Spring Projects

We are finally getting to the projects that we did not have time for in the fall, when we realized we had missed the warm weather window (how's that for alliteration?) for applying exterior paints and wood conditioners. D has been raking up and bagging most of the remaining leaves. Today he also applied Thompsons Water Seal to the little bits of bare wood holding up our back porch steps. I took on a few projects as well:

First, last week, I made what will probably be my only attempt this year at landscaping (I retreat inside when it gets warm and buggy), by adding a pretty pink jasmine plant (jasmimum polyanthum) to our lamppost. I'm not one for gardening but there was a great idea in a magazine to wrap a lamppost in chicken wire and then plant a viney plant at the base, so that it will grow up the post. Here it is before I filled in the hole:

I tied the (plastic) wire on with zip ties and then tied the vines to it gently with string. It doesn't look very impressive but the area gets a lot of sun and no little critters have tried to eat it yet, so I consider that a good sign for future growth.

Here's a picture of what it could look like in bloom, one day:

(photo credit to http://www.flickr.com/photos/mondomuse/3268234488/)

While I was digging a hole for the jasmine plant, I started to realize exactly how annoying it was that we had a "bumper crop" of acorns this year. Besides loudly falling on my car all fall, those little guys really set up house. I photographed just a few but I pulled out dozens. They are in all our flower beds, making themselves comfortable--safe from any mowing activity:

At this rate we are going to end up living on an oak tree farm!

Today my big project was to cover the bare wood on our picture window. It's a lot harder to scrape paint, even barely-adhering paint, than I thought. I spent an hour or so hacking at it with a metal scraper, a wire brush, and a razor. Even though I figured the paint was not original to the house, I wore a little face mask in case there was lead dust. (They make home-buyers sign so many lead-disclosures that I think they made me a little paranoid.)

The obligatory "before" shots (this was after I scraped most of the loose paint, so the windows look even worse than usual).

We used Sherwin William's Duration Exterior in gloss finish. Since we didn't know exactly what color "white" we were working with and how much of the window's color was actually just dirt and aging, we went with untinted out-of-the-can white. It is definitely different, but we are hoping that a little rain, sun, and dirt evens it out. It's close enough that you can't see the difference in the photo:

(Isn't it nice of our cat to model for us?)

And finally, a few more random yard shots of our flowering plants. If you are able to identify any of them, let us know.

Pretty pink blossoms that the bees seem to love (also a view of our as-yet untreated window, if you look closely):

Beautiful white blooms near our garage.

And mystery buds on a tree in our backyard (with more pictures of the fully-bloomed tree to follow).

My Mind's in the Gutters

You may remember that back in February, we lost some gutters. Now that we're out of snowy season and entering rainy season, D and I are trying to find someone to replace them. As usual, we wrongly believed that a couple of estimates would be enough to help us make our decision. But with two contractors disagreeing on what we need, we have to wait for at least one more estimate to break the tie (or, more likely, offer us a completely different set of options that contradict the other two). They are so busy repairing the damage caused by the blizzards, that it will be a week before another company can even come out and give us an estimate.

Before we get any further, here's a picture of the damage, now that the snow is gone and we can see more clearly:

Basically the whole back of our house is effectively gutterless. I think we're talking about 50 or so feet. The real question is what to do with our fascia boards--the wood that the gutters are screwed into. Ours are completely bare wood. They are not painted, stained, polyurethaned, or covered in aluminum (they might be pretreated for termites or something--no idea).

Gutter company A says that the fascia boards do not need to be covered. They will put up a new gutter securely to make sure that no water seeps back there to rot the wood. The gutters will be screwed through the boards directly into the rafters, as opposed to just into the thin boards, so they don't come out again. Gutter company B says that the boards have to be covered with aluminum to prevent rotting, which would soften the wood and rip the gutters out.

DIY websites appear equally divided, so I don't think there's one right answer. It seems to me that the boards don't serve much purpose except to be a place to mount the gutters. From what I read, gutter installation instructions say if the boards are rotted when you take off the old gutter, replace them. It's not a big deal and it doesn't really seem to have a lot of repercussions if they do get a little damp and soft. Plus evidently they haven't until now, so if a gutter is installed correctly they will probably be protected.

