July 2008 Archives

So I ran to Lowe's this morning and snagged some more pavers.

The east side flower bed is complete now. I added a few impatiens but I don't know how well they will do since this area gets about 5 hours of direct sunlight per day. If they don't survive well then I should have used something else now shouldn't I...

I got the lawn cut and the rest of the impatiens and miscellaneous shit planted in the back by the deck flower garden. Alas, I couldn't weed G's vegetable garden since the 8 tomato plants are now large enough to make me want to gag even being near them. I have to stand like 5 feed a way to water the damn area now. *hurl*

I wanted to try and get one more thing done so I took a stab and the east entrance post repair.

I made a cut about 14" from the base thinking it would get the rotten previous repair and any other damage.

Damn... this shit was way rotten. It totally collapsed (pic above) when I tried to remove it.

It is a common fact that wood and saws hate me so even though I measured several times prior to removing, and several times after, the final cut new post was not quite right.

It didn't help that there's a small metal peg in the concrete base that the post has to sit on and to get a decent tight fit will be a problem.

It may actually be wiser to just install an entire new post all the way up to the overhang. Though I can't quite tell how large that would have to be without removing a lot of the wood up there... something I'd rather not do.

The sun eventually had the better of me and I added a few shims to make it solid for now.

I'll have to revisit this in a day or two, perhaps with another plan.

Holy shit do I hurt!

It has been a very long day of working on the landscaping. And man did it get hot and humid!

I spent about 90 minutes on a second pass, turning over the entire area and removing as much of the ivy roots as possible. Man are they invasive. I can see why the one contractor said it'd be a really pain to get rid of them on the side prior to any excavation. And this is less than a 1/3 of the other side.

The more you dig up the more there are. Just awful.

But you gotta admit, it looks a helluva lot better than it did at 9am this morning!

Tomorrow (or more likely Monday with the way el backo is hurty) I need to get some more simple pavers to add a basic border to control everything. I'll either Lowe's tomorrow or just "borrow" them from the weed garden area in the back yard. Need a few more backs of mulch too so it looks like I'll be back at Oakland Nursery too.

Installing the simple brick border really cleaned up the front.

Eventually, the border will be the same stone or pavers that will make up the west side retaining wall.

Ok. I am going to try and move now.

So I decided I'm going to scrape and paint the trim siding on the front windows that is peeling and in desperate needs of some love.

Alas, the holly bushes behind the magnolia are definitely in the way.

The damn things have sharp pointed leaves and pretty much have ripped my skin to shreds every time I go back here.

As usual, why there are here is questionable. I can see them maybe being a break-in deterent, but other than that, they are just an ugly nuisance.

They also aren't going to make it easy to ever work back here, especially on the windows.

So. I chopped them up. Ta-dah!

The rootballs are still there and can be dealt with next year, or whenever I decide what has to happen to the boxwoods.

I also decided to use what things were laying around the house and make a distinct border against the driveway. More on that later today.

Another area that has bothred me since I bought the house is the side by the driveway.

It is another overgrown useless space with English ivy all over the place and holly bushes here and there.

It was a major pain to clean up during the autumn since it really can't be raked and quite frankly, is a major eyesore for me from the street.

Not as bad as the west side's English ivy and poison ivy mess, but an eyesore nonetheless.

While I was walking through Oakland Nursery yesterday I kept getting so many idea and filed them away.

Well... once I was done with the front I figured I'd tackle cleaning this up in conjunction with repairing the wood posts.

I made a first pass (above) in removing the ivy. Talk about a PAIN IN THE ASS!!!

I basically had to take a serated blade and remove the shit as a layer, cutting underneath and making "rolls" of ivy. Awful! Awful! Awful!

So... from the door to the remaining yew is sorta cleaned up. There's a huge stump in there that I think may have been another yew or a much larger holly bush at one time (more likely). That'll have to come out since it is above ground and won't allow things to be planted there.

I'll make another pass later today or tomorrow and then put in another simple brick border to contain the mulch and plants.

