Not professional

So after the terrifyingly high estimate for remodeling our backyard... I stopped moping and moved on to other things.  Seventy-five bucks buys a jug of concrete acid stain.  It's worth a shot right?

You know that sound...

The one that a record player makes when you slide the needle off the record?  It's used a lot in comedy these days - despite the fact that a majority of audiences have never seen a record player - but that's another post entirely.

Anyway - If I could spell that sound that's what the title of this blog post would be.

I was really excited last post about getting an estimate for work in the backyard.  I loved the guy who came out to do the estimate and was impressed with his company.  I had visions of a lovely sanctuary-like backyard. It would be the way it used to be before it was wrecked.

A week passed and I didn't hear from the guy.  I tried not to take this as a bad sign, but I was getting nervous.

When Dave called Monday to check on things and was told that he had worked on the estimate over the weekend, I really started to worry.  When the gentlemen came by the next morning and got out of his truck with a beautifully bound and covered estimate booklet, I cringed.  I peeked at the final page with the figures.  Just peeked.  It was devastating:  Over eleven-thousand dollars.

Now I just feel silly.  I was figuring on actually  having some money left over for a playset for the kids.  I thought there would be money left for mulch and plantings.  I don't know what I was thinking.  I didn't at all expect to be that far off on the costs.

To be fair - I don't think his estimate was high.  I think I was suffering from a bad case of wishful thinking.  A quick search for retaining wall and paver costs (installed) on the internet and plugging in our dimensions comes to quite near that figure.  It isn't like me not to research things ahead of time.... This was an emotional blunder.

Sigh.

I am sadly going back to the drawing board.  The drawing board will involve shovels and sweat and digging out those flowerbed trenches like we always have.  We don't really need a patio.  Maybe I'll still get that playset.  We'll see.

In the meantime - we'll go back to focusing on our practical repairs.

There are porch columns calling my name.

Pick me up

It hasn't just been months and months since we have blogged about our Hurricane Katrina repairs and/or home improvement projects.  It has been months and months since we have done anything.  We experienced and are experiencing burnout in a major way.

Out of money.  Out of energy.  Out of time.

It will be six years since Hurricane Katrina wrecked our house and our two sets of French doors are still fused shut from rust.  (Out of money.)  We still haven't put that final coat of paint on the living room walls.  (Out of energy.)  We never got around to finishing repairs to the back porch columns, replacing the crumbling ceiling fans, or replacing the fascia that has fallen off in subsequent storms. (Out of time.)

A snapshot of our lives right now:

There are five children.  Two are teenagers.  One is three years old.  We have school events, sporting events, projects, fundraisers, and constant expenses.  That's for two of them.  The other three are still taught - by me - at home.  We have eleven animals.  Eleven.  Eleven.  Dave does have a full time job.  I volunteer many hours a week.  We also clean the school cafeteria on Saturdays.  Milk is just over $5 per gallon.  Gas is a little less.  Our house is insured for over half a million dollars - but it doesn't appraise for nearly as much.  That costs a lot of money.  Teenage boys eat a lot.

Don't get me wrong.  I love my life.  I don't think Dave would complain either.

But I'm feeling a little overwhelmed... and a little down in the dumps.  We have been so used to making progress on the house that it seems like - despite all we do in a day - we aren't actually doing anything.  Add to this the fact that seven people in a house for a few years causes some inevitable wear and tear - and watching the things that we DID manage to fix slowly get old and worn and it's downright depressing.

And so.. It's time for a major project.  It really really is.  Yes - we'll be replacing those french doors soon and I have a couple painting projects to work on.  We'll be replacing the light fixtures in the kitchen and eventually finishing the back porch columns...  But I mean a major project.

Yesterday we had someone come over to give us an estimate for a backyard renovation.  I'm waiting breathlessly for the quote.  I'm wanting a stone retaining wall and a nice, new patio.  This is the pick-me-up I think we all need.  I'm sure of it.

With the fence installed...

It's time to post a couple of follow-up pictures and discuss the next steps.

The fence looks quite nice, but as you can see in the photos the flowerbeds have been allowed to go completely to heck.  This wasn't pure laziness on my part (thought it played a role).  With the telephone company out here for just over six weeks tromping on plants and digging large holes and trenches in our yard - it didn't seem prudent to spend a lot of time repairing their damage when I knew we had a fence to replace anyway.

I'll be posting plenty of horrifying before pictures of the backyard soon.  Anyone who has ever read my blog before knows I have always been pretty proud of my yards and gardens - so this will be an exercise in humility.  But I'm hoping the after impact will be all that much greater as a result.  Stay tuned.

Don't fence me in

We have a few projects planned for the next few months so it's time to start blogging again.

