First Mow

It's been about two months since the new lawn was installed. It received its first mowing yesterday. It looks pretty good. Here is a before and after picture but it's thrown off by the amount of sun in the first picture.

We are approaching the big wedding weekend, which is only a few days away. The stress factor is arising.

Good-Bye Dead Patch

 Today was another step forward in some major yard work. I have been fighting with my Wall Street Parking Strip for over 20 years. Despite my intense efforts to water this strip, the grass refuses to stay green.

Here is how it looked as of this morning.

And here it is how it looks now.

We chose this low maintenance alternative after talking to various neighbors and seeing the results from our previous landscaping where we laid smaller gravel around the garage and Carriage House.

With the help of our neighbors, Fred and Cole Anderson, we have transformed that patch of dead grass to this low maintenance strip of rock.

Here are some pictures of the process.

I'm quite pleased with the aftermath of this project. I'm waiting to see if there is any backlash. Generally, those of us who live around the park prefer green space but technically, this little strip is not "on the park".

Water Bill

I have been dreading this day.

The bill from the city utilities department finally showed up and as expected, it was quite high. It was, in fact, about double out usual bill of $125.00.

I have been watering the new lawn twice a day since they laid the sod. Plus I've been trying to keep up with my regular watering schedule for the front and east yards. The east yard, hidden in the back by arbor vitae, looks great. The front yard, the one anyone driving by can see, looks pretty sad. It has tints of green to it, but many other shades of brownish-green and bare spots where no grass grows. 

Year of the Yard

It's been a busy month here at the house and I have yet to post any of the improvements.

Let's start with the new deck. We hired Shawn to build us a deck in front of the Carriage house. Here is the photo progression from start to finish.

Isn't that awesome?! It's our new favorite place.

Let's move on to the west side yard. It started out looking like this.

And now,

We are loving this new yard. I've been watering the hell out of it since it was laid in on the 13th. I am not looking forward to seeing our next water bill. After dropping $10K on this project, I'll be okay with a high water bill.

We also laid some sod in the other back yard by the new deck. We also completed the little area where I've been burning the hell out of that damn tree trunk root. We repainted the arbor that blocks the junk space between the garage and Carriage House.

So, here's how that looks.

The last thing we had to do was build a gate for that little opening there. Also, Susan has been prepping the garage for some touch up paint.

And there we have it. We're pretty happy with the whole thing. Stand by there's even more to come.

BiCenQuinQuagenary

 In the news, they refer to this year's Fourth of July as the Semi Quincentennial. That's half of 500 years. I prefer BiCenQuinnQuagenary because it's more mellifluent. At least, it is to me.

We spent the day doing little stuff around the yard, culminating in a visit to our neighbors, Tammy and Lou, who have a pool. We had a great dinner and a nice visit.

We were pretty full afterward and we weren't sure we wanted to go down and see the fireworks downtown. But fireworks won out.

We drove downtown and pulled into this parking garage right by the park. We drove to the top floor and there were already a bunch of families up there.

Susan was apprehensive about going there but the gates were open, so we didn't have to pay, and it was a pretty good place to watch the fun. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if the lights in the garage had been turned out. 

So Happy Birthday, America. I'm awfully glad I live here.

Stump Planter

What a busy day! I'm quite spent.

First of all, it's my mom's birthday. She would have been 93 today. She probably would have hated that.

It's been five years since she died and today, we finally got around to spreading her ashes. We put them in the Little Spokane River from the Bridge out at the Robinson property.

But prior to that adventure, we had a crew from A-1 Tree Service come to clean up our maple tree.

Here's before and after.

They took out a lot of dead branches and ones that were getting near the house. From looking at the pictures, it doesn't look like that much of a difference. They pulled out a lot of dead stuff

We also had the guy level off the top of the stump in the back of the house.

Now it is ready for me to create a little planter out of it.

I used my router to carve out the initial circle and now I'm going to start drilling some holes and hopefully carve out a space we can place a pot full of flowers.

In the process of doing all that, I have really worn myself out. It's great to be in shape.

Also, progress was made today on the Carriage House Deck.

Last Day of June

We had a very productive day.

Susan has zeroed in on a new area of the house to paint so the scraping has begun,

I wasn't really planning on it, but I found myself smack dap in the middle of the arbor project.

Here's the arbor as of the start of the month.

Here it is after todays' toil.

I am for the most part, pleased with the results. Moreover, I'm happy it is almost complete. The only thing remaining is a gate on the open side.

The old lattice was getting pretty ratty and cracked. We pulled it off and Susan repainted the frame. 

I then got to work replacing the lattice. The new stuff was a much tighter weave which better helps hide the crap stored behind it.

I will admit here that I made one rookie mistake putting up the lattice but I'm not going to say what it is. As you can see from the pictures, it looks pretty damn good!

For the sake of reference, here is a picture of the label from the lattice we purchased at Lowe's Home Center.

Root Eradication

My main project today was to make some progress on that damn root.

Here is how it looked a few days ago.

Here is how it looked at the end of today.

I am fairly happy with the results, but I still have a lot of work to do. You can see I have a large section of it cut out. That is primarily thanks to Mr. Sawzall.

I started the day with another fire. I was dowsing the root with charcoal lighter fluid when I thought of a new plan of attack.