Found under the layers of ivy were a golf ball, a rusted pair of tin snips, and a plastic dinosaur.

There were a few other balls and bizarre pieces of wood too.

I took a day off today to make up for my lack of work this past week on the front.

It is totally coming together.

I replaced the remaining siding pieces, installed an el cheapo mailbox, reinstalled the flag pole, and managed to get the new lights up.

That said, the real work was the 5 or so hours I spent scrubbing the siding down, trying to get all kinds of paint off of it.

A tiny bit of it was mine, but the majority of it was from before I bought the place.

I scrubbed it down twice, then went over it with a razor picking the as much of the flecks off as I could.

Some of the siding paint is already worn off, but I was trying hard not to scrape any of it off.

It looks a lot better.

I also repainted the metal hand rail. It was in pretty bad shape and I cleaned it up and used a "hammered" black finish which really hides the flaws and old rust pockets.

Unfortunately, the last time it was painted, they got black enamel on the siding and I was not able to get it off. I may have to use a solvent to do it.

Tomorrow will involve getting rid of the holly, scraping and priming the siding around the front windows, and hopefully getting the rotten posts on the side entrance repaired.

I want to run back to Oakland Nursery and get some more potted plants. They are all $15 each.

I've been on a Cowtown Public Library kick this week and finally got Across The Universe.

Damn! What a great weird little film.

Using Beatles songs and "characters" to tell a late 60s love story is really kind of something great.

Julie Taymor's direction is fantastic and I love how the film has these incredibly surreal moments due to the song lyrics.

Would spending $300 on a mail box be unwise?

It is so purty though!

And it can hold mail!!!

'No Values Voters' Looking To Support Most Evil Candidate

So prices have gone up here and there and for the most part, I've been unaffected by them.

Sure, gasoline is around $4.00/gallon but since I drive, I can't really complain about it and just pay the price if driving is what I want to do.

Groceries? I really haven't noticed that much of a price increase in much of what I buy from Giant Eagle.

But today...

Oh...

I got slammed with my first slap in the face of a price increase.

My morning coffee at White Castle went from $1.09 (though I was typically charged .98 since I'm a morning regular) to an insane $1.39!

The reason I stopped going to Tim Horton's and other places was because White Castle not only turned out to be a better cup of coffee... it was also cheaper!

And now...

I don't know what to do.

I'm a coffee addict.

I have been since I was a child.

And man oh man... my morning White Castle coffee is like one of the single most important events of my day.

I'm torn between saying "fuck off" and just getting a thermos and making coffee at home or just letting the man step all over me by charging me 20 cents more for exactly the same thing.

Yes.

The bad economy and inflation have just hit me in the face!

Well the rain never came.

In fact, it got a little windy but other than that, the sun came back out and it got hot again.

I ran some errands and then found myself at the always awesome Oakland Nursery.

I think I want to get 4 nice larger potted plants for the porch. They'll distract from the crappy post repair and will add a little color and warmth to the thing. Maybe I can find something that is animal safe and that can be pulled into the foyer during the winter months. That'd be even greater.

I'd love to have more plants in the house. We have this bamboo stick and that's about it.

Anyway, after I returned I set back up and got the ceiling painted and the siding done.

Now all that's left is some touch up tomorrow, and then nailing two of the siding pieces above the posts back on. I'll probably have to touch up some of that.

All in all, I'll probably spend some time after my massage appointment just scrubbing up the siding.

I did a great job of keeping it clean so what I'm really concerned about is trying to get Blobs of Painters Past removed.

Hell... I hadn't even realized how much cream paint is on the concrete. I'll wirebrush that off as best as I can then wash the whole slab down.

Still gotta figure how to mount the new lights without potentially damaging the wires underneath the siding. (Grrrr... why can't anything ever be easy?)

So I managed to get 4 hours or so in today.

I got the porch "ceiling" primed. Damn! Talk about taking forever. Major strikes against me for speed were the fact that it is actual slatted boards, has other layers of paint that cracked but wouldn't scrape off, and I don't twist and pivot well along my pelvis these days.

