In the garden, and RAIN!!!!
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Thursday, December 25, 2025 04:27
VIEWED: 1005090
PAGE 282 of 1154
Have a nice time, Brenda. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Have a nice time, Brenda. :)
It was a good lunch then we went tooling around the mall we were in.
They bought some stuff and I kind of played conductor. Which was okay.
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lol
Further down the rabbit hole we go...
Yanno, if it was only my porch that needed fixing I would have been done a month ago.
As much damage as the ants and moles have done to the patio, and likely the concrete slabs under the attached shed and the front porch as well, I think the beginning of all of my problems were those gorram maple trees that I planted because that dipshit neighbor told me they were Rose of Sharons. I REALLY hope that she believed that. It's one thing to be pissed off that you're being foreclosed on and screwing the bank and/or future owners of that house by planting maples all along the fence and the garage of the house before you leave, but why would she have lied to me about it and have me plant them here too?
Anyhow, I never did anything about them after cutting them down. Huge mistake. They are, in fact, the reason why the crappy chain link fence came up. Just like the guy who gave me a fence quote said.
After starting the day by mowing the lawn, I figured I'd grade out all of the dirt that the exposed patio pavers had pushed up against the slabs of the garage and the shed. Garage went smooth. The shed... not so much.
There are roots everywhere. Some of them up to 1" thick... and that's only the ones I found. I ripped a lot of them out along the perimeter, then dug out the post of the fence closest to the house, re-set it deeper than it was, and buried it back and compacted the dirt down. That alone took hours to do by hand. Then the rain came.
I'm going to have to let that neighbor behind me know he better cut all the rest of those damn things down and obliterate the stumps. He's not just in danger of losing the soffits and gutters. Those roots are going to destroy the garage from underneath too as well as his really nice fence.
Oh well... I'll deal with it in the spring if I don't get to it before snowfall. I've got more pressing issues to deal with at the moment.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Damn SIX, but you're a machine. I can't imagine doing a fifth of the work that you do in one day!
Well dd and I have started clearing out her previous bedroom. Going thru all of her things and emptying out all of the furniture so we can move it over and put things in them in a more organized fashion. Put together a big giveaway box and a big recycling box. Tomorrow we'll finish emptying the room and I'll finish organizing her stuff. Hubby and dd and I also fixed a shelving unit that currently serves as a linen closet and we went over the bedding/ bthroom items and took out the extras so it's all organized now.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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It's out of necessity, really. Summer is over and the floor isn't even in yet.
I've already written off the windows and the interior of the porch until spring. That's probably not a bad thing since I can monitor things better for leaks for a half year before really sealing things up. We're going to screw the rest of the floor in, so as long as I'm careful I can pull it up if there is any need to (I really hope there is no need to). Actually, I just thought about it now and the last piece I put in the far corner could just be put down and maybe I just throw a single screw in it for now to have it tamped down for the season. That would allow me to easily go back under and monitor the situation in the spring before I proceed with the windows and the other work.
I have little faith that I'll have anything put down to replace the patio pavers this year either, outside of some tarps or visqueen with some pavers holding them down. Not sure how shoveling that is going to be until we get there.
I'm not even sure if the gutters are a possibility now. My friend has been flaking hard on me the last few weeks, and using the excuse that I'm not ready to put the floor down as a reason not to come over even though there are a ton of other pressing issues simultaneously, such as jacking up the front overhang and raising raising the columns supporting it. My brother will probably help me with the majority of them since they're low and we can do them on A-frame ladders, but just trying to get him over here to help buy and move the plywood took weeks. He's got so many obligations I really don't know how I'm going to get a full day out of him... assuming we can even get it done in a single day.
And I got to get a job soon too. All this work and my dental stuff at the end of the year isn't going to pay for itself.
Back down below today. Hopefully nothing else pops up and gets in the way of doing that. It's cold down there now, and I had the sniffles all day yesterday from working down there the day before when it was cold.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Using screws not nails? GOOD IDEA! If subject to possible moisture, does this mean brass screws? I like the idea of tacking oone piece in with one screw, that DOES make it a lot easier to see what's going on under the floor!
