I had a little time over the weekend to start working on the shingles for the back wall. It’s the type of project that I visualize as being very quick and easy, but of course, it’s not. On every row I was reminded of every non-plumb surface on our house and had to deal with the almost-but-not-quite-right angles of cedar shingles. It should look great once it’s all painted, although it’s taking me a bit of time to get used having siding back there, having shingles instead of lap and having the corner trim, which is a new detail we had to add to be able to cleanly mate up the disparate siding materials.

Normally I like shingle courses spaced a little tighter, but having them larger is not only saving us a ton of $$, but it also sort of mirrors the unusually large exposure of our lap siding on the rest of the house. Lastly, the 11″ spacing was the only way I could work out to keep each electrical box within a single course. I didn’t want to have to put in the big pieces of wood that often surround lights and switches on newer houses. In the same spirit as removing all the conduit and sinking everything into the wall, I’m trying to make it all look less cluttered.

Looking like a real house now...

Although this weekend was a bit too rainy to get deep into the railing and post replacement, I did take time this afternoon to fabricate the new railings. The existing porch and step railings appear to have been homemade from 2x4s, so I ripped and sanded these to match. I also improved the design a bit by creating a channel to recess the top of the balusters, as well as adding a drip groove.

Apparently, I don't own a dado blade set. Also, I'm sure I'd be too lazy to ever swap it in and out anyway, so I just improvise...

I hadn’t yet managed to take my obligatory week “off” to work on the house, so I scheduled it for last week. On the Wednesday prior, I got a call from our mortgage broker saying that the underwriter at the bank was freaking out about our exposed plywood siding on the kitchen. They wouldn’t close the loan (scheduled for 6 days later) with it in that condition. I told him “no way,” that we were going to have to walk away from the deal, since finishing that was going to be a big, complicated mess that we weren’t prepared to do at this time. While it was ugly, the deep overhangs of our house did a really good job of protecting it from the weather, so I thought it was a ridiculous requirement. Anyway, after Stephanie and I talked it over that night, we decided that it made sense to go ahead and try to finish the siding, since we would be losing nearly $500 in our wasted appraisal, not to mention the $350 in extra interest that were were paying each month.

Now for some of the back story to help explain why we weren’t too excited about taking on this project and kept deferring it. First, here’s a picture (taken for my dad, so he could create our landscape plan), which shows the area in question. Yeah, exposed plywood isn’t the best idea, but it really doesn’t look bad considering that it’s been that way for 7 years!

One of these things is not like the others

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When we moved into our house, the front railings looked this:

A little mildew, but not too bad...

After about one year, we found that they had rotted out. Like so many things done by our previous owner, I’m sure it was fixed up with a nice coat of paint just before we bought the house. For a long time we got by with one railing, but it’s long since given up its ghost as well. I was supposed to be replacing all of this last week when I was taking time off of work, but a certain other thing got in the way. The goal is still to get these in place and painted before the winter rains start.

One railing and pot removed, so the one remaining is the "good" one

There is seriously no wood left in that thing!!

Sorry, I’m tired and that’s the best I could come up with! And technically, it was only one mommy.

This is a long overdue picture that shows all the plants that Stephanie got into the yard. It looks SO much better than before. Now that we have no more grass, all the sprinklers were disconnected, and we are 100% on drip irrigation. It’s a bit of a pain to set up, but it’s so nice to be able to target the water exactly where it’s needed. Oh, and the fact that we don’t have to nurture the gazillion new plants with manual watering is pretty great, too.

Why is there a picture of Butchart Gardens on our blog?

I never get tired of fixing and replacing broken things. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

A few nights ago, I noticed a small puddle under the sink. A check with a flashlight revealed that the water was leaking out the exit hole for the power cord. Hmmm…not good! I went to Home Depot the next day and bought another Badger 5. That night I asked the obvious question about whether it was wise to buy the same model as the one that just started leaking. A few reviews on Amazon led me to believe that eventual leaking was not unheard of for the Badgers.

