Another Round of Odds and Ends

A collection of recent things from our house.

At our old house we had crape myrtles lining two sides of our backyard. They looked really nice when they bloomed each year. With the exception of the one tree in our front yard that was included with the landscaping we were treeless but we finally fixed that recently. In the past few weeks we've added three trees to our back yard. It started off with planting a flowering cherry tree in one corner and then adding two apple trees (Winesap and Red Delicious) in the other corner. Planting anything in the yard with the amount of rocks in the dirt isn't easy. I have a mattock I bought years ago for use at the old house that's been invaluable anytime I've needed to do any sort of digging.

Flowering Cherry Tree

Apple Trees

Over the Memorial Day weekend I built a new workbench using the 2x4 Basics Workbench Kit. My prior set up was a smaller homemade bench sitting next to another square one that had belonged to Jenny's granddad. The set up didn't work very well for me so I sold the homemade one and moved the square one to the other side of my air compressor. In their place using the aforementioned kit I built a longer bench that is already working out much better. I also went a step further and stained it using a small cheap can of cherry wood stain. Eventually I'm also going to add a frame on top to support a work light using the included shelf link pieces but haven't gotten around to it yet.

Also over the Memorial Day weekend I picked up a miter saw. (Side note: Lowe's will price match Amazon. I saved $20 this way.) I don't do a whole lot of woodworking but when I do it requires pulling out a folding workbench, clamps, and a circular saw along with running an extension cord to cut anything. I used the saw to build the workbench and another stand to hold my yard tools. I really wish I had bought one years ago, it so much easier and quicker to make the cuts needed. Seeing as I have a four inch long scar above my right knee from an incident with an angle grinder years ago I think my wife gets a bit nervous when I get a new power tool.

Back in April I picked up a 22 foot telescoping ladder when it went on sale for 35% off. I mainly needed it to reach the outside dryer vent up on the second floor to clean it and for hanging Christmas lights on the top of the house at the end of the year. I also was finally able to reach the crappy little CFL light bulb Ryan Homes puts in the garage. It didn't put out much light and also took a little while to reach full brightness. I replaced it with a 100 watt daylight LED bulb that Home Depot is selling for $10. (Best price I've seen anywhere.) It made a big difference out there. (Excuse the mess.)

Three other significant upcoming projects: staining the fence and sealing the driveway. I've been putting these off all spring and really need to get them done soon. I'm also going to be adding additional shelving in the garage above the door. We still don't have a shed yet and I've got too much stuff still sitting on the floor. (As the picture above clearly shows.)

More Odds and Ends

-I changed the name of the blog from "Build" to "Built" recently since the house is no longer under construction.

-The No Solicitation sign I mentioned in the last post appears to have worked for the most part. We went from receiving multiple door-to-door marketers a week to none for the first three weeks after it was posted. (And I saw several of them roaming the neighborhood during that time. I finally got a chance on Tuesday of this week to mock two of them for willful stupidity in ignoring the sign however. Somehow I'm guessing neither of the violators expected the response I gave them when I opened the door.

-Two weeks ago I finally got around to cleaning up and organizing our garage. I've been kind of embarrassed to open the door lest the neighbors think we belong on an episode of Hoarders. At our house we had a shed in addition to the garage so a lot of the stuff in there like the lawnmower and yard tools normally wouldn't even be in there. Hopefully sometime in another month or two we'll have a shed. There's also quite a bit of stuff in there I still need to sell, donate, or otherwise get rid of and I've really been lazy about taking care of it.

-I probably still wouldn't have gotten around to organizing it except that since old house finally sold I needed to move my Beetle project over to the new house. Since the engine caught fire in 2004 I've been very slowly restoring my first car, a 1973 Volkswagen Super Beetle. (Link to the restoration site I set up for it.) Moving it also required a truck and large trailer, neither of which I have easy access to so it required making arrangements for that as well. But with the help of my brothers and a friend we got it safely moved along with my other work bench and a few parts. Getting around in there requires a bit of effort at the moment to not trip and fall over anything.

-A contractor for Comcast came through our section of the neighborhood at the beginning of the month running cabling and installing pedestal boxes. I only had a few small holes in my yard but in other yards, particularly the corner lots they dug huge holes and did a poor job putting the sod back. I was also disgusted by how the crew threw cigarette butts in my yard and in the street. They also didn't dig deep enough under the driveway of one of my neighbors causing it to buckle.

-Having never had an irrigation system before we were surprised by the amount of water it uses. I've had to dial it back from twice to once a day and shorten how long each cycle lasts to avoid using so much. I guess it will take a bit of experimentation to see how much we really need to water to keep the yard in good shape. It would also help if we could just get some more rain. I think eventually I'm going to add a rain barrel or two to the downspouts in the back to save water as well.

-Construction finally started on one of the two empty lots to the right of our house. I've been taking a picture from the same spot in our bedroom window every afternoon hoping to do a time lapse once the house is finished. I also spoke with the project manager earlier this week and he told me construction on the other vacant lot directly next to us where the concrete washout and a storage container currently sits should begin in a few weeks. They're the last lots on our side of the neighborhood so I'm looking forward to them being done and finally having neighbors on the other side of the house in a few weeks.

Odds and Ends

A few various things from the past week or so:

-I discovered a downside to living in a new neighborhood weekend before last - I picked up a sheet metal screw in the tire of my car. I can't say for certain it occurred around our house but odds are it probably did. Thankfully it was only took a $10 plug to fix. (I really didn't relish the idea of replacing a less than two year old tire which is initially what it was looking like.)

-The door-to-door marketers have been really obnoxious since we moved in. At our old house we might get one once a month at most. Here it's been more like once or twice a week. I guess they see far more opportunity with new neighborhoods. It got bad enough that Jenny finally made a no solicitation sign for our front door.

-Speaking of things my wife has made she also did this wreath for our front door too:

-Aside from the various scuffs and smudges we put on the walls moving in we finally incurred the first self inflicted damage on the house a few weeks back. We had family over for our younger son's first birthday and because our cocker spaniel lacks any sort of manners we put in the master bedroom for the duration. He wasn't very happy about that to say the least so along with barking he also ripped up the carpet in front of the door.

-The project manager came out last Wednesday along with two other guys to fix the handful of issues we've had in the house since moving in. The soft spot in the floor upstairs ended up being a spot in the subfloor that just needed to be filled in with putty to level it out. The crack in the toilet tank in the hallway bath was limited to just the outside but the project manager went ahead and replaced it. (Learned something new - the bowl and tank are two separate pieces.) And the issue with the weather seal around the door was resolved by adjusting the strike plate. (I didn't know this was possible.) All told it took about an hour.

-There's one other small annoyance we have right now but there's nothing that can really be done about it until construction is finished concerns the sewer drain in front of our house. It currently has a barrier in front of it of rocks and wire to keep construction debris from flowing into it. Because of that however whenever we get anything short of a drizzle in a short period of time it backs up in the gutter and in front of our driveway. A few weeks ago we had a huge downpour that was high enough to keep us from going anywhere until it subsided. This was the scene a few weeks back during a particularly heavy spring storm:

Having been through several tropical storms in the past few years I'm a little concerned about what will happen if we get even more water within the span of a few hours or day as typically is the case with those.