I ruined and entire, though cheap, brush, trying to make sure that a good solid coat of primer got into everything to create a new surface.

From what I can tell, the original color was sorta creamish. I'm really wondering what the house boards under the siding look like. This ceiling was cream, the posts had previously been a greyish color. I'd love to know the history of colors on (and in) this house.

Anyway, a decent coat of primer on the ceiling and a 2nd coat on the siding that's getting painted was applied.

I also got 2 coats of paint on the posts. I've decided I'm using the same Olympic white satin finish paint for the posts, the side, and the garage trim. Any siding will be painted in Olympic white flat finish.

I also accidentally shattered the globe on the light I didn't take down. Lovely glass shards all over the porch now!

The wind started picking up and the skies turned grey so I decided to clean up and call it a day for now.

We're supposed to have rain off an on all day until tomorrow.

So. I guess I can clean up some of the house and do what laundry I can.

Maybe I can even get some toys up.

It was a day of high Naladrama here at the Domicile.

However, I managed to put in a 10 hour day of physical labor. Something I haven't done in ages.

I'll be paying for it tomorrow. I'm already paying for it sitting here typing this.

Anyway...

Today was about scraping the entire ceiling and posts down as much as possible and trying to recreate bases for them.

The main problem, as you can see, is that the posts are not straight.

Years upon years have shifted them. And quite frankly, this project isn't about taking it 100% to perfect since I do not posses those skills.

Well...

I butchered a shitload of wood trying to cut these. I wasn't able to properly calibrate the miter saw and the blade is a bit off. I'll definitely have to fix that before any more major detail work is done on it.

I finally realized that due to the post misalignment, as well as the issue with the cement bases, simple easy cuts would not produce what I needed.

So...

I ruined some wood, but eventually I got something that while not perfect, would work.

Since there were gaps due to the posts and cement bases, I capped it off with the leftover quarter-round from the bedroom shoe molding job. I caulked the hell out of it with a paintable silicone too.

All in all, they look ok from the street.

And they'll look fine once the area is replanted and there are som pots and such on the porch.

I managed to get the posts and the bottom facing siding primed.

I started on the ceiling but realized it was almost 9 1/2 hours of work and my back just wasn't going to hold out.

So.

Depending on how I feel tomorrow... and the more than likely threat of rain, I'll finish priming and maybe... just maybe... get it painted.

(Yes. I decided to repaint some of the aluminum siding trim. I learned on the House of Love what a difference painting old siding can make.)

If you have lumber I no doubt can butcher it!

As usual, I'd hoped I'd pick up using the miter saw fairly fast but the thing is out of alignment right out of the box and that's not helping.

Unless I actually learn from a real person how to properly assess a wood repair situation and am told and shown the ways I could go about doing it I'll be nothing more than a half-ass amateur at best.

I'll take plaster repair and other interior non-wood related repair any day.

Ugh!

So.

Where do I begin.

I've spent the better part of 2 hours trying to clean up the garage so I can create a workspace to try and cut that wood.

After I got everything moved out and swept, I sorta made a decent place to work over the next few weeks. At least it will be out of the direct sunlight.

So.

Yeah.

Then I decided to put together the table and chairs I bought last month.

I got the table up to the deck to assemble and realized something wasn't right.

So.

Yeah.

I don't know when it happened.

I don't know how it happened.

But the entire glass table surface is shattered into thousands of fragments.

Isn't that lovely.

There goes that $130.

And... I still don't have a decent table now.

Frak!

My depression has gone to 11.

Porch

So The Domicile is pretty much an extremely simplified Craftsman style house. There are several in the Clintonhood that are totally bonkers Craftsman from top to bottom and they make me drool.

Alas, I'd say I'm on the economy side of Craftsman here.

Anyway, the lights I've picked for the front porch are retro-Craftsman, with extremely clean lines and angles.

