if anyone has any hint of ambition to help dig out these stumps, please let me know. applications are now being accepted for any and all shifts. i managed to dig up around about 2 1/2 of the remaining stumps, but it was painful. i have to believe it's just about the most frustrating digging known to mankind. here is a typical digging sequence. (1) insert shovel (2) hit rock (3) insert shovel (4) hit roots (5) repeat steps 1 through 4 approximately 10 times (6) insert shovel (7) dig out dirt (8) go to step 1. occasionally you have the joy of chopping out some roots just to mix things up. Chrissy was a bit confused why i was so frustrated with it ... so i let her dig for a few minutes. it took one shovel for her to understand. i'm gonna try to get the next 2 dug out partially over the next few days then let Tony yank the suckers out. a note to all who ever do landscaping at their house. please, dig out your stumps after you cut down shrubs to save the next homeowners the surprise task of doing it.
ok, so we did some other stuff also. we got the stairway walls primed! finally. this is one we've put off too long. we decided to go ahead and paint the whole upstairs landing area the same color (top color from the living room). we talked about finding a place to transition to something slightly different, but decided it'd be easier to just use the same color everywhere. we have enough leftover anyway and the color will look great up there. painting the stairwell is an interesting task with the height involved, but the amazing Swiss Army ladder made it very do-able. i only almost fell once. Hazel only got primer on her once also, still not sure how. hopefully some evening this week we'll finish the final coat on the areas we've primed. sorry, no pictures of this work yet ... i'll get one when it's done. painting here is frustrating also (thankfully for me, Chrissy did the rest of the house when i was doing the floors), as we find more of the endless poor previous painting and patching work. we just can't understand the thought process that lets someone leave enormous runs in a paint job ... or hideous patching. i know i'm pretty much a perfectionist, but seriously folks. i complain about their work a lot don't i? hmm.
let's see ... we also did some yard clean-up (it seems to be some sort of trash magnet) and pruned the rose of sharon bush in the backyard -- the only piece of landscaping we really have at the moment. we've also been working on planning what we'll do with the rest of the landscaping ... and probably sometime this week our expert will show up to give us some ideas (a friend from college who does landscaping). i've been playing with the house in CAD to help planning. i spent most of the time getting the house looking right (what i could reach is to scale), but threw in a couple quick plants to see what things would look like with some greenery.looks like just about anything up front will help. hopefully in the next week or two we'll have a plan in place and can get started planting.
oh, remember Project #4 "Green me up, Scottie"? well, let's see what weed-n-feed does to a yard with more weeds than grass. pretty nice eh? i thought i should take this picture soon because the seeding i did a few weeks ago i starting to grow ... so hopefully these bare spots will start to disappear. the plan is still to tear out the whole thing this fall and start over (and do some needed grading along the house at the same time). we'll see what the ambition level is come August/Sept.
we toured 2 other houses this weekend ... one older, one newer than ours. we chatted with Tony and Allison from across the street for a while on Sunday and they showed us around their old house (and we gave them the updated tour of ours). they've got a great place there. Saturday we went over to Brad and Rachel's (Chrissy's friend from college) for dinner. they are now in their nice new house. it's so weird to be in a new house where things aren't crooked, cracked, creaky, etc. ... someday.
it's been a hectic couple of weeks, so sorry about the lack of posts. last saturday (2 saturday's ago) we went to pick up our storm door at Lowe's. i checked some measurements and we crossed our fingers that it would fit in the car (on an angle through the trunk to the back seat). we picked it up ... no good with it in the box. took it out of the box ... no good. dang. hmm. we need a truck! i'm sure many people in the parking lot wondered what crazy people thought they would fit a storm door in a Saturn anyway. we felt pretty dumb out there. in my defense, it was pretty close ... the problem was the sides of the trunk screwing up the angle into the back seat, something i didn't notice when checking measurements. i tried calling a local friend with a truck, but he was gone. so, we took the door back inside, went to Home Depot, rented a truck and came back. annoying. this delay put me behind a bit, but i did get a good start on putting it in before we had to head north for my cousin's wedding.we spent the rest of the weekend around Goshen. we got to hang out with Ross and Sarah for a while which was really nice. we just don't get to see them as much as we'd like. it was also nice to have the Sunday lunch get-together with the fam. those are always good times.