Eh, it sucks that your friend is so unreliable. Is he giving you any sort of cogent explanation as to why he can't come over? Is he still up to his ass in alligators at his end? Or what? It would be nice for you to know so you could at least get an idea of when/if he might be over before the snow flies and the ground freezes! At least your brother is helping as best he can. I know you're capable of a lot more than I am, but een with your energy and strength there are still jobs that can't be done alone.
Er ... one thing more to think about before the ground freezes ... Wondering WHY your front overhang is drooping, have the columns sunk because the underlying support has sunk? If so, might that be because the sump pump is dumping water right back near the foundation and washing dirt away? Seems like you do have an underground flow problem, and pumping water back into the ground upstream of your foundation could be causing underground erosion (it happens! Some prankster turned on our neighbor's "fill" line to their pool and left it running, next thing I knew I had a "spring" pop up in my front yard, and a hollow was created under our sidewalk. It sounds like drum when we walk on it now!)
Hard to believe you're thinking winter already and we're still thinking heat waves. Today is predicted to get up to 90 F. The heat waves are getting cooler and shorter but we're a long long way from "winter"! At what point do you have to call it quits on the home rebuilding? When there's too much rain? Or when th ground freezes?
Glad you're thinking about getting a job. Reading your posts I really do get a sense that you're much happier when you have a project/ goal. I know you've called yourself OCD ... maybe that's not exactly what's going on with you but OTOH I can't imagine you twiddling your thumbs all winter long either. Best of luck with the job hunt, SIX!
*****
Back at this end, I messaged two doctors about all of the pain I've been in, and they both prescribed me some medicine - one Rx'd naproxen and the other Rx'd meloxicam. Can't take both at the same time, so I decided to start with meloxicam (once per day) and I'm FINALLY not hurting all day and all night! What a relief! shoulder pain ... mostly gone. Finger joint pain? Gone. Knee, ankle and foot pain? Gone. The only thing still bothering me is my left hip/sacroiliac, but I can deal with that. I can sleep, I can get out of bed or up from a chair without being stiff and hurting all over. yay!
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Using screws not nails? GOOD IDEA! If subject to possible moisture, does this mean brass screws? I like the idea of tacking oone piece in with one screw, that DOES make it a lot easier to see what's going on under the floor!
Yeah. I'm using screws that are rated for moisture. Probably wouldn't hold up for decades on a porch that got rained on every day, but should be fine in this setting. A lot better than all the rusty nails with the old construction, to be sure. Yup. I'll be just taking down that last piece until spring so I can see how it holds up over winter. Fingers crossed.
Quote:
Eh, it sucks that your friend is so unreliable. Is he giving you any sort of cogent explanation as to why he can't come over? Is he still up to his ass in alligators at his end? Or what? It would be nice for you to know so you could at least get an idea of when/if he might be over before the snow flies and the ground freezes! At least your brother is helping as best he can. I know you're capable of a lot more than I am, but een with your energy and strength there are still jobs that can't be done alone.
My friends house problems are probably 3 times as much as mine. He's also got the city breathing down his neck too, which fortunately I don't have to worry about yet since I'm careful and I caught this all before anything was becoming visible from the street. I know he'd be here more if he didn't have all of that crap to deal with on top of a full time job, fiencee, ex with child support, seeing his kid, etc. But then again, if he didn't need my help, I might not be getting his for free when he comes over either...
He's ready to come over whenever, but he just has a bug up his ass about doing anything until we put the floor down. That just kind of pissed me off since I could use his help with other things and there is going to be quite a bit of work on the existing joists as far as planing them down to make the floors fit. I really think he thinks we're going to get that done in a single night and there's absolutely no way it's happening in 3 hours with the prep work that needs being done (with a tool his dad owns, so I can't even do it myself now).
I should be able to tell him I'm ready for the floor to go in on Thursday. That won't be true, but at least none of the things that I wanted to do that he had no interest in doing will be holding it up anymore.
