Welcome to our tree family

We added a new tree in October and we now have 3 more to go with it! I took advantage of a sale at our local nursery and the shrinking window of our area's planting season to quickly cross a few trees off our gardening to-do list. We saved a bit by having 3 delivered at once but then spent that and more to have them planted for us - they were too big we knew we wouldn't be able to easily do it ourselves. And so I'd like to introduce you to our new cast of deciduous characters:

The Sioux Crepe myrtle, which has beautiful bright orange leaves right now and, we hope, will have cotton candy pink flowers all summer. Plus gorgeous peeling bark.

The only problem with this one is that we wanted it installed where our old oak tree was but apparently after over two years and with the stump chipped down to nothing, there were still large roots. So the planter, with our begrudging approval over the phone, have to move it much farther down than we wanted.

 Which means it is directly under the power lines....Ugh.

We hope to find time (yeah right...) to hack the root up and move it back closer to the corner of the sidewalk before it gets too big.

Tree number two: October Glory Red Maple:

 Keeps its leaves a beautiful autumn color late into the year. As, indeed, it does:

Right now it is super close to the hawthorn, which we plan to dig up and move closer in to the left side of the house to mirror the cherry tree on the right.

And finally, a Burgundy Bell Maple:

Planted in the back of the house near a small, dying tree that we plan to chop down and which will hopefully one day grow up to be a good shade tree.

As you probably guessed from this post, these trees sort of represent the start of having to do *more* work in the yard. Our neighbor, a landscaping expert, gave us some inspiration and we ran with it. At least in theory. We're not exactly sure when we will get around to it but at least we have a bit of a plan.

And the dryer follows

A few days after our washer arrived, the dryer made an appearance. They were supposed to arrive at the same time but a day or two after we ordered our set fro Home Depot, we got a call from LG HQ to say that we had accidentally ordered a mis-matched set. Clicking through from thewirecutter (might as well support them by clicking through) was for the LG 7.4 cu feet dryer with steam, ENERGY STAR with an Energy Star rating. The trim around the door is light silver. 

The washing machine had darker trim, making this other LG 7.4 cu feet dryer with steam dryer, which cost $50 more, a better match.

D had a split second on the phone to decide what to do, and went with the closer match so they would look better beside each other. Unfortunately, we didn't realize the new one is not ENERGY STAR rated and therefore not eligible for a rebate, costing even more in real cost than the extra $50 (and also presumably using more energy). After reading the manual (which is the same for both), it is missing a button that turns on a more energy-saving drying. Otherwise they literally are identical, so I have no idea why they bother selling both models at all (and why ours was more expensive just for darker trim).

Anyway, that switch meant the dryer delivery was delayed so that's why it made its grand appearance a few days later. When they installed it, D did a quick sweep up the dryer vent as far as he could reach with a duster (but just to the first bend and without the whole snake contraption). The install took about 2 minutes. Here they are together.

Nothing much to say about it. The drum has a light (which, for some reason, photographs very strangely even though to the eye, the white balance for both lights is about the same). I haven't played with any of the steam settings yet, so basically the only thing to say about it is "yup, it dries."

The washer is dead, long live the washer

After two previous near-death experiences that would probably have cause most people to replace it, our washing machine became gravely ill again a couple of weeks ago. It wasn't technically dead, just agitating very poorly. We decided it was finally time to invest in a new one. D made a strong argument for a front loader despite my vow to never give up on top-loading. As almost always happens when we want to invest in an electronic, we turned to the wirecutter's recommendations (which also explained why top loaders are less than ideal as front-load technology has become so much better). We decided their reasoning was sound and proceeded to order the recommended pair, the eloquently named LG WM3770HWA and its mate. There was a complication over the drier (more on that later), staggering our delivery dates a bit. So for one weekend, we went from this:

 to this:

There are lots of fancy shmancy settings that, even after reading the manual, I have no idea how to use (seriously, I cannot figure out the difference between "extra rinse" and "rinse and spin" and still don't really know when to use the various sanitary/steam/"allergiene (TM)"settings. But it has lots of overrides so I can get exactly what I want, has a "cold" wash that adds extra time but is more energy efficient and equally as cleaning, and has its own water heater so that we can actually, for once, wash our cloth diapers in actual hot water (our old washer could only use the temperature out of the water heater, which for safety reasons we leave at 120 degrees). It spins out much more water than our old washer, which means things are almost dry before they ever touch the dryer. It's energy star too, which is good for saving power and also for the rebates we're eligible to claim.

One annoying negative is that the door opens with the hinges on the left, which is not changeable. It blocks the way to the dryer. The hoses are too short to switch the order (i.e. move the washer to the left). The only solution we've come up with is to buy another laundry basket, move the wet clothes to the basket, then drag it over and load from the basket into the dryer. I'm sure we'll get used to it, but it's pretty irritating.

