Garden Lessons

I've learned some important lessons about yard care this week! The very first lesson was perhaps the one I was most excited about:

How to assemble your very own manual mower (or as Eddie Izzard might say, 'push me pull you' mower)? This was perhaps the easiest assembly I've ever encountered. Screw the screws in, push the handle cover onto the ends of the bars, and squeeze the bars together to snap them into place over the mower. Next came the dangerous part... add e-rings over the pegs to keep the handle in place. The pegs, located conveniently next to the big sharp mower blades are just big enough that you must give a very hard push for the e-ring to lock. Fortunately no fingers were lost in this exercise. 

Next lesson: How to mow a lawn. Fun fact: neighbors will throw junk into your yard if they think nobody's going to notice. This junk, along with twigs, will make your mower stop turning. Always rake before mowing! This means I should buy a rake before I mow again. Also, any uneven parts of the yard will catch on the mower and you may need a running start to get the grass on those bumps (like most of my yard).

In the end, it was a great workout and I now have a lawn instead of a jungle. 

Now, hoses. When you screw a screw into things you turn the screw clockwise. This is an important part of the lesson on hose attachment... for the threads of the screw are on the faucet, not the hose. I'm somewhat ashamed to say it took overnight considering this issue to figure out that meant I had to twist the hose counterclockwise to get it to attach. Attach it did; however, and I was able to water my lovely little yard!

Now, for the final lesson learned (the hard way): If you put a hose down facing away from you and you have yet to turn the faucet off, the hose will spin around and soak you... even if you run away from it!

Deck Demolishing

...can be difficult for someone who's not that tall.

That was a deck. It's big, monstrous, and prevents any light from reaching the back windows in the house. I'm not a big fan of light... in fact I'd say I'm relatively close to a vampire on a day-pass when it comes to sun touching my skin; however, that doesn't stop me from wanting to rid my house of this evil monstrosity.

The first time I saw this house I wondered why anyone would leave such a thing attached to a cute little house. 'Surely', I thought to myself, 'it can't be that hard to tear down this rickety old thing!' As if to prove me wrong, that rickety old thing turned out to be a well-built old thing with many many nails. That deck could open its own hardware store with all the nails it contained. In fact, working on the deck was why I purchased my favorite tool (thus far):

SLEDGEHAMMER

After just over a week of work on this deck, and only having nearly fallen off and broken my neck 3 times (believe me I'm not going to attempt to beat that record) I've taken the sides off! The top... well that's a different story. That one may need to be left to professionals that can wield power saws atop ladders 8 feet off the ground. I don't think adding nearly-falling-head-first-into-the-ground-from-8-feet-in-the-air-and-breaking-my-neck-but-catching-myself-and-only-severing-a-couple-limbs to my list of homeownership activities would be a good plan. 

So, while it isn't perfect, I think this can still be counted in the 'win' column for now!

Open Concept

Is the most evil thing you can possibly do to an old house. 

The very idea that someone would purchase an older home with the intent of taking down walls that had been standing proud for more than 75 years disgusts me. If you want to live in a place where you can see from your front door into the backyard then either build a new home or find an existing home that looks like a charmless, modernist, sure-to-be fad (like avocado colored appliances). 

Having said that... 

That is a 'before' picture of the one and only bathroom. I spent my Sunday pulling up the linoleum floor tiles to find...

a rotted subfloor underneath. So extensive is the damage caused by this rot if I should step hard in the wrong place I fear I may fall through the floor into the crawl-space beneath the house. 

What does this have to do with open concept? Only this:

The state of things made me want to demolish something. Since the tub surround was falling off the wall at one side, and I didn't like the placement of that wall (added only as a support for the tub surround), I removed it. 

I may still have a rotten floor, but at least I'm not carrying pent-up frustration about it. 

So here is my one and only 'open concept' adjustment to my home. I have created an open concept shower. 

Bugs Ahoy...

Or maybe just oy!

When I bought the house I knew there were termites, wood boring beetles, and (per the previous owner), "A few ants every now and then."  Define 'few'. To me few means 3-5 a day... Not 3-5 per quarter inch. I need that exterminator NOW!!!!

First Week

Last week I closed on a 1927 bungalow in an unincorporated (ugh), suburban (yuck), lower-middle income (sigh), little city (hah! what city?). The first day was very exciting: My awesome realtor gave me the keys and a sweet present for the house. That's about where the joy ended.

Arriving at the house, I noticed the people across the street (several grown men) had nothing better to do than sit on the front porch, smoke, and watch the quiet street... in the middle of a workday. Let's not even talk about the days that followed when I discovered their multiple junk cars littering the street and constantly parked in front of my house. I may not own the street in front of my house, but it's still rude to park junk there.

List of Priorities:

1. Pest repairs... thousands of dollars in repairs are needed and companies are unwilling or mind-numbingly slow about responding to my request for an estimate. How hard can it be? I'm happy to give you the square footage, just tent my house and kill the creepy-crawlers!
2. Gas Shutoff valve... required by the county and nobody wants to come to this city to do it.
3. Sewer Lateral... required by city/county and "the only guy that might know about that won't be back until Tuesday" (per the city's sewer place). Trying to get an extension but this will (clearly) have to wait until Tuesday.
4. Remove Deck... there's this monstrous back deck on the property, it needs to go.
5. Repair/Replace bathroom things.
6. Everything else...

Now, that's not too extensive a list, is it?