Quote:
Er ... one thing more to think about before the ground freezes ... Wondering WHY your front overhang is drooping, have the columns sunk because the underlying support has sunk? If so, might that be because the sump pump is dumping water right back near the foundation and washing dirt away? Seems like you do have an underground flow problem, and pumping water back into the ground upstream of your foundation could be causing underground erosion (it happens! Some prankster turned on our neighbor's "fill" line to their pool and left it running, next thing I knew I had a "spring" pop up in my front yard, and a hollow was created under our sidewalk. It sounds like drum when we walk on it now!)
It's over a gigantic concrete slab front porch that has sunk. I'm not sure if the sump is the issue since it's so far down from the slab, but I could give you a pretty long list of things making it happen in tandem and the sump definately isn't doing it any favors. Let's see... I don't have gutters, so all of the rain falling hard down off the house displaces all of the dirt below since there was never any rocks or mulch thrown on top of the bare dirt around the hastas. Then there's the ants... and the moles... *groan*... this house is so depressing to think about.
Quote:
Hard to believe you're thinking winter already and we're still thinking heat waves. Today is predicted to get up to 90 F. The heat waves are getting cooler and shorter but we&#NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Yes... I'm in quite a bit of pain right now. Nothing serious, mind, but since I'm not nearly as physically active as I was while working the old job, this kind of work I've been doing the last few days is really taking a toll on the joints and stuff, especially when I wake up and it's not 70 degrees in my house anymore.
The good news is that I was able to work on the patio pavers all day. The bad news is that they're still taking a lot longer than I would have thought. If I were just pulling all of them up and throwing them in a dumpster I would have been done a few days ago, but I have to meticulously remove all the dirt and sand from them, beat them on some other bricks to make sure I'm not willingly carrying any insects down with me, stack them a dozen at a time in the porch, then get down there and hoist them all down with me, then crab walk my happy as with each one to place them.
It's a monster job for one person.
I did finish the first layer today though, and I got a great start on the 2nd layer. I would probably have enough un-broken bricks to put 3 layers down there, but that would leave less room than I'm comfortable with under the joists, I'm afraid.
Stacking up the broken ones at the end of my driveway for now. I've already filled all 3 cans with more of them than I'm comfortable with because of how heavy they are. It will probably take me 3 more weeks of trash pickup to get all the broken blocks out of here.
In the mean time, I'm also grading the dirt as well as I can from the walls, and after seeing the divots the rain put in the dirt I had exposed yesterday by the garage (and the subsequent mess it made on the siding), I'm also putting a straight run of pavers on top of the dirt all along where gutters should be so the rain will bounce off of them instead of making a mess and screwing up the graded dirt until I figure out what I'm going to do.
As for the fill? I'm now considering just planting grass seed in the spring. It turns out rocks are really expensive, and gravel isn't cheap either. Not to mention I'd probably need about 20 tons at least of whatever material I went with. They'd have to drop it out on the street and I'd have to carry it all over with a wheel barrow about 200 feet a little at a time. I'm not sure if I want to invest that kind of time, money and labor when this is over.
I'd just have to make a walkway between the garage and the porch when it was done. I could probably just buy some lumber and concrete mix and make my own. That's what Youtube is for. :)
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Strange dream this Sunday morning. Dreamt my Blair was still alive and people hit the fact from me. Not sure if I saw him in the dream. I saw my friend and her mom. I think that was what prompted the dream. There was a lot of things munched together.
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Finished the 2nd layer of pavers in the crawl.... FINALLY!
Nowhere near enough to put a 3rd layer down, even if I wanted to, and I don't want to. 
Got about 60 left, and about half of them are broke, so they'll just be staged to throw out on garbage days. The rest of them will be used to make a temporary walkway to the porch until I figure out what I'm going to do back there.
Going to take a hiatus on that work for now though. Tomorrow will be all about finishing the structural reinforcement down below now that the crawl is dry and clean. After that's done, it's the visqueen. I'm hopeful that I'll get all of that done tomorrow with daylight to spare.
Weather changed on me, but seems to be in a good way. Got one extra day of no rain now, and 4 more days in the 70's. After that it's nearly a wekk in the 50's but then it seems to go back up to the 60's after that to wrap up the 2 week forecast.
I'll probably be putting the floor in with my friend in the 50's, but that's okay. At least I won't be down in the dank crawl when it gets that cold. :)
Strange dream, Brenda. Hope you're not too disturbed by it.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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