The big win is the surprise at the bottom. I knew I wanted to put the unit on pedestals because the added height makes it a little easier to load/unload. For only $100 more than the cost of the pedestal, thanks to a sale, I got a "sidekick." It's a tiny washer under the big washer. It uses its own water and settings, so I can run a hot load above while running a cold load below (or just a load below - it doesn't need the top to be on in order to run). I have no idea if it will be worth it in the long run, but the novelty right now is huge. So far I've cautiously upped the ante on what I've tested, even venturing to some hand knits that I would never mix with regular laundry. This might save me from having to hand wash as much as I do now. I also plan to try it on cloth diapers for those times we have one or two and don't want to wait until we have a full load (like this morning when I discovered last night's diaper up in the girls' room after we did the full cloth diaper load last night). D's extra muddy bike clothes will also get the sidekick treatment.

I had planned to write this post up on Saturday, not Monday, so there would be more suspense before the dryer arrived but...

Stay tuned as I put it through its paces.

Welcome, Newcomer

A new little tree arrived this week and we finally got around to planting it - a 7-foot or so tall Japanese Snowbell, Styrax japonica. A friend of our botanist neighbor wanted to find it a home and even brought it to us for free - with all the trees that have come down around here lately, we never say no to a new tree.

So finally the hole was dug and the tree planted:

Here it is, with the as-yet-untouched mulch pile where our old tree once stood.

 If we are lucky and good caretakers, it can grow up to about 30 feet tall with a 10 to 25 foot spread.

Better yet, it will get white flowers like this on it:

It certainly won't take the place of our fallen oak or the 8 trees removed from the vacant lot, but a fragrant flowering (and free!) tree can't be a bad thing.

The actual story about ants

In what is apparently becoming an annual occurrence, we got ants this summer. They invaded our kitchen via the wall near the stove, and even though we kept spraying bug spray both inside and out and attempting to fill holes, they kept finding ways in. We suspect there is a small ant-sized gap behind the wall-mounted cabinets, so we can't get to that without some serious construction. We did our best to take away any temptations, but with two small children, the kitchen disaster each morning was a feast for them most days. But we did our best, trying to use Soft Scrub each evening to get rid of any possible food residue and meticulously put away food. Fortunately their infestation was mostly limited to surface access, and they didn't get into our cabinets where, let's say, we aren't the most diligent about sealing items (for example we used to put all our cereal into tall air-tight containers, which works if you have one or two open boxes of cereal, but not when you have five, as seems to happen lately with our toddler's ever-changing requests). There was that day we left a just-opened box of Honey Nut Cheerios out while we were at work. That was fun for them. Oops.

We were almost ready to give up and call in professionals, especially when we saw them starting to build a home at the edge of our kitchen sink. Then D did a little reading and decided to try one more do-it-yourself solution, a cotton ball soaked in a solution of water, borax, and sugar (stored in a well-labeled container, in keeping with poison-control guidelines).

The idea is to use enough sugar to get the ants to want to eat it, and enough borax to kill them afterwards, but not so much borax that they can taste it. We left a small cotton ball on the counter just at the point where they crawled from the wall to the counter (the red line is the ants' approximate path and the blue ball represents the cotton ball).

For a few days, it seemed like we may have had more ants, but they all just stopped at the ball and then turned back around, so they didn't venture into the rest of the kitchen. They found their food (the sugar) and that was sufficient.

Eventually, their numbers shrank. After about a week of no ants, we removed the cotton ball.

That was about a month ago...

I think they're gone!

Ants are not the story

So we had ants. It was bad. We got rid of them. But that's a separate post entirely. For the purposes of this post, the only important fact to know about the ants is that we discovered they were trying to make a home in what was apparently accessible space between the sink and the counter. We sprayed some water in there and this is what our sink looked like.

 Ewwwww....(though not as bad as last year's ant infestation).

It turned out that the caulking around the sink was moldy and barely there - something we probably should have noticed years ago and re-caulked frequently. Caulk, and trying to create a nice "bead" always sounded very intimidating. It wasn't our first try at it. But it was pretty close.

 D did all the work while I entertained the kids. First out came the old stuff, totally black (it's supposed to be clear):

Then to the caulk gun! We considered buying a brand that came in a regular squeeze tube, but it needed at least 24 hours to cure. This one needed only an hour or two (though we left it overnight). Given it's our kitchen sink and we have a kitchen disaster after each and every meal, we really couldn't go that long without the sink.

 There's the caulk line:

 And the final touch to get it just right:

Before the clear caulk dried out and while he was on a roll, D did the same thing with our bathroom sink upstairs. We didn't take before pictures, but it was already a little black and dingy. Here it is, refreshed:

And finally, it was time for the bathtub. Funny enough, this bathtub project had been on our to-do list already and we'd purchased caulk and acquired the necessary tools just in time for that tree to fall on our house and distract us from smaller projects. Now with two additional re-caulks already complete, it was time for the tub. The caulk was 5-years old and pretty dingy - no amount of scrubbing or bleach seemed to clean it, and it was starting to peel in places.

So scape the old stuff:

 No more  caulk:

And...voila! A bright white bathtub line again! It really looks so much better now. I think D managed to caulk everything that could be caulked. Hopefully we're good for another 5 years or so!

See? This post wasn't about ants.

The next one will be.

Fair warning (but actually, there are no scary pictures, so don't worry).

We're still here...Now with Purple!