I got a log and placed it on top of some carefully laid kindling on the side of the root. My hope was, it would burn for a while, creating some hot coals on the root that would smolder for a while.

It kind of worked but not as completely as I was hoping for.

By now, I've burned enough of it away to cut through with a long course blade on the Sawzall.

Tomorrow, I hope to work on the section next to the sidewalk but I'm going to let that burn a little more.

Productive Friday

 I had a bunch of little tasks I wanted to get done today. 

The first one was to clean up a wiring project from about 20 years ago. I just did a sloppy job back when I did some wiring and I've been wanting to finish it. The project in the boiler room spurred me on to make it all good. So, that's done.

Starting back on June 6th, I started a project of eliminating this giant root from my life.

I've been going out every so often and throwing lighter fluid on the chunk of root and trying to burn it away. The picture above is from my first day back on June 6th.

Here is where I am as of today. You might think it looks like I'm making pretty good progress. You would be mistaken.

I tried digging into the root today and I came to realize that this thing is huge. I'll bet it's 10 inches thick. I'm maybe a quarter of the way burned through parts of it. 

However, I am not deterred. I will continue to make little fires as often as I can.

Also today, I mowed the front lawn, tidied up the Carriage House a bit, and got some left-over stuff from our yard sale over to a yard sale at Mark's. My old bike is gone and I'm fifty dollars richer.

Broiler Project - Day 3

11:15 AM: Rick and his brother showed up around 9ish this morning and got to work on the last section of the boiler. I just went down to take a picture.

There are a lot of sparks coming off that blade. I'll tell you one thing. These guys are earning their every penny of the five grand he quoted me.

4:00 PM: They are finishing up. I just helped them load a very heavy section of the main boiler into the trailer.

Here are the pictures that a worth a thousand words.

Boiler Project - Day 2

8:45 AM: The guys who are removing the boiler are down there and we are just waiting around for the sound of loud saws cutting it up into small, removable pieces. I shall again be chronicling their progress as they fill up the trailer currently parked in the driveway.

I kind of have to hang around and be on hand in case these guys need something from me. So, I'm looking around for things to do while they work.

 

I have decided to work on my whitewater canoe. We had it in the yard sale on Saturday. It got lots of looks but no takers. I'm going to post it online and see if I can get a sale that way. I'm asking $500.00 and I'm pretty firm on that. There is a little wiggle room because one of the air bags in it, used to displace water, has a leak. I found one of the leaks but either it is not holding or there is another.

I tried selling this thing a couple of years ago and got no takers then too. I had it sitting in the back yard and a squirrel ran over it and put a hole in the airbag. I've tried a couple of times to repair it but I'm really going to tear into it today and see if I can solve this issue.

I'm not having a lot of luck finding the leak. I've been out there flooding it with water, looking for air bubbles and I'm not having any success.

My next step is to take it over to the pool and get it under water to look for the leak.

11:49 AM: They are making progress, but it looks like it's slow going. Here's the latest photographic evidence.

Rick told me he plans to be finished today. That remains to be seen.

1:15 PM: It's coming along. They have to run out and get a cutting wheel because they can't cut through the network of pipes on the inside of the boiler. Here is another picture.

That group of tubing in the middle of the casing is what they are having trouble cutting through. It's really a mess down there right now.

2:43 PM: I finally found the second leak in my airbag. This is a huge victory for me. I took the bag across the street to the pool and dunked it every way I could think and couldn't find any bubbles. So, I brought it back home and filled it up with as much air as I could get into it.

I took it back to the pool and found the leak almost immediately.

The bag is currently sitting in the Carriage House with a patch in place and curing. I'll give it another coat of glue in a bit and then re-install the airbag into the bow of the canoe tomorrow. 

I really feel good about completing this task that has hung over me for two years.

I should point out that the second leak is in a place that I don't think was caused by a squirrel. It's close to a seam near the bow of the boat, way up under cover. So, what I'm saying is, I'm not sure how that leak got there. AND I hope it's the only other one.

4:57 PM: They are done for the day down there but not finished. They will be back in the morning for what they hope will be half a day.

 

All that's remaining is the main vessel. They still have to cut it up.

That's a good day's work.

Boiler Project - Day 1

Say good-bye to our old boiler. It is going the way of the Doodoo starting today. 

The new boiler is a combo unit that will run the heating system as well as instant-on hot water. It will hang on the wall just behind the present boiler.

You might note all the boxes and crap stored around the boiler. We have since cleaned that all out and now it looks like this.

Much better.

The guys who are removing the boiler showed up at 8:00 this morning and are currently getting set up. They are hanging visquine all around the room to create a protective barrier to contain the asbestos. Apparently, the little asbestos fibers will start flying as they cut this boiler into many smaller pieces.

I will update here as the day progresses.

12:38 PM: Not much has been happening down in the Boiler Room as far as loud noises. They have the room sealed up which I understand takes some time. Rick told me he expected this to take two days. So, I don't have much to share at this point. Standing by!

3:00 PM: I've been hearing some noise down there. What surprises me is the noises they are making are not very loud. I figured it would take a lot of noise to get that boiler out of there.

4:17 PM: Rick is finished for the day. The asbestos is abated.

I was not expecting this. They pealed all the asbestos off the casing of the boiler. I just figured they would cut the whole thing into pieces, bag it up and haul it away.

So, he'll be back tomorrow to do the cutting into pieces part.