Return to Home Improvement

Now that the Wedding Planning isn’t monopolizing all of our free time we’ve been able to turn our attention back to the house work. Just before Thanksgiving we had our foundation seismically retrofitted. In addition to the standard “House Bolting” the duders added some support beams, fixed some cracks and cut some new ventilation holes. Oh, and removed a buttload of dirt:


There weren’t really any pressing problems that needed fixing – this was more of a safety-first approach to home ownership. Over the course of 4 days the crew worked some foundation magic, making our house more stable and less likely to jump off its foundation during The Big One. Fingers crossed, people. Here’s some of the crazy hardware they installed:


After he finished under the house we had the project manager come back to help us out with our crumbling back step. I was planning on doing the patch work myself, but the original step was too tall (11inches instead of the standard 7 inches) and a bit of a trip hazard. In the end the best option was to jackhammer out the old one and pour two new ones. Those fellas did some fine work:


After we returned from a quick Turkey-based jaunt to NY we had an alarm installed and did some Winter Cleaning in the Garage. While we’d love to have a fancy closet company come in and work some (expensive) magic, for now we’re settling for some shelving units. Here’s a little time lapse of the excitement unfolding:

The Garage from pvision on Vimeo.

Dish Hole

We selected our next house project based on quality-of-life improvement. Installing a dishwasher was the big winner in that department, hands down. Keri did some online research and chose Bosch as our Brand. We hit up Lowe’s to make the purchase, and a few days later it was sitting in our kitchen. Soon a handy man arrived to cut a hole where our largest cabinet used to be. And now we wait. Wait, wait, wait for Pat the Electrician.

Pest Poison

Ever since we moved in we've been waging war against the local pests. In addition to the colony of ferrel cats that hangs out (and poops!) in our yard, we've also got a variety of spiders and an oppressive amount of ants. For the most part these bits of nature stay outside the house, where they belong. Occasionally we'll find a spider hanging out on the ceiling, and a number of times we've had medium sized ant infestations in isolated areas. These always fill me with a quiet (and sometimes less quiet) rage and I mutter curses to (and about) the ants while I methodically kill them all.

The ant infestations finally pushed me over the edge and I started calling pest sprayers. Ideally we wanted to go the green route, for a variety of good reasons. Unfortunately it takes up to 5 months for the natural deterrents to be fully effective, and the problems often get worse over these five months. Oh, and it costs twice as much, they need to spray twice as frequently, and it doesn't necessarily last in the heat (so your spray that should last 4 weeks wears off after 2). Hmm. Hello chemicals!

So the man came last week and sprayed. We've still seen a few ants, but today I saw some concrete evidence of deadly progress:

Yes, those are all Black Widows. Yum!

Dishes Be Gone

Today Blake brought over his ladder and we headed to the roof. Our mission: remove unwanted satellite dishes. For some reason the previous owners had not one (or even two) but four satellite dishes. Some may have been old, who’s to say, but we've got The Cable TV, so for our purposes they could all be filed under useless (and ugly).


None of the dishes put up too much of a fight. When got them all down we got to work unfastening the many feet of coax cable that was strung about the entire exterior of the house. In addition to collecting satellite dishes, the previous owners apparently collected TVs – one for every room in the house! When we were almost done I looked down to realize it was perhaps not the best job to opt out of wearing work gloves. Yum!

(Thanks for the photos Blake!)

More Treasures

This evening Keri found two more Back Yard Treasures - some sort of animal mandible (complete with small but vicious looking teeth) and an old-timey pull tab from a canned beverage. Odd and amusing.

Yard Bash ‘08

Keri’s parents were in town this weekend, and when the girls left on Sunday for some to do some girl-things we Men turned our attention to the back yard for some good old fashioned manual labor. After assessing the situation we hit up The Depot to sock up on some tools, plants and dirt.

Tools Of The Trade

Over the course of the day there was a lot weeding, tree trimming and cinder-block moving. In addition to planting a lot of new greenery, we also dismantled an old compost container, repurposing the materials into a low garden wall. This required a good amount of pick axe work which was felt by everyone the next day. During the digging we found a number of back yard treasures:

Buried In The Yard

Inside The Old Brick Stove

Creepy Guy From The Compost Pile

When the ladies came home they helped us finish the planting and watering before the sun went down. It was a team effort and the yard looks way better because of it. Here’s a before/after comparison of the area behind our garage:

Before

After

The next day we avoided all forms of manual labor and headed out to Point Dume to enjoy an amazing sunset (complete with dolphins and seals).

Pacific Sunset

Thank you to Keri's parents for all their hard work!

A guest

We've had our first guest in our guest room. Grandma H. came for a quick visit after her Daughters of Scotia convention in Sacramento. We set up the "guest wing" for her, giving her both privacy and easy access to the teapot. It was a wonderful visit. Dave will provide wonderful photos of the room at some point in the near future. I'm just happy it all worked out well.

We're ready for the next round!