Progress and Pavers

I think I'll have a good picture of what the whole house will look like soon. The guys are rocking right along with the soffit and they've almost finished the new shingles on the front. Tomorrow should be the siding on the front of the first floor. I can't wait!

new shingles almost done on the front!

project supervisor kept safely inside

After the front is finished, they are going to skip around to the back. Bill is going to get the footers poured for my new back porch. Yes, that's porch, not deck. The aim is to make it look as if it was always part of the house and not something that was tacked on recently.

Anyway, that's up next so that our hardscaping can get started. I'm really looking forward to my new retaining wall that will corral the mess on the factory side of the house. For that project we are planning to use Techo-Bloc. This is my current favourite color combination.



techo bloc, mini creta, victorien and mista in champlaign grey and onyx black

Everybody else seems to think I should go with brown, but I see greys. With the silver roof and all the raw concrete that was used in 1930, it is honest and original. I was even leaning toward re-using these super simple concrete pavers we dug up from the cabin. But everyone is afraid they will break. So far they haven't, I have loads more, and you can still buy them new, so I actually don't see the problem. But I can't get anyone else on board, so, new techo bloc it is!

All browns just make me think of the bland brown neighborhoods that have cropped up the last couple of years. Blech! Again, I don't want something dated 2012.

So for today, I'm leaning toward the mix of medium greys with a touch of brown, and an accent of charcoal grey. The main field colors would be the wall and the floor. For the walls, they do come in the charcoal grey as well, so I'm thinking maybe a 10% mix of dark grey with the 90% medium tones. The edging around the floors and the stairs in charcoal grey will be a snazzy contrast, and help define edges to prevent falls and mis-steps. And of course then we need to make the caps dark to tie it all together.

Please, I welcome comments or suggestions regarding my color choices. I have to stop changing my mind very soon so they can be ordered!

Snow Doggie

Mother Nature must be mad at us. She neglected us the last two winters, they were fairly mild and we got off easy. Now she is making up for it. It started late Friday afternoon and continued until early Saturday afternoon. I'm guessing we got about 30".

I cleared everything as soon as I got home from work Friday evening, around 7:00 p. There were only about 2" at that point, so it went quickly. I cleared the full width and length of the sidewalk and our parking spaces.

I went out again before bed, around 10:00p and cleared it all again. It took me nearly an hour that time, with about 8" having fallen in the past three hours. I cleaned off my car and cleared a moat around it. I figured that was that much less I would have to deal with Saturday. Good thinking... in theory, anyway.

This is what I saw when I put Oli out at 7:00a:
Oh my. Well. My game plan for Saturday was to shovel and watch dvds. I borrowed Stargate Atlantis (season 4) and Mad Men (season 2) from the library. I figured I could be snowed in all weekend.

So I got the shovel and got started. I cleared only a shovel-width this time, that is all that is required, and about all I had strength to do. I'd say we had about 2', give or take, by that time. I cleared a ring around the fire hydrant and a path out to the street. Lewis had worked a double shift and I knew he wouldn't feel like shoveling before he could even park, so I cleared a space for his car. I couldn't budge any of the snow where he usually parks, right behind my car, because the plow had shoved a bunch of snow there. I'm telling you, I was exhausted by the time I was done. It took me almost two hours.

As for Oliver, the snow was so high when he went for his first "out" before breakfast, that he did something I never, ever saw him do before. He lifted his leg on a dead porch plant! I told him he was a naughty dog, but really, what could he do?He was a bit perplexed until I started clearing the snow, then he was back to his usual barky dog self. Biting at the snow, snuffling around, "digging" the snow off the shovel for me. He had a good time. He's never seen snow this high and he was being very timid about it. By late afternoon, I realized I would have to clear some paths in the yard for him to do his business. Luckily the snow was still light and fluffy.

The snow walls were so high that I was even able to let him off his rope, something I would never normally do, and we ran around in the circles I made. He had a blast chasing me and trying to catch the snowballs I threw for him.

More Sidewalk Talk

Ta da! There it is, all shiny and white, making all the sidewalk around it look bad. John and Bart really did a good job. The town inspector said it was one of the best in town, and you know he has seen a lot this season! Many of the sidwalk repairs were done by professionals, too.The guys put a shiny 2009 quarter into the cement before it set. See that little smear on the right there? That was supposed to be an imprint of Oliver's paw, but they waited a little too long and Oli was slightly less than co-operative.

Sidewalk Saga

Let's take a trip back in time a few months, back to May. You might recall that we had the front sidewalk all torn up. The guys had leveled it, added the 2B stones, the wire grid, and had the frame in place, ready for the cement to be poured. Then the sky opened up and dumped more than 4 inches of rain on us in May. Then another 4 inches in June. We just couldn't keep up.It rained buckets almost every day for weeks, and every time I came home I had to check on the basement, mop up as much water as I could, put the fans on the water to dry it out. I even had my two little space heaters running down there. Of course, none of these fans could be left running when Oliver was home alone. I'm too afraid of something happening. I'm also very afraid of mold, so it was a major effort to get the house dry. Every. Single. Day.

Exhausting.

We think the reason we had so much water in the basement was because of the gaping hole where there should be sidewalk. Which was prepped and ready, but of course cement could not be poured in that kind of weather. Couple that hole with the fact that we had much more rainfall than normal. The water table was saturated. I know I shouldn't complain, really, because there was so much flooding in the area, many people were far worse off. But still, it was a pain.