The Garage

I got a small sample of exterior paint to try out before buying the many gallons I'll need.

The original garage goes more towards green, which is my most despised color. (I just don't like green and can't bring myself to paint it on anything. My mother doing my bedroom in awful green paneling when I was a child probably is the major cause.)

The bottom color is a bit lighter, and is the "Sauteed Mushroom" that I can close to using inside on previous occasions.

I honestly didn't realize it was that particular one. I was just grabbing swatches by color trying to think what would go with the awful green siding but be a bit more brown and earthy.

I think this may just work.

S'funny.

I lived there for almost 5 years.

I broke my back slaving away at making it nicer.

And...

It feels like a thousand years ago.

The current "moment" is the only thing that is every real isn't it?

Busy day today.

Front Porch

Would you believe it took almost 2 hours to get this down?

The screws that held it in were stripped. Some broke. And of course, the sun was directly beating down on me and it is 93 out today.

Sucked.

But it is down.

The siding around the windows on the foyer had obviously been painted over.

However, they didn't prime. At least it sure doesn't look like it.

There's only 1 layer... and a poor layer at that, of a crappy paint. Believe me. I know how to do this right. At least I hope it is holding up.

The areas where the lattice connected (above) are going to be a bit rough to blend in.

Yes. Both posts should be totally redone.

No. I'm not going to do that now.

I'll scrape and sand what I can.

The Roundup I applied is sorta-kinda doing its job. The weeds are all dying.

However, the English ivy doesn't look affected at all.

I'll dose it all again tomorrow.

I've never had Roundup not kill everything.

Domogarage

Since there were only 2 small areas (about 6" long and 2.5" wide) that were rotten, and the boards themselves weren't totally shot, I've decided to try and experiment and see if it works.

Finding matching slats will be hard but I'm trying a wood filler that I'll sand into shape. The first amount, to fill the larger gaps, is up.

It may work. It may not. I'm only out $5 if it doesn't.

Tomorrow: Garage cleaning and porch scraping.

I know I'm entirely too old for this kind of shit but...

I really want to play Edward Forty Hands at Botcon!!!

I think I could definitely do that better than playing Amy Winehands!

I didn't get any actual work done today.

I had a very physical day at work and my back just was not up to it.

And quite frankly, I wasn't up to the heat and humidity either.

However, I did get about $100 worth of wood to repair the garage and the other entrances. Nothing for the main garage "triangle" though.

If my back is willing, I hope to get the following done over the next four days:

- Reorganize garage to be able to better work

- Front porch lattice removed
- Front porch posts scraped, primed, and painted
- Front porch ceiling scraped, primed, and painted
- Recreate facade bases, prime, and paint
- Look around for new front porch lighting, install if I find something appropriate

- Cut back vegetation our the side entrance to ease working there
- Replace bottom 6-10" or so of each side entrance support post
- Recreate facade bases, prime, and paint

- Continue scraping rear of the garage
- Fully remove under the triangle trim and replace with new wood
- Get front garage window removed for repair
- Create new front window sill

That's a shitload on the task list but if I can get even 60% done... especially the front porch and side entrance things... I'll be able to focus on the garage.

Quite frankly, this wood repair is all new to me.

I have zero experience with any of this and all of my knowledge comes from reading on websites and books on how to do shit... not actually having done shit before.

Who knows... I could totally f this up. No doubt there will be much swearing this weekend.

But there is not try.

There is only do.

(And of course there is only Zool too!)

I didn't get any actual work done today.

I had a very physical day at work and my back just was not up to it.

And quite frankly, I wasn't up to the heat and humidity either.

However, I did get about $100 worth of wood to repair the garage and the other entrances. Nothing for the main garage "triangle" though.

