Over the Green Fence - A Better View

Summer days are filtering out to winter snow and spitting clouds of chilling gray. So what's a fence to do? Give way to mountain peaks of white and filtered blue?

I'd say yes, and then again, I'd say, "Hell ya!" I love the white peaks and filtered blue of a western horizon of rocky mountains and Colorado sunsets. But what about GREEN?

My green fence offers a view winter or summer, because it's colorful, bright, and interesting. I've heard some neighbors wouldn't allow it, but honestly, I don't live in those neighborhoods. So, the reality is, my neighbors do like my fence. Many of them, especially children, comment on my fence and tell me why they like it. Over the GREEN fence is a happier view.

In those microbial minutes that lash out at time and allow the next moment to happen, my bright green fence offers a moment of gladness to enter in. It's gay enough to acknowledge the sound of laughter, brilliant enough to usurp color, and grounded just enough to allow folks to know that there isn't a better fence anywhere in the neighborhood.

Life with my green fence is just brilliant and lovely! Come enjoy it with me.

Trailer Décor – 5 Ways to Use Hallway Space to Enhance Your Home

If you live in a trailer, you probably have many items you’d like to display or store that don’t need a lot of space, but you STILL have no place to put them. We have solutions!

Hallways! Oh my gosh, have you seen the tunnels they put alongside the bedrooms in a trailer house with no visible access to living human existence? Well loose the domination and let’s get back to living. There are ways to use those vast dark mines of existence with a polish unknown to house dwellers. We have pizzazz!

Kids art – Young parents often find themselves using a trailer as their homestead of choice when children are small, and there’s truly no place to hang kids art, kids pictures, and kids “Clutter” so you trash it, store it in a box, or attempt to shove it all under the kids’ bed. STOP already!

Frame it and hang it on the wall. Much better solution and it doesn’t take a massive huge space. An easy way is get a poster size Plexiglas frame for each kid – put their stuff in there and arrange it for easy viewing then hang each one in a segment of wall space along the hall.

Shelve it – NARROW shelving along the side of the hall makes for easy storage of books, small NON-breakable treasures (baskets and bins of toys), and other hall necessities. These can even be located under the aforementioned art display frames for a great hallway décor. My favorite width of shelving is about 4 ½ inches. It’s easy to make yourself in 30 inch widths, with a light paneling or plywood back, and you can paint three to five units different colors for each kid, or stain to match your traditional hallway-dark paneling.

Hook something – Run a 1 X 4 along the wall at chair rail height and again at shoulder height and place pegs along the railings. You can then attach firmly to the wall with screws into the studs and hang almost anything on them. Hand bags, carry alls, library bags, coats, jackets, tennis shoes sports equipment, brief cases, back packs, laundry, or whatever your heart desires. Try hanging your hats there too…

Art/Photo Gallery – Similar to the first idea, this one springs up from being a family girl with a ton of photo albums. Just frame a collage of photos and hang them in the hallway. Either single frames or in multiples, arrange them on the wall with a few flowers or a wall ornament or two and you’ll find people stopping in the hall to check out the photos. Or simply a collection of a few treasured pieces of wall art will capture attention.

Track Lighting – Replace the single bulb in the middle of the hall with a long track of special lighting you can aim to enhance your choice of wall art. This increases your likelihood of using the hallway for something other than passage and maximizes your ability to use it. The best part is, you can set the level of lighting you prefer and nobody minds.

Sometimes you just have to live there. Holding together the family treasures in a trailer house is an easy way to make a home on a budget. Learn how to live well anywhere you live with http://designhome4sale.com suggested staging ideas.

©2009 - http://janverhoeff.com

City Code Inspectors Harass Little Old Ladies

What is it little old ladies chatter about at church functions? Well, it probably should be their grandchildren, but that wasn't the case one recent Sunday afternoon. They chattered up a storm about the rain and how they hadn't been able to cut their yards. Each of them feared reprisal from the local code enforcement officers, because their weeds were more than eight inches high.

Was it because their neighborhoods were safe from drug dealers and the influence of drunk drivers? Not really, a drunk driver drove through one old lady's fence more than 15 feet in from the curb at a corner stop sign. It seems his vehicle missed hitting the corner of her home by less than a foot.

But... the code inspector was busy measuring her weeds, determining that the brush pile she had waiting to be picked up by her trash barrel was a community hazard and threatened her with a fine or jail term if she didn't get it picked up. Where was he when the drunk drove down the street? Perhaps, had he been there, he could have pulled the drunk driver over before he drove through the little old lady's fence?

Instead, he was across town with a friend of the little old lady, pulled to the side of the road fining her for having the light over her license plate burned out. Didn't it used to be a community service of police officers to install a new light bulb when they pulled a vehicle over for this particular problem? Isn't there still a sign on the side of their vehicle that says "To protect and to serve"?

Green Fence - Treatment or Algae?

I found this photo of a green fence on google in a search of "green fence" and thought it valuable enough to post here. The photographer isn't sure if the green is caused by the treatment the wood was given or by algae from a sprinkler.

I'm not sure either, though I'm betting it was a treatment. Either way, it's green enough for me to appreciate the value of the portrait of the fence and post it to encourage more folks to think GREEN when choosing their new fence.

Looking for a new fence? Consider recycled materials, green fencing or some other reusable item for fencing your yard. Don't use new - that's just a bigger foot print you're making in the sands of time.

Bailing wire and corrugated steel are preferable to adding size to your foot print.

