Cat Door Under Basement Stairs

From Blogger Pictures

We have been having a hard time coming up with a spot for our cat box that is accessible for the cat but NOT accessible for the dog. Sarah had the great idea to put it under the basement steps and restrict the dog's access with a cat door. This is the result.
This is one of those great projects where I didn't have to spend a penny: I had enough scrap wood, nails, glue, and even the hinges lying around to do the whole thing.
For the curve of the cat portal, I used a gallon paint can as the outline. Seems to work fine.
Now the dog won't have a perpetually renewing buffet.

Stone Wall for a New Garden

It's been a while since I either did or posted any projects but the dry spell is now over (at least for now!).
Right after we built the house, we had a giant, 3-story pile of dirt and stone. We spent a few hours pulling out the best stone and piling it in the yard. Having a pile of wall-stone is great, but boy, can it ever get in the way. I built a garden wall a couple years a ago with quite a bit of it but still had some left over.

We moved the left over stone to a pile on the side of the yard and there it sat for a few years. In the meantime, the brush really grew up around it and it just plain looked like hell. (I don't have a "before" photo, but trust me.)
Finally, Sarah and I pulled ourselves together and first decided what to do (the hard part IMO) and then started. This new wall for a garden or patio is the result. Each end is punctuated by quite a large stone and the two arms curve a bit to meet at a point in the back.
We're not sure if this will become a perennial garden, a seating area, or a new outdoor kitchen with a cobb oven. Regardless of what it becomes in the future, though, the work had to be done so that we could have fun going on to the next steps.
I learned quite a bit about building stone walls about 6 or 7 years ago when I helped build a large stone retaining wall in a construction project at our Waldorf school. I got to work with an experienced wall building who taught me a lot of tricks about not only putting the wall together but "seeing" the stone, moving the stone (a hand-truck is great), and modifying the shape of the stone with a maul and a cold-chisel (sometimes just a few chips can make a stone fit perfectly).