Second difference: company A wants to give us cheap aluminum gutter guards with holes in them, probably something like this:

while company B wants to put on high-tech solid ones that uses the water's own surface tension to pull it into the gutter, like this:

Sure it's nice, but it seems like overkill and certainly not a cheap solution. From what we're learning, we will need to clean them either way. Maybe the cheap ones will need cleaning every other year and the expensive ones every 3 or 4 years, but gunk will find its way in eventually.

Third difference: company A wants to put on standard 6'' gutters. They won't fall down, they say, because they will be screwed in more securely than they were this time. Company B claims that 5'' are better because the added weight of the extra inch can be what pulls the gutters down inheavy snow/ice.

There you have it. Two completely different options with very different prices. I don't want to skimp but I don't want to be taken advantage of, either. I'm not sure the "best available" options are all that necessary. Of course I also don't want to cause future grief of gunked drains and rotting wood. I think a third opinion is necessary. And maybe a forth or fifth.

So don't be shy, blog readers. I think I scared most of you away from contributing with my poll last week, which deliberately did not have any middle ground between liking or hating contractors. But I need your opinions now: do we go with company A or B or find another middle-of-the-road set of options?

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And finally, our garden continues to develop, no thanks to us. We discovered this week that we have roses!

A Poll While We Wait

We are working hard around the house and have a lot of projects in progress. I want to wait until they are done to blog about them but I didn't want you, my readers (all 4 of you...), to think I was neglecting you.

We are about to have our first experience with contractors (windows, in this case, but gutters and electrical work are soon to follow). So while we wait to hang our paintings and light fixtures in the newly-painted hallway, to get our new windows installed, to paint the bedroom closet, and to get some gutter estimates, please let us know what you think with a poll. Don't hold back--let us know how you really feel.

Spring Thaw

In January, I heard our house make a strange noise and it took me a little while to realize that it was our sump pump, doing what it was supposed to do and draining unseen water out from under the foundation of our house. Our sump pump is a very treasured object because of all the bad things we had heard from our more experienced home-owning friends and family about flooded basements. Also it was a feature sorely lacking on most of the homes that we considered buying. But our house has one and we can only assume it is doing its job, since we can't see any water in the basement. For that matter, we can't even see our sump pump:

For a reason that must have seemed logical at the time, the previous owners completely carpeted over the sump pump. There is no slit in the carpet, no little space without staples or tacks. No no, just a completely solidly nailed-in carpet. I'm sure at some point we will have to rip up at least the corner; and I haven't been able to figure out exactly where everything drains...So for now we just take it on faith that the sump pump is doing what it should be doing.

Which is good, since the ground has been slowly absorbing the several feet of snow that we got last month. And so the sound that seemed odd in January now can be heard every day and has become a regular contributor to the sounds of the house. Which is good, because there is a fair amount of standing water and, as the picture shows, more snow that needs to melt:

Close up of the puddles lining our mulchy patches (stay tuned for our feeble attempts at gardening said mulchy patches):

The sump pump is actually on the correct side of the house, where all that water seems to be collecting (it's just out of the frame at the bottom where the mulch turns to grass), so I guess the previous owners knew a thing or two about basement flooding.

The nice thing about the spring thaw? We're actually starting to see life! The garden is a big mystery to us, since we didn't move in until September when most of the spring and summer foliage was gone:

At least for now that life seems limited to flowers, but soon I'm sure we will see the more unpleasant side of it--the creepy crawlies.

And while it might not be alive, here is a picture of our new door wreath. I decided to show my excitement for spring by creating an artificial flower arrangement for the door. It turned out to be much cheaper to buy a $4 olive wreath branch and a couple of $1-2 fake flowers than a $35 fully assembled wreath. I just wove the wiry stems into the branches, no glue or extra wiring required.

Also we are discovering that even in March, black doors heat up to a pretty uncomfortable degree. Something we may have to deal with later.