If my back is willing, I hope to get the following done over the next four days:

- Reorganize garage to be able to better work

- Front porch lattice removed
- Front porch posts scraped, primed, and painted
- Front porch ceiling scraped, primed, and painted
- Recreate facade bases, prime, and paint
- Look around for new front porch lighting, install if I find something appropriate

- Cut back vegetation our the side entrance to ease working there
- Replace bottom 6-10" or so of each side entrance support post
- Recreate facade bases, prime, and paint

- Continue scraping rear of the garage
- Fully remove under the triangle trim and replace with new wood
- Get front garage window removed for repair
- Create new front window sill

That's a shitload on the task list but if I can get even 60% done... especially the front porch and side entrance things... I'll be able to focus on the garage.

Quite frankly, this wood repair is all new to me.

I have zero experience with any of this and all of my knowledge comes from reading on websites and books on how to do shit... not actually having done shit before.

Who knows... I could totally f this up. No doubt there will be much swearing this weekend.

But there is not try.

There is only do.

(And of course there is only Zool too!)

Today I measured the garage, side, and front for all of the wood I suspect I'll need for repairs.

I then moved on to the west side of the house.

The entire west side ground cover needs to be completely killed off.

I spent about 90 minutes or so soaking the entire area with 3 passes of Roundup.

There's so much poison ivy in there that I figured it best to try not to salvage any of the nicer ground cover and instead to just consider this a lost cause... one of many here.

Since I need to patch some of the concrete foundation of the porch all this up to the gas meter was going to have to be ripped out anyway.

I tried to avoid spraying the peony but if it dies it dies.

The lattice on the porch needs to come down and be scraped and repainted. From the looks of it, the wood has "shrunk" due to the weather and it has become disconnected from the house and the post in some areas.

I'm not sure what to do yet.

I don't dislike it.

Obviously, any replacement would likely need to be custome made.

Tomorrow will be my run to get enough wood to make it through to Monday, as well as caulk and a few other items.

Our milk experiment is a complete success!

Behold: Cottage cheese!!!

The Garage

So I spent the afternoon ripping off all the cedar shake on the front of the garage and some of the bad trim.

There's quite a lot that will need to be replaced and it really seems to be something that is either all or nothing due to the way the pieces overlap.

I still need to remove the window sill (above) and the other pieces of trim around the window but I'll do that when I'm ready to replace them.

Theoretically, the window can open. It is hinged to open on the horizontal but I think there's a nail holding it shut. Nothing the reciprocating saw can't handle.

I plan on removing the window and just cutting out a small corner enough for a heavy duty extension cord to go through. That way, we can put up a huge ass Christmas wreath on the garage during winter and it can light up and all.

I plan on gouging out the back window much the same so we can run temporary party lights and such for parties.

The Side Entrance

The bottom of the south post has obviously been cut and repaired before. Unfotunately, the whole thing is totally rotted out.

The north post, while not as bad, shows sights of rotting too.

I'm going to remove 24" from the bottom of each and then replace it.

I'll then do a simple decorative trim up above the seam that'll make the posts look a bit more visually appealing.

Once it is all painted again it should look great.

The Front Porch

I removed the rotten wood trim from the front porch post. This'll get a simple trim replacement and the show trim down to the cement slab to mirror the posts' tops.

So today was all about the pines and other clean up.

I spent hours chopping up and bagging the remains of the pine tree branches while Giga took the remains of the compost heap structure, as well as other miscellaneous wood and crap to the dump.

We borrowed Mr. T's chainsaw but it took about 20 minutes to even get it started and then G was only able to chop up a few tree trunks. We still have a bit to go but on the whole, everything is cleaned up and mostly bagged for pick-up on Thursday.

Alas, the rain is here and supposed to last until tomorrow morning.

If all goes well, I'll have the front of the garage removed sometime tomorrow afternoon.

My white female Betta died today.

I've had her a little over 2 years.

About 6 months after getting her she started exhibiting all kinds of genetic flaws.

Her eyes scaled over. Her top and back fins kept growing but became incredibly deformed. And she lost a lot of scales.

She couldn't swim well. And she couldn't see.

But I couldn't bring myself to euthanize her.

She couldn't come up for breath in her aquarium and so for the past 18 months or so she's lived in a small betta bowl.