Fence Options - Totalitarian Methods of Creating Property Boundaries

There's got to be a better way to put up a fence than the old post holes and kid-or-pork controlling wire fences I grew up with - but what?

After seeking a solution to the neighborhood problem of fencing, I retaliated. These every day, non-unique fence designs are okay for run of the mill neighborhoods where everyone complies with the same general sense of "looks-a-like" but my neighborhood isn't one of those. In fact, although there are a few boldly brilliant white picket fences around, the majority of neighbors tend to use found objects and refurbished junk as fences. Or, due to city code irregularities, the neighbors tie up a few old panels of 'something or other' to provide privacy for their activities, and listen to the neighbors and city hall squeal for a year or two before "mending their fences".

In one recent case, a family suffering from the residuals of cancer, abandoned their home for the greater requirement of health care, and the city (in their infinite wisdom) hired a local firm to clean their yard for them and bill them in accordance with some significantly well hidden rule of discrepancy - six months later. Whatever happened to neighbor helping neighbor? Couldn't someone have just cut their grass and left a note that said, "Hey, I'll be back next month to do it again. Hope things get better for you?"

But... Nah, that would be too much like caring for brother-man.

Back to fences - what about these novelties?

Bicycle frame fence reuses a throw-away and shows off a collection of classic bicycle frames. Or what about a Birdhouse Fence?

A tire fence might be interesting? Although some might think it dangerous or a health hazard, a ring of tires standing half buried around a residence and painted a variety of colors might be a fun and exciting way to preserve a property boundary. I could think of a few interesting ways to decorate a row of tires? Perhaps by bolting them together, you could get a double layer of tires for a taller fence?

If you like it county, here's a thought - boot fence? It could happen differently, but these boots have walked out their usefulness and arrived at a different stage of life. Fence post ornaments! what a way to live out your days as a boot?

Have a few athletes in your family? Dress up a great fence with athletic equipment, by hanging your favorite equipment on a privacy fence. Put up a basketball hoop and you've got a great way to entertain yourself on a summer afternoon.

Over the Green Fence - the Pasture is Greener

Fences in the neighborhood can be quite pathetic, but the alternative is... they could be quite darling and daring if all the neighbors decided to live a little on the other side of the green fence.

For instance, take this rickety old picket fence.

Please!

If you took it, the neighbors could contact the victim's fund and they'd have money to replace the picket fence with a few good fencing ideas, like the one I'm going to show you right below this paragraph. Consider for a moment if this neighbor, painted their rickety old fence and tacked it to a support post that kept it from being rickety. Cleaned up the weeds in front of the fence, and planted green grass on the other side of the newly painted picket fence. (Tom Sawyer - eat your heart out!)

The problem is, the white picket fence would not be as appropriate for this property as the fence it has already on the property. A white picket fence would be a larger ecological footprint for the owner to leave in the sands of time. And the home owner probably would feel very out of place behind a white picket fence with greener pastures.

Sometimes people choose to be who they are because it's comfortable and they don't know anything else, but sometimes they choose to be who they are simply because that's who they are.

Many years ago a woman in my parent's business organization showed up to a meeting and asked for a brighter red lipstick. She was wearing a mixture of orange and red clothing and claimed her lipstick (an unheavenly shade of red) wasn't as bright as she'd like it to be. My parents offered her a different shade of lipstick (they sold it as one of many products at that time), and explained that they could order any shade she liked. Before the woman left our home that evening, she had applied the new "gaudier" shade of lipstick.

Another woman of a more graceful appearance had explained to me a few days before that you have to be the kind of person you want to attract. You can't change those who surround you, but you can change yourself, and whatever you change yourself into, that's what you'll attract to you. I listened and when I saw the woman in red lipstick I considered her words.

We can't all be the high class social elite that attract only high class social elite to ourselves. What we can do, is be the best "US" we can be and attempt to attract those whom we desire to spend our time with. If we're failing, we need to change.

In short, if the pasture on the other side of the fence is always greener, perhaps you should change your fence. White picket fences - what a generational topic!

Over the GREEN Fence

There are times when designing a fence and painting it to suit the neighborhood, the community, or other specific causes means taking a risk and putting your imagination to work. Over the green fence came to mind. The past several months, I've considered the kind of fence I want to surround my personal property.

• Playful and fun kept coming to mind.
  
• Privacy and visually reductive was obvious.
• Colorful wasn't on my initial list, but it sounded good.
• Who could resist looking over the Green Fence into the neighborhood?
  
• Along came DIFFERENT and I couldn't resist.
• Then the City of Lamar started playing harassment games over their stringent city ordinances and I considered the response to the green fence and how much attention it would draw when the City starts harassing me over the color and style of my new green fence.
  

I could write a blog post about it - I thought - conjuring up images of various fence styles I could design to surround my somewhat modest home. Since the colors I choose probably won't be traditional neighborhood colors, the city control freaks might have an issue with my random color selections.

Of course the green fence above was my initial design, but then the concept of painting the house with brilliant colors and letting the neighborhood enjoy a more than exuberant design came to mind. Now, I probably should let you in on the secret that I have a few strange yard ornaments, like a footed bathtub water fixture, a toilet fountain, and fertilizer spreader - the old antique variety with a huge rake and old steel wheels. I'm seriously thinking I'll need to create a nice sign that says "Happy House" on a winding ribbon that runs down my fence.

If you have suggestions, leave them in the comments section. I'll consider them.

Oh? The toilet is turquoise and the claw footed tub is violet on the outside with yellow feet and the inside is a lovely shade of teal! They're going to make an awesome vignette in my front yard!