Yet another long stretch of no progress combined with a struggle to take pictures left a lot of readers (all three of you) in suspense about the room. Well wait no longer. It is finally (mostly) back to some semblance of normal.

After the mid-August drywall installation another 10 days or so passed with no progress, partly because we went on vacation and partly due to bad planning on the part of the contractors. Then in late August they painted, finally. Our big "upgrade" from this chaos is that we let our pre-schooler select a color for the alcove, since there was a discrete set of walls and an obvious place to end the color change (and it wasn't like we had enough green in the can anyway so they'd have to buy a new gallon). No surprise that she picked PURPLE! She picked Sherwin Williams Dahlia and we compromised by going one shade lighter (which was plenty dark, as we learned from the neon green in the rest of the room) to Awesome Violet (SW 6815). To my surprise, we still had our light blue ceiling paint and they were able to blend the line so the ceiling is still all sky blue. That section now has no clouds of course (and probably never will) but at least it all goes together.

They installed new baseboards and other small things as well. The window wasn't ready from the manufacturer so the hole stayed boarded up and the corner stayed dark (I swear I took a picture from that day but I can't find it anymore).

There was a redo on the baseboards (they were about a half inch taller than the existing ones) that delayed us yet another few days while they waited for some rain to stop (all their cutting equipment had to get set up outside) and then because they failed to plan for store closures on Labor Day. Then finally, finally, they fixed the baseboards and framed the window (though it was still boarded up...).

And then Lo and Behold, just last week (7 weeks after the tree fell on our house, if you're keeping score), the window was ready and the room was done!

Of course by now we had completely lost the curtain hardware (more is on the way!). And another funny problem is that the outlet (seen above in the lower left of the picture) is now covered by the corner bookshelf. They must have mounted it in a slightly different place than it was originally and it's now no longer accessible when the furniture is back in its original place. Darn. The contractors also weren't nearly as picky as I am on their paint work, so I did a little touching up on the edges myself.

But at least this place is starting to look normal again! We have a new rug (the other one had so much glass and wood on it that I would always have been a little worried no matter how much we vacuumed it and shook it out). Toys and books are all finding their way back to their original homes. And the curtains can probably go back up this weekend.

 7 weeks. 7 long weeks.

(This is not quite the end of the story - there's a bit more outside work to discuss another time...)

Progress at last

After three days of fans and heaters, the water people judged we were dry and took their equipment away. And then we waited. And waited. Furniture was still scatter at inconvenient spots around the rooms, making toys, crafts, and books inaccessible. Insulation fluff still fell on our heads. We moved the kids back into their room, where at least there beds were under real ceiling and away from falling insulation. We vacuumed piles of fluff daily - it seemed to make its way everywhere.

Our adjuster finally came over the following Monday to look over everything and agreed to our repair plan. But by then our roofer was on vacation. Fast forward yet another week - and a surprise visit by a roofing specialist brought in by the insurance. He actually pulled up a board covering the hole in the roof, leaving just the tarp. That made for a very loud rainstorm that evening when rain pounded against the plastic sheet (at least no water seemed to come in). Also made for a strange, almost pleasant blue glow as the light from outside came in through the blue:

Finally FINALLY last week, after two weeks of no change, things started happening. On Monday, these appeared:

New slates for a soon-to-be repaired roof. Tuesday rained (AGAIN) so the roofer couldn't do the repairs. Fortunately Wednesday was dry, and I came home to:

A huge improvement over the tarp that had been hanging over our house since the tree fell in late July. Note that we have a new top gutter and a bunch of new slate. The roofer rearranged slates so that the new ones are where we can't see. He used older slates to repair the holes visible from the ground so that they would match. From the inside, we have new wood over the hole the tarp had been covering:

 We were still not sealed though - I guess not the roofer's job to do that part?

 Hi outdoors!

D sprayed some expanding foam through there to block a little more airflow. On Thursday, the water people came back to certify that our house was still dry before we began drywall repair. It was, yay!

Friday the dramatic change occurred and we came home to new drywall and plaster. Also drywall dust everywhere (especially unfortunate since we had the house cleaner here on Friday too - bad planning but originally the builders weren't supposed to start that soon).

Next up, more layers of skimming and sanding and then the painting process can begin. There's a two week wait for our window but at least the rest might start to look normal relatively soon.

Water Damage

On Sunday even after everything had been temporarily patched up, the dripping continued during what seems lately to be our daily evening rain storm. We noticed water damage on the ceiling below the kids' room in a few places in the office. And water continued to drip through the window frame.

That can't be good...

On Wednesday the water mitigation people arrived. They agreed.

I'm trying to remind myself that it will get worse before it gets better.

The kids' room has a tarp up to separate the entryway from the rest of the room so the dehumidifier can be more efficient. The kids, by extension, are both sleeping in our room. So cozy...(that's sarcasm).

The ceiling and walls are ripped back to the studs. The hole in the roof causing the extra leaking is much easier to see now (the patch of sunlight above the trashcan). Someone came back to improve on the patching done Saturday and now the leaking seems to have stopped.

Cloud mural ruined, dust from blown insulation everywhere. Lots of tears and lots of wine...

It will get better.