Yesterday I stopped in at A-Boy and picked up this “Waste King” instead. It’s supposed to be more durable, but I guess we’ll know whether that’s true or not in time. If you look closely at the picture, you can see where I had to cut the temp/pressure relief pipe for the mini-tank heater, since it was too close (my fault) to the waste line from the disposal. I couldn’t put it back together with that pipe there, so I had to cut it and made a mental note that I need to fix it soon. We’ll see how long it takes me to get around to it…

And so far, we like the Waste King better than the Badger. It seems a little slower, but it is much smoother and far quieter than the Badger ever was. It’s a little classier, which is to be expected for an appliance with “Legend Series” in its name.

The Waste King!

6 1/2 years ago we demolished the chimney that used to run through our pantry closet. It was no longer being used, as we had switched to a high efficiency furnace and a tankless water heater, both of which vented out the side of the house. The bricks sat in a pile in the side yard for six months, until we moved them to the back corner, so that we could rototill and lay sod (now deceased) in the yard.

We had grand plans of one day building a pathway, an outdoor oven or some other amazing, artistic creation as soon as we got to the point of having everything else done on the house. Even ignoring the obvious fact that we will never reach the point of having everything else done, we also gradually learned an important lesson about bricks: glazing is important. These bricks were very rough and porous and completely lacking in any kind of weather-resistance. Presumably, this is because most of them were indoors and not exposed to the elements. We started noticing that our bricks were gradually disintegrating out in the yard. They were splitting and cracking after being exposed to water and freeze/thaw cycles. It became apparent to us that the bricks were useless and now just taking up a bunch of space in our yard.

Fast forward to this summer… after our landscape contractors finished up the tough work on our side yard, we were left with a huge pile of crushed rock. I estimated that we had 6 yards remaining (out of a total of 12), so math is clearly not our landscaper’s strong suit. Wanting to take advantage of it while we had it, we decided to go ahead and clear out the weeds and debris from the other side of our house and gravel both sides of the narrow walkway. Our house is only about 5′ from the property line, as is our neighbors’ house, so this area has been long neglected. I ordered a dirt/sod dumpster and spent much of this last weekend loading up our yard cart with dirt, wheeling it to the front of the house, carrying it down the stairs and rolling it up into the dumpster. Fun stuff! One of the cool things about the dirt/sod dumpster, though, is that concrete chunks and bricks are also acceptable materials.

Knowing that we would never want to pay for another dumpster, I made myself go out Monday night after work and spent 3 1/2 hours hauling all 820 or so bricks down to the dumpster. It took 33 trips:

• Load 3 buckets with 8-9 bricks each
• Load buckets into the yard cart
• Push yard cart 90′ around the house to get to the front steps
• Carry buckets down the steps (did we mention that elevated lots make all house projects even worse than they already are?)
• Dump buckets of bricks into dumpster
• Return to back yard and repeat until finished

It sucked, but it’s done. And with the bricks gone and the side strip cleared out, we have for the first time achieved the elusive goal of having no crap or other garbage lying around our house. I found bits and pieces of most of our projects on the side of the house…a bunch of old molding from the family room, a rusted latch from an old door, empty cans of paint, rags and stir sticks from the house painting, remnants of the old galvanized plumbing….all of it is gone. It’s actually a pretty amazing feeling to walk around the house and not see all the clutter!

Brick-a-brac

An archaeological dig in our own backyard!

Here’s a composite view of the yard made from shots taken along the edge of the roof. It does a great job of showing the shape of the path. Some of the curves look sharper than they really are, which is just an artifact of the photo merge. We do want to slightly change the way the path interfaces with the step, because the landscapers didn’t follow our lines. The step is supposed to extend beyond the path on both sides by about 6″.

A little easier to visualize

Here’s what the yard looked like on Saturday, after the 4th day of work. While there are lots of punch list items yet to be completed, the overall look is infinitely better than what we had going on before the project. This will look really cool when we have some plants!

Ready for action

Here’s where things stand after the third day of work. Unfortunately, I didn’t get quite enough concrete for the step, and they ran out while filling my form. So we grabbed some more, and I finished it up that night. Although it’s only one step, it provides a nice delineation between the area adjacent to the patio and the rest of the yard.

Now we can clearly see the outline of the path, and we’re pretty excited about how it looks so far. Only 10 yards of gravel to go, and it’ll be done. We are so glad not to be moving it all the way up into our yard ourselves!

Looking up...

and looking down