied wood filler.

The wood filler is a consistency similar to play doh or a thick paste. After sanding down the wood, you can use a spreader to fill in the gouges with the wood filler and smooth it out as evenly as possible. Depending on the size of the gouges this may be easier or harder than it sounds. For a couple of the gouges in my door frame I had to let the first application of wood filler dry then apply a second layer in order to get the surface as level and smooth as possible. I also had some spots along the edge of the trim that were tricky since smoothing them with the spreader would cause the filler to be scraped away.

After letting the wood filler dry completely (which should only take a couple hours, but I just waited until the next evening) you can sand down any rough spots then repaint the area. The filler I got was a tan color that was pretty easy to cover with a couple coats of white paint. You can hardly tell there was any damage!

Before and After of door frame in spare bedroom.

After of the garage door, not much
I can do to salvage the actual door.

I have quite a few other spots around the house that can use a touch up coat of paint (but don't need wood filler), so I expect I'll be wandering around for the next few weeks freshening up my trim, windowsills, the spots in the bathroom that I missed while painting six years ago...

Rowena

Rowena

One year ago I welcomed a new roommate--Rowena.

I debated whether to adopt another dog so soon after Ollie died (he got loose and ran in front of a car early in the summer), but honestly I hated not having a dog. So I decided to move forward with adopting a new dog, and I decided to look at dogs that were closer to 30 lbs. since having a larger dog makes sense for security as well.

What I didn't think through was getting a dog that was not quite a year old and as a result to being in the shelter also had separation anxiety and is scared of crates. Add in that Rowena is part lab, part border collie (and therefore high energy) and things started out kind of rocky!

Ollie was almost six when he died, so he was starting to settle down and I was past the problems with chewing, etc. All the sudden I had a dog that not only wasn't "settled" but was able to reach things that eight-pound Ollie never could!

Rowena

I met Rowena at a pet adoption event downtown and fell in love. She did well on a leash and according to the guy who found her, was house-trained, got along with his three dogs and didn't seem interested in the neighbor's cat. That was before the shelter.

I hadn't made up my mind to adopt her and the guy couldn't keep her (four dogs is a bit much) so he took her to the Tulsa shelter.

I had never been out there before, but my youngest brother and I went to look a couple weekends later and...it's bad. As you walk into the dog section you get hit by a wall of urine-scented air, and that's without the super-sensitive sense of smell that dogs have. The dogs are in pens and in some cases sharing a pen. There was someone mopping up accidents as we walked through, but there were at least 50 dogs and no way to let them outside regularly.

When I saw Rowena there, we took her outside for a bit. She loved playing with the ball and was so excited to have some attention. I just couldn't leave her, and I'm so glad I didn't. However, she couldn't come home with me until the following Monday since the shelter had to spay her before letting her leave.

When I put her back in her pen she wouldn't even look at me. I felt AWFUL. Monday when I went to pick her up she was still on painkillers from the spaying surgery, but she stuck really close as soon as she saw me. I think she knew I was her ticket out of that place.

Part of the problem with picking up a new pet on a Monday when you work full-time is that you then have to leave them at home without supervision for the rest of the week. Tuesday went fine since she was still recovering from surgery, but Wednesday...

I decided to try crating in order to save myself some damage to the house.

Yes, my 30 lb dog crawled out
of that hole she chewed.

Then I decided to try a metal crate. I discovered Rowena trained with Houdini.

I added a latch to the door of the metal crate and tried working with her to make the crate seem like her safe place.

If I wasn't home the crate
was not a safe place.

Finally I decided she did less damage if left out than she did when crated. I might buy stock in dog toys though since I buy tons of them to keep her occupied during the day.

I de-decorated my living room temporarily since Rowena showed a serious lack of respect for books, photo albums and anything left on the tables. I also gained a new appreciation for a spotless kitchen since any dirty dishes or food items left on the counters were in peril.

My house quickly started to look like no one lived here since the bookshelves were empty and the kitchen looked pristine!

I signed Rowena up for obedience classes almost immediately. The great thing about border collies is they are scary intelligent. Rowena is so willing to learn, but the classes also helped with her leash aggression toward other dogs (another result of being in the shelter I think). She gets defensive when on a leash around other dogs, something that the socialization at obedience class helped with.

Rowena on the run.

