Our Old House: September 2006

Friday, September 29, 2006

Old House Delusion Disease

Maybe we have this ...?

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

diary of a madman (1 year gone)

well, Saturday marked the our 1 year houseiversary! yes, we've been homeowners for an entire year. wow, that is truly hard to believe. it feels more like it's been 5 years. just kidding. sort of. sometimes it feels like we've been here for ages, the next minute like we've only just moved in.

it has certainly been an interesting year. we've learned a lot to say the least ... about what to do living in an old house (turn the heat down and use lots of blankets in the winter, squint when looking at old plaster walls and ceilings during the day, look close before you buy, use lots of expanding foam insulation, etc.) ... and what NOT to do (try to refinish pee-stained oak floors, put non-waterproof items on the floor of the basement, eat paint off the walls, let expanding foam insulation get on your hands, try to make it all perfect, finish it all at once, etc.) ... what to expect of your house (the worst) ... what NOT to expect (that previous owners knew what they were doing or were as anal as you are). we've had highs (seeing the hardwood floors after they were finished) and some pretty extreme lows (learning about the aforementioned pee-stained oak). i'm learning how to be a handyman. Chrissy has learned that she is a lot handier than she first thought.

so, would we do it all over again? well ... hmm. knowing what i know now ... that is a pretty tough question (speaking for myself anyway). probably? maybe? i don't regret the decision, i'm just not sure it's something i'd want to go through again ... those tough times were pretty darn, well, tough. i know that if/when we get "finished" with all we want to do here (if that's even possible) it's gonna be awesome! Noblesville is great so far ... and has limitless potential to be even better. we lucked into moving across the street from some folks we'll likely be friends with for a long time to come. a friendly face across the street has gone a long way to helping us get through those tough spots. so thanks to them. thanks to all of you who have helped us work on projects (and there has been lots of that) and those who have helped by praying for us and keeping our spirits up when we got down and didn't know what to do. so there it is, thoughts about life here ... 1 year gone. i wonder what year 2 will bring?

as they say, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

i'm not sure that saying means anything right now. i suppose it could if you wanted to wax philosophic, and i'm sure it's true in the literal sense that our neighbors grass is greener ... mainly that was just a transition into an update on the lawn. green grass is growing. that is good. green weeds are also growing. that is bad. lets hope more grass than weeds grow. i did go through and re-seed a few areas where it seemed a bit thin, especially the crest of the hill in front where water (and ants) were leaving uneven coverage. we've had decent rain the past 2 weeks so i haven't had to water which is very nice. the jury is still out on whether or not this was a successful endeavor. it's all gonna depend no what comes of those vile weeds. keep those fingers crossed.

in an unusual development, we seem to have

a serial fall decorator stalking the streets of Noblesville. we came home from work on friday to some mums sitting on the front porch and a bundle of corn stalks in the garden. sunday evening we came home to pumpkins on the porch. we are quite confused at this point. we have a few suspects ... but no solid evidence at this point. does anyone know if Matlock is still doing work?

speaking of evidence. well, not evidence ... trash cans (i'm the master of the seamless transition). while looking for a compost rake i stumbled across our new kitchen trash can (i know, exciting!). for whatever reason, Lowe's had a couple really nice simplehuman stainless steel trash cans (40L, step can) on clearance for $25. sweet bargain! i guess the nasty green trash can i've had since junior year of college gets demoted to the basement now. dirty wet nasty basement ... my nemesis (i just may have cussed the house/basement out the other week after a long horrid evening of cleaning up after a major water issue).

well, that's the news from Lake Wobegon.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

ok go ...

i keep forgetting to post a link to this. if you haven't seen this before ... try to watch it without smiling. now this is how you make a music video ... rent 8 treadmills and buy a big gray tarp.

update on the weeds/grass. purdue guy thinks the wide ones are weeds. CRAP. probably annual grassy weeds. if they're summer annuals they'll die when frost comes. if they're winter annuals they'll die next summer when it gets hot. i'm going to let some of them grow tall so he can positively ID them. they do appear to have started from seed ... so maybe my good seed had more weed seeds then expected. the worst of it is in an area of the backyard where there are a bunch of them. otherwise there are only a few here and there around the yard. he says to not panic, it's probably not going to be a big deal. the real grass is really starting to take off. there are little sprigs of green everywhere. the dead areas are starting to have a greenish hue to them. in a couple days i'll go out and spread some seed in areas that don't look like they are taking very well.

over.