when we got home Sunday night, i went back to working on the door. this is when the problems started. after much diagnosis (a.k.a. confusion, swearing, head-scratching), i determined that the door was just a bit too big (maybe 1/2") for our opening. i think we were kind of in-between sizes, so we got stuck with the size slightly too big (the next one down would probably have been way too small). i don't quite understand how a "custom size" door still comes in standard sizes that you just get to charge more for. hmm. anyway, the problem this caused was at the top of door. there is a piece that trims out the top/provides weatherstripping. because the frame was so "high up" in the opening, there wasn't enough room to slip this piece in properly. i worked on modifying the trim piece in 2 areas and the frame section at the top. by modifying, i mean using a tin snips and cutting off much excess metal. after much laboring, the door was still binding on the trim. arghhhhh. it was getting late, so i just installed the door hardware so the door would latch shut and would wait til another day to finish the rest. bah humbug.
this past week was a work nightmare. i had a big deadline that other prior deadlines had caused to be a big big problem. i worked ... a lot. i was stressed ... a lot. luckily, when i got home Friday i still had a wife.
somewhat spontaneously, we met Michael, Kim, and Steve (Michael's friend) at Turkey Runfor some hiking Saturay noon/afternoon. we had a really good time, despite some muddy conditions (muddier for some than others, i'll let those involved tell those stories). the leaves aren't out yet, but it was still nice to get outdoors and get some exercise with some friends/family. i also got to start breaking in my new hiking boots which was nice. this is the pair of shoes i exchanged for after returning from the Grand Canyon (i rid myself of those demon, achilles-killing, death shoes). i think i'm gonna really like these. they are probably a bit heavy for everyday hiking, but not too bad. i really wish the first pair i got would have agreed with my feet, they would have been the perfect hiking/backpacking combo shoe. oh well.
when we got home, i moved back to the frustrating storm door project. i refined my "modifications" to the best they could be ... then did some extreme "bang-to-fit" action on the top frame piece. whatever i did, it seemed to work, just barely! i put an extra screw in the trim piece to hold it ... a slight shift in that piece and we're back to square one. the "too tall" issue struck again when installing the closers. the top closer would bind up on the frame piece, leaving the door stuck closed. that's no good. so, i drilled some new holes and shifted the closer down about 1/2". all good. we have a fully functional storm door! the 1-hour estimated install time advertised didn't quite play out.
today was outside work day. it was going to be "go downtown and watch the Final Four festivities/concerts" but the weather wasn't so hot. we picked up an axe at Menard's on the way home from church and i went to town trying to remove one of five shrub stumps in the front of our house. our lovely previous owners just cut them off and shuffled some mulch over the stumps to try to hide them. after about 2-3 hours of digging (for some reason the hole doesn't look as impressive in the picture as it did in real life) and chopping i managed to rid the yard of one of these beasts. sweet. 4 to go. not sweet. i may not take them as far next time ... Tony from across the street offered to help yank them out with his truck after i get them started. that will save me some time and energy. we also did some yard clean-up and cleaned the porch. our favorite previous owners also managed to splatter paint on just about every surface out there. the cleaner we got didn't work on paint though, so we have to find something else. anyway, that's what's happenin' here in N'ville (along with storms-a-brewin'). have a good week y'all.
know. applications are now being accepted for any and all shifts. i managed to dig up around about 2 1/2 of the remaining stumps, but it was painful. i have to believe it's just about the most frustrating digging known to mankind. here is a typical digging sequence. (1) insert shovel (2) hit rock (3) insert shovel (4) hit roots (5) repeat steps 1 through 4 approximately 10 times (6) insert shovel (7) dig out dirt (8) go to step 1. occasionally you have the joy of chopping out some roots just to mix things up. Chrissy was a bit confused why i was so frustrated with it ... so i let her dig for a few minutes. it took one shovel for her to understand. i'm gonna try to get the next 2 dug out partially over the next few days then let Tony yank the suckers out. a note to all who ever do landscaping at their house. please, dig out your stumps after you cut down shrubs to save the next homeowners the surprise task of doing it.
we really have at the moment. we've also been working on planning what we'll do with the rest of the landscaping ... and probably sometime this week our expert will show up to give us some ideas (a friend from college who does landscaping). i've been playing with the house in CAD to help planning. i spent most of the time getting the house looking right (what i could reach is to scale), but threw in a couple quick plants to see what things would look like with some greenery.looks like just about anything up front will help. hopefully in the next week or two we'll have a plan in place and can get started planting.
yard with more weeds than grass. pretty nice eh? i thought i should take this picture soon because the seeding i did a few weeks ago i starting to grow ... so hopefully these bare spots will start to disappear. the plan is still to tear out the whole thing this fall and start over (and do some needed grading along the house at the same time). we'll see what the ambition level is come August/Sept.