I've changed the water twice a week. I've fed her by hand, coaxing her to eat flakes and to find them on the surface.

I changed her water this morning before I left for work and somehow I think that is responsible.

But... well... she lived a lot longer than she probably should have.

But I could never bring myself to put her down.

I could never do that.

Well I started scraping and cleaning the algae off the front of the garage when it became truly apparent that the entire top part (the triangle) and other trim needs to be completely replaced.

Yeah, I knew it a couple of days ago.

But honestly, I was really hoping for a simple scrape and paint with only minor wood repair.

Unfortunately, once again the previous owner's failure to maintain something is resulting in me now having to do far more work than I should have.

Basic maintenance. That's all it would have taken. Every 2 years or so you check to see how the paints holding up. How the weather is effecting things. And you fix what needs fixing.

Grrr.

So... yes.

The entire front cedar shake siding needs to be done.

Basically, I think I can remove the white trim pieces (and reuse them), which will expose all the old siding. Removing that'll be simple then.

Once down, I can see if I need to put some kind of new plywood underlayment up, or maybe just reshingle.

I should be able to be the new pieces in bundles so hopefully I can redo the garage for about a total of $700 or so, barring any other unforseen issues.

I may as well coordinate the front porch, side entrance, and garage wood repairs and painting at the same time.

Damn I'm gonna learn a shitload this time around.

So Saturday we got us a call from Skippy and he was heading out to launch some of his new birthday rockets.

Since I got so much done at The Domicile that day I didn't feel guilty about wasting the late afternoon.

These new rockets are gimondous!

The one has this little compartment in which small objects can be placed. Next time... I'm launching a small Transformer PVC or Spychanger up.

There was lots of sweet sweet rocket love with tons of rockets being launched.

However, as with last time, the smaller rocket ended up taking off so fast and far and ended up out of the park... likely falling in the Olengrungy River or onto SR315.

This is how NOT to launch a rocket:

So the other weekend we met Annette at Lisa's wedding party.

Seems that Annette owns the Elicimod... the Domicile's mirror twin 2 blocks down.

It is the only house that I've been able to find that is the same floor plan as mine. But it took forever to even notice since it is a mirror image!

I've got a contractor coming tomorrow. I want a quote to dig a trench and run a PVC drain pipe from the deck to the sidewalk so I can drain the back of the house out front.

And then, to put up a similar retaining wall like Annette along the side (below pic from Autumn 2007).

I think it'll look a thousand times better and I can landscape and such with perinneals or small shrubs.

So I got about 3 hours in today on the west side and the rear of the garage.

I was only able to do about 7 feet up or so on the west side since the dirt there wouldn't hold a ladder right now.

However, the back has the concrete so I was able to get much higher and work.

The rear window sill is totally shot and rotten through and through. This should be fairly easy. (Says the guy who's never done this kind of repair before!)

However, I was not prepared for the rot above the window! I went to scrape and the whole thing just totally collapsed.

Of course, Baby Jesus' gift to mankind... duct tape... offers a temporary patch so water will not make it any worse.

The skies decided to turn dark around 6 and the winds started going crazy and whipp'n up my tarp so I decided to call it a day.

Weather permitting there'll be more scraping tomorrow. But it is pouring something fierce right now.

So I started scraping the garage down today and man oh man what surprises I found.

I need to decide how much of the wood in the front I'm gonna replace. All the stuff above surrounded by yellow should more or less be totally redone. Some more than others.

I really had hoped to do as little as possible but I don't know now.

If I can find the pieces of wood shingles precut it should be easy to replace the bad ones.

I ripped off all the rotting wood around the window.

Basically, from what I can tell, the previous owners did not maintain anything here. This garage should have been sealed and painted with a decent paint and then every few years touched up as needed.

You can't leave an old wooden garage just "there" and expect it to have any staying power.

I won't even go into the wood down at ground level. Ugh.

Tomorrow I'll scrape the rest of the front and then the west side.