I've also fallen in love with the dog park. My yard was plenty big for Oliver, but Rowena needs to run. Since I am not a runner, going to the dog park is awesome! She'll run with the other dogs for hours if I let her stay that long.

So many people suggested that I should take Rowena back to the shelter based on how much damage she did in those first few weeks, and while I understood what they meant it made me want to scream. She was only 11 months old, adjusting to a new situation and bored being alone so much. I knew it would get better and the idea that "returning" a pet that you made a commitment to is so acceptable really mad me mad. Maybe there wouldn't be so many shelter dogs if more people accepted the commitment that a pet is BEFORE adopting in the first place.

Rowena slowly began improving when left alone in the house and now I hardly ever come home to damaged items. There are still a lot of areas around my house that need to be fixed though, including the doorway to my garage. Since I leave through that door, it took most of the damage from Rowena's panic attacks when I left her those first few weeks. Now that she isn't actively destroying new things I feel like I can finally start fixing the damage.

Have any of you had tough adjustment periods with new pets?

Those eyes.
Rowena is not a big fan of reading.

Warmer Weather

This month has finally seen the temperature creep into the upper 60s to 90s with fewer freezes. Which meant I could finally get serious about planting things in my new flowerbeds!

You may remember me posting about Dad helping me build flowerbeds with landscape timbers and re-bar. Until now they've sat empty except for some dirt and weeds.

This weekend I went to Southwoods Nursery with my mom and grandmother and they bought me some azaleas to plant in the flowerbed against the back wall of my house. Of course, the planting couldn't be done without hitting a few snags. Apparently my sewage pipe is located in the flowerbed. Right where my perfectly spaced azalea needed to go. So instead of perfectly spaced plants I adapted my plan and planted the pink azaleas closer to the azaleas on each end.

I've heard that azaleas are hard to maintain, but the one I planted two years ago couldn't be happier and has required practically no work. To plant them I just dig a hole a little bigger and deeper than the plant. Fill it up loosely with peat moss (azaleas like acidic soil which is what the peat moss is for) and add water until the hole is filled with a soupy mixture. Then you plop the plant in, cover the edges with dirt and you're done.

The next flowerbed we built is at the end of my deck and I haven't gotten it filled yet, but my grandmother did bring me some jasmine from her house that I planted in it. Eventually it will grow up the side of the deck.

Before I could plant anything though I had to line the edges of all the flowerbeds with landscape fabric. Because we used landscape timbers to build the beds the soil can wash out the spaces between the timbers without something holding it in. Since the plants need to root deeper than the beds I couldn't cover the bottoms which made cutting the fabric to size a little tricky.

The last bed we built is in the sunniest corner of my yard and is for vegetables. It's funny that this is the sunniest area since when I moved in there were bushes growing along the back fence that made that area one of the shadiest parts of the yard. After cutting down the bushes and finally digging up the roots to prevent them from growing back the bushes are finally gone for good. I want to plant something else along that fence eventually, but something that won't destroy the fence.

This was actually the first bed I planted anything in since I went to one of the local herb festivals and stocked up on tomato and pepper plants. We have a lady in Tulsa that grows and sells heirloom tomato and pepper plants, The Tomato Man's Daughter. She has a great selection and I almost always buy my tomatoes from her.

Once I had everything planted the tricky thing was rigging a fence that would deter Ollie from jumping on the plants while he barks at the neighbor dogs. That corner is where my yard meets up with the others so Ollie likes to race through it, which may not matter once my plants are bigger than him, but for now I don't want him stomping on my plants.

I barely got my tomato and pepper plants in the ground before we had another freeze though! I cut the bottoms off of some milk jugs to cover the plants overnight so they didn't die. It actually didn't get as cold as the weathermen predicted which was good.

I'm excited to get everything growing, here's to hoping I actually get tomatoes and peppers and even blackberries this year! The last few years were so hot and dry so early in the season that everything dried up too fast.

In the front yard I bought some bushes to replace those that died a couple summers ago and Grandmother bought me a couple of new plants to go in the pots on the front porch with my silver sage.

Hopefully they'll survive, I think it looks pretty nice all together!

Other pictures from this spring:

St. Francis looked pretty nice with my tulips
blooming this spring. Irises and dahlias
are starting to come up now.

The garden bed has some sort of purple flower
that grows along the fence. Lovely (and invasive).

Ollie thinks he's a rabbit.
Or at least runs like one.