Monday, September 11, 2006

confusion

ok, now i'm not so sure those little green things were the new grass.

i'm now noticing what i really thought baby grass would look like ... lots of thin whispy sprigs of green. ok, so what are the other things? i'm really hoping it's not the weeds coming back. seems like too many for that to make sense. i'm not sure if it's the different cultivars of KY bluegrass looking different?? that seems odd too ... i've emailed the experts at Purdue to get an explanation. i'll keep you posted.

oh, and it rained today! woohoo, no watering tonight!

Sunday, September 10, 2006

its gotta get worse before it gets better ...

we were actually in town over labor day weekend with no major plans (mainly because Chrissy had to work). it felt like an odd thing. i looked at the calendar ... turns out, it was an odd thing. prior to that, 19 of the past 20 weekends we were either out of town or had weekend visitors. now not all were full weekend visits and one of those weekends only Chrissy was gone ... but dang. that's just plain ridiculous. what happened to this summer??

i took the opportunity to move on the yard project. the weeds had sufficiently curled up and died, so i went to the local Nations Rent to get some necessary equipment: an aerator (Ryan Lawnair IV) and a power rake (Ryan Ren-O-Thin). here's the tools of the day:

Pass #1: mow again. i'd been slowly lowering the mowings to reduce competition for the new grass and hopefully stress out some of the existing grass and weeds so that maybe it would die. i think i was around 1 - 1.5".

Passes #2 and 3: aerate. i was shooting for about 20-40 holes (2"-3" deep plugs) per square foot (most of my strategies i cannot claim as my own ... i get my info from Purdue's Turfgrass Program). the aerator specs say it only gets 9 holes/SF. so, i overlapped the 2nd pass to hopefully put me in the 20-25 holes/SF range. it looked like a small dog had pooped all over the yard.

Passes #4 and 5: dethatch. i wanted to really to bust things up here. the power rake came with the flail blades i was hoping for and i set them to cut into the ground about 1/8" - 1/4". this would remove the thatch, break up the aerator plugs, and stir up the top of the soil a bit, hopefully improving soil-seed contact later. it would also really hack up any root structures lurking near the surface ... again hopefully reducing competition for the new grass. what surprised me was how much thatch was actually out there. wow. 2 passes with this sucker and we had a mountain of thatch to rake up. our new compost heap was a bit overwhelmed to say the least. and wow, it looks like we're dirt farmers.

Pass #6: ok, the massive dethatching effort worked up enough dirt to pretty much obscure most of the aeration holes. i figured some would open up later with some rain/watering, but decided another pass with the aerator would be in order. more turds. by my calculations, something like 220,000 turds in total.

Pass #7 (next day): starter fertilizer. 44 lbs of 18-24-12 gets the 1.5 lbs of P205 / 1000 SF we're shooting for. pretty little dots of white, black and yellow fertilizing goodness.

Passes #8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13: seed. 21 lbs of Lesco's "Quality Blue Blend". cultivars are Shamrock (49.32%), Total Eclipse (24.91%) and Hallmark (24.72%) ... all from the lovely Pacific northwest (WA). these all did decent in Purdue's most recent KY bluegrass tests. and Lesco gave me a good deal on it (Contractor's rate). the goal here is to spread the 3#/1000 SF as evenly as possible. thus, i set my drop seeder so that it was barely dropping seed. i did a couple passes and realized it would take 10 years to complete, so cranked it up a bit to finish out. 45,717,000 seeds total ... plus or minus (i lost count a few times). i've got about 29 pounds left if anyone would like some good seed.

Pass #14: water.

Pass #15: pass out (on the couch). manuevering that equipment around the yard, up and down the hills, plus raking, in the sun all day totally wiped me out. i was so sore. felt like the aerator had run over me. definitely several days to recover from that.

Now, more watering. Lots and lots of watering. Not much water at at time, but frequently. they generally say 2-4 times a day, but mainly just trying to keep the surface from totally drying out. so far we've been doing 1-2 times a day. just in the past few days we're starting to see our little babies starting to grow! awww ... aren't they just adorable?

there are some stupid ants along the front hill that keep stealing seeds that are making me mad. as if it's not hard enough to start grass on a slope, these little jerks keep piling it up by their holes. what are they doing with it?? selling it on the seed black market?? hopefully in a week or two i'll have a nice green picture for you!

Our Old House