So it was a rainy grey and relatively cool Independence Day.

The early afternoon was all about the usual Doo Dah Parade and Browning cookout.

It pretty much rained the entire parade but I was impressed with the number of people that watched from the sidelines as well as participated. The weather sure wasn't inviting.

Came home and then went across the street to the block cookout.

Apparently, every year J. buys and blows up thousands of firecrackers.

He had this 25-30 ft roll of about 16,000 firecrackers.

It too about 6 minutes to blow the entire roll.

Hell... my camera even ran out of space at 4 minutes.

After that, I briefly stopped by Carina and Skippy's party but they were all heading down to Whetstone for the fireworks.

Not one for big crowds, I did my usual anti-social thing while Giga went with them.

Yeah. I came home and went to bed.

Fun, ain't I?

So much fun that my July 5th will consist of cutting up hundreds of branches and placing them in compost bags all the while waiting for the BBC to air the series finale of Doctor Who "Journey's End".

Yes.

I is the lame.

On more levels than any human can possibly imagine.

Today's the day when we remember President Whitmore and Captain Hiller's successful defense of the Earth against invading alien attack.

May it never happen again.

Well it is raining again. Joy.

I've got 3 parties to go to tomorrow and I've decided to make 3 big old bowls of mizeria.

We've got Doo Dah at noon, and then across the street at F & T's, and the down a few blocks at Skippy's, followed by (if I can stay awake) fireworks down at Whetstone.

And it'll probably be raining the whole time too.

---

Set up a meeting next Wednesday to get an estimate on how much it would cost to put up a retaining wall along the west side of the house and a 2nd one to put up a stone retaining wall around the front of the property (essentially removing the hill) and leveling it all while ripping up the concrete walkway and doing a paver or flatstone walkway to the sidewalk.

Maybe...just maybe... it could be around $3000 or so. *hopes*

---

There's nothing quite like coming home at lunch, letting The Hoont out, and all of a sudden realizing there's a shitload of pine limbs in your yard!

Damn AEP! That was fast!

Yes. The bare and generally ugly pine trees at the back of the property are gone! They even cut one down all the way to the ground. Why they didn't do the other is beyond me.

Anyway, there'll be many trips to the dump this weekend.

Need a chainsaw too.

Previously, it looked like this:

If the pine trees had been full and down to the ground I probably would have left them.

While we did have over 10" of rain in June, a record for Cowtown, I was very happy I didn't have any in the basement.

Many neighbors had various degrees of water coming in as did Max Power and EB.

Well... today I noticed that while I didn't have water per se, moisture has been seeping up through some cracks.

I really can't complain though.

I took advantage of feeling pretty good back-wise today, as well as the rare sunny (and sorta cool) day to get working on my various projects.

Front Yard

I had cut down the one yew a few weeks back and decided I'd clear out the rest and once the porch is repaired, start the landscaping from scratch.

I spent about 30 minutes digging but I couldn't get 2 of the rootballs out. The one near the steps was fairly easy.

So... I used Ye Olde Trusty Reciprocating Saw with a wood blade and managed to get the 2 problematic ones cut out, but not entirely removed. That'll have to come later.

And so the yew remains are waiting for pick up Thursday.

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Garage

I had dug out the compost pile a couple of weeks ago (which lead to my recent back issues again) and Giga got the wood framing removed.

I can start cleaning up the dirt and get started on the scraping and wood repair.

Giga's got a dump run in his future. We've got all this to go, as well as the contents of the garage's "attic".

I've got the one garage gutter temporarily draining to the side of the property for now.

This'll stay up until I have to remove the gutter to scrape and paint.

I've decided that once I replace this gutter, as well as add one to the other side of the garage, I'm going to tie them together towards the northeast corner of the garage and just drain them to the rear of the propery beyond the shed.

That'll save me trenching to the front of the property to drain to the street.

Tomorrow I'll hopefully get started on scraping and remove some wood, taking measurements so I can get an idea of how much wood I'll need.