You see, normally the rainwater runs down the street past the house, the low spot being between my property and the factory. But with the sidewalk unfinished, well, the water had a new low spot. And it could hold lots more water!

As you see, when we finally figured out this connection (geniuses that we are) we made effort to create a mini sand wall, to encourage the water to flow right past the inviting hole in our sidewalk. These pictures were taken during a "light" shower.

Eventually, more than two months after this project began, the weather cooperated for a few days, and we were able to finally pour the cement.

Then Lewis borrowed the camera, so I don't have any pictures of the finished product right now! I'll take some tonight and post them tomorrow.

Something Else Happened the Day of the Oliver Crop Circles

Remember all those heavy stones I said I was carrying? Well they formed this:A nice mowing edge / path to divide the very back of the yard from the rest of the lawn.

Two reasons for this:
One, the 100' extension cord on the electric mower doesn't reach much farther than this, and, two, it is a pain to get under the apple trees to mow the weeds, 'cause nothing else wants to grow under there.

So the plan is to lay a mowing strip for a clear division (done), kill the weeds, and plant ground cover that will thrive in those conditions and not require much maintenance.

My little path starts near the fence at the spirea and crosses the main backyard path, past the apple trees, and ends at the retaining wall on the other side of the yard.

Crop Circles

I've uncovered the secret to crop circles:

Golden Retrievers love rolling and rutching their backs in tall grass.

Well, that's what Oliver likes to do, anyway.
Sunday was a big-work-outside day. I was afraid I was running low on my reclaimed from the cabin paving stones for my backyard project, we've been pilfering from that stack for the front yard for a while. So I decided I had better lay them out to see how many I could still take. And it's a good thing too, because I had exactly enough left for my backyard project. Not one more or one short.

Of course, I didn't take a picture of the finished walkway, I'll try to do that soon. But you get a picture of Oliver instead. I think my old cell phone took better photos than the new one, but that's what was handy. Oli doesn't get to this part of the yard very often, but I moved his rope so he could be near me, but not so close he could trip me up as I carried heavy stones across the yard! So, as you can see, he enjoyed himself. Also, you can see we seriously need to mow!

Rocks and Cement = Sidewalks

Last August, for my birthday, I got a letter from our town. A lot of people around got these letters. Mine came with a black and white printer copy of a photo of my sidewalk. More specifically, the big corner chunk that was coming loose (from where the town's snow plow hit it two winters ago). Residents had ten months to make the appropriate repairs, or the town will do it for you, charge you the cost, plus 10%, plus fine you. Nice. Well, what can you do? It is what it is, I guess. Oh, yeah, there's also a $15 construction permit either way.


Most people weren't prepared to make the repairs last fall, and of course you can't do this kind of job during the winter, so over the past couple of weeks there has been a lot of this sort of thing going on around town:Yup. That's my little slice of construction.

Mom's boyfriend John and his neighbor Bart are going to help with this, as they have both been laid off recently. John is very handy in general and Bart worked for years for a company that does paving in the summer, snow clearing in the winter.

On Tuesday Bart cut the broken sections away from the rest of the sidewalk and the street, then John took a sledgehammer to the sidewalk.

On Wednesday John and Lewis loaded the largest pieces onto the trailer that John left for us. Then Mom and I took over and we dug the rest of the smaller pieces out of the pit. That's what I'm calling it now. The pit.

As it turns out, there was a big layer of field rocks just below the cement layer. Most of them have come completely loose from the cement. Mom and I picked them out of the rubble and have piled them onto my crescent flowerbed. (Poor violets, they didn't stand a chance.) I'm not quite sure what I want to do with them yet, but I have many options. More on that later.Now, I'm not saying my sidewalk is in great shape. It certainly is not. There are only two sections that don't have cracks. I would have liked to do the whole thing at once, and if I could have put this project off for a couple more years, maybe we would have been able to do that. But right now money is so tight that I don't even know how I am going to pay for the supplies to finish this project. So thank you, town, for forcing this on the homeowners during the worst recession many of us have ever seen.

Oliver enjoyed watching us for a while, but once I gave him a chewy he didn't care what was going on anywhere in the neighborhood. That's it, buddy. Get rid of that nasty tartar and plaque.

Snow dog

We woke up to a thin blanket of snow this morning. Oliver helped Lewis clean off the cars and shovel the front walk.

I've learned that it is much easier to clear snow that no one has tramped through rather than to wait till the snow has stopped, then try to remove it. Our borough requires one shovel width to be cleared within 24 hours after the snow stops falling. Yeah, right. After the first year (never had to deal with this kind of shovelling at mom's house out in the country) I now go out several times to clear the sidewalk. And I usually clear the entire width, because you just know that some idiot is going to walk through the unshovelled snow right next to the nicely cleared path. I don't want to be responsible if that idiot falls and hurts himself.

Mom stopped to let Oli out this afternoon, and she cleared the sidewalks. It looks like she swept it with a broom, it is still light enough to do that, although the forecast says it is going to turn to freezing rain later. Good stuff.

Then when I got home (early), Oliver went out front with me to help with the third clearing.

As you can see, he was immensely helpful at tearing up the freebie newspaper

that got caught in the pile of snow on my shovel.

He also likes to clear my shovel of snow. I scrape the shovel toward him, then he "digs" the snow off the blade of the shovel with his front paws. It is like a game. Fun for puppy, less lifting for me. This actually works well when the snow is that heavy stuff.

On another note, the sidewalk is probably going to need to be replaced within the next few years, and while I'm not looking forward to the expense, it should make shovelling easier with less broken bits and cracks to catch the blade.