Titan, my brother's cat, enjoying
geraniums at my mom's house.

I know dandelions are weeds, but don't they
look pretty making a path to the forsythia?

I hate to mow, but Ollie loves a freshly mowed yard.

'Tis the Season!

Okay, so I've been promising for a while now to show off what I've done to decorate this year. Since I'm finally done here's the post!

Story Behind the Tree
Last year a friend, Grace Grothaus (awesome local artist, check out her stuff here) finished a show that included several full-size Christmas trees. Since she didn't need 7+ trees after her show she gave me one! I collected ornaments from my mom and grandmother and bought a few on sale after Christmas last year. Now I almost have too many ornaments!

In the background of this pic you can see Ollie's stocking (mine is still with mom's decorations and gets hung on the mantel at home). You can't tell, but I use the first quilt I made as a tree skirt because the colors and size are perfect.

You also may notice my tree lacks a topper. I really want to get an angel to go on top, but not one of the cheap ones that falls apart before you even get it home. I also don't want to spend a small fortune on it though. At work we have one of those crocheted angels, I think that would be awesome. So apparently I need to learn to crochet. And find time for it. Or maybe one of you can already crochet and is just dying to make me an angel?

Handed Down
Here are a few of the ornaments that I got from my mom and grandmother:


Yes that is a Santa made out of okra! And that little wooden wagon has been around as long as I can remember (there's a matching wheelbarrow as well). My great-grandma actually gave me the little tree with button ornaments. Love these!

Then I have these ornaments from Korea that I got from work. We had dozens of these so I got to bring some home for my tree last year. They come in all sorts of colors and are just adorable!

Enough About the Tree
Growing up the nativity scene was one of the things my siblings and I had the most fun setting up. We would argue over where to put baby Jesus or the wisemen. Mom's stable even had little mangers that we sometimes put real straw in.

I found my nativity on sale at a little shop in Sand Springs a few years ago. I loved how unique the design was and that the pieces were wood (and therefore not quite as fragile). My set was designed by Jim Shore, who I had never heard of before I found this nativity set.

Since then I bought a few other pieces (such as the palm tree and camel). I simply love his stuff! Each piece of the set has a different design. For example: the shepherd has the scene of the angels coming to the fields to share the great news; one of the wisemen shows the star over Bethlehem and Joseph shows the trip to Bethlehem with a very pregnant Mary. 

This and That

This rocking horse was a gift that I received several years ago. In high school I would put it in my room with my miniature tree and electric candles for the windows. Something about candles and fire just makes it feel more like Christmas.

In the bar area I used the table runner my friend Claire made me as a housewarming gift. You can't tell in this picture, but that fabric has these adorable little snow-covered trees printed on it. Claire also made me matching place mats and some napkins.

The glasses are from Pier One. Since I had the candy leftover from Halloween I put a little red tissue paper in the glasses and divided the candy between them. So far I haven't been too tempted by the candy sitting out. I keep hoping other people will eat it!

I found the awesome pitcher (seen below on the dining room table) and margarita glasses on clearance. There were several styles of glasses, but I felt these would be the most useful. I scored both glasses and the pitcher for under $20.

My table centerpiece was inspired if I do say so myself. I found a package of those red and gold glass balls at Lowe's for a good price. Then I already had the gold beads and decorative wire. I kept the table runner that the St. Mary's youth made (also featured in this post). Very simple, but classy.






 

Oliver

Last, I will leave you with this picture of Oliver, all decked out for the winter weather. Now, let me just say that in the past I have been somewhat opposed to dressing up your pet, but Ollie gets so cold in the winter that it just seems cruel not to put a sweater on him. Besides, doesn't it look cute?

Oh summer!

So I came home on Thursday and found this waiting for me:

I finally broke down and bought a hammock for my backyard last weekend, less than a week later there it was! So I ran outside, put all the hammock stand pieces together and then came back in and cracked open the box.

That's when I realized the pieces that attach the hammock to the hammock stand were missing. Grr...no enjoying the hammock that evening!

After a trip to Lowe's with Lydia, and some repeated trial and error with getting the chain the right length, here it is!

Ollie also likes the hammock...

This area still needs some work. I'm planning to go buy some mulch and create a "retreat" area around the tree. Mom got me a birdbath for my birthday so that is going out there too. I'll put up another post about it once I've finished that project!