First up - there's the back fence that's falling down.  Or I should say - that was falling down.  It isn't anymore because it's gone.  One afternoon and night of taking the dog out on a leash and then we'll be set again.

Blogging on the go

Not enough time at the computer these days so we are going to give mobile blogging a shot.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Tis the season

for cleaning up.  This time of year is at least as busy as spring as far as little nagging projects go.  Especially little nagging projects involving the front of the house....  There's just something wrong with hanging decorations on mildew-coated columns or a mailbox that has rusted.

Dave was particularly irritated by the rusted mailbox.  Now I would like to pitch a product -- Krylon Metallic spray paints are spectacular as far as spray paints go!  The colors are lovely -- and the 'metallic' part of the name is true..  This isn't flat paint with some glitter in it.  The coverage is great and the finish is flawless... no runs or globs.  In about fifteen minutes plus drying time - our mailbox is brand new.

The color is oil-rubbed bronze.  This paint actually has a lovely metallic glint up close.

Work on the columns is progressing weekend by weekend.  Those on the front porch are trimmed out, caulked, sealed, primed, and some even have a coat of exterior latex paint.  

My sanding job on the wood-filler leaves something to be desired - but I was getting impatient... and the improvement is still dramatic.  I figure we can get nit-picky with the sanding when we have to paint again next year.

And, finally, Dave has been working on properly painting all the rest of the porch trim.  Honestly, we don't think there has ever been a proper coat of paint on the exterior trim of this house.  When we first moved in the paint was thin enough to see the wood grain through it and it turned to chalk within a month or so.  Over the years painting time was eaten up by other projects or delayed by insane weather so that we usually only managed to get it clean and coated with Kilz before the mold and mildew were back and doing their damage.

We have been taking our time with this painting in the hopes that it will last longer than previous years.  Double coats of Premium Kilz-it along with multiple coats of high quality exterior latex -- allowed to dry completely in between coats.. may help.  Also - switching to latex from enamel makes us hopeful.  The internet tells us that oil-based exterior paints don't do UV exposure well.  Oops.

Maybe we got it right this time.

Only time... and blistering heat... and blinding sunlight... and torrential rains... and industrial fallout... and thick coats of algae and mildew.... will tell.

Stalling

It's been a couple weeks since I boldly pronounced the undertaking of a couple new projects here on the blog.  Regardless - they're not finished.

To be fair, the fleur-de-lis-as-wall-damage-camouflage project is complete in the foyer.  This does not constitute cause to celebrate, however, considering that project took about 20 minutes of my time.

In the meantime - the column project is at least more underway than the last time I mentioned it.  The columns on the front porch are now trimmed and the trim is filled and caulked and ready.  There is still caulking and sanding to be done before they're ready for primer - and hopefully that's a project I'll take on this afternoon once I am motivated by telling the world it needs to be done.

It's not laziness that slows us down, to be sure.  It's a combination of having too many irons in the fire and running into the usual roadblocks.  One example of such a roadblock would be yellow jackets.  Yes.  I don't like those.  It's that time of year when those little buggers are particularly grumpy and - did I mention this? - I don't like them much.  I was motivated sometime last week to trim our front hedges.. until a yellow jacket took offense at my waving electric hedgetrimmers around his house...  I dropped the hedgetrimmers where I stood.  They stayed in that spot on the lawn for a good three days before I had the nerve to retrieve them.  Needless to say -- the hedges aren't finished either.

Another roadblock to progress would definitely be my tendency to start totally unrelated projects before I ever finish a project we're supposed to be working on.  This time I was distracted by the need (no - really - it was a need) to do something dramatic to our plain yellow kitchen walls.

It took an afternoon to create a Gold Leaf feature wall in the eat-in area of the kitchen.

Unfortunately - this project is also technically unfinished as I intend to do the same thing to the north kitchen wall when the mood strikes me.  At least this one looks finished in the meantime.

Weekend projects

Relatively small projects, both -- but neither are finished.  Not because we could not have finished them ... but because we stop to eat and sleep and be with our kids sometimes.... Things we had stopped doing during our feverish bid to completely repair the house post-storm.  I learned to say 'It will get done eventually.'  Then I learned the bigger lesson of 'It may never get done - and it won't kill me.'   So here we are.

(Above) Project One:  The gashes in the textured foyer wall.  

It was a couple of years ago.  A tropical storm was on the way.  I wanted to be pro-active and at least get loose yard items picked up before Dave came home from work.  Among those loose yard items were the two big rocking chairs on the front porch which I cleverly dragged into our mostly empty dining room for safe-keeping.  

It didn't cross my mind at the time that our children would have lots of fun rocking in those rocking chairs inside the house...  Or that in the process our freshly textured foyer wall would be randomly gashed by the backs of rocking chairs.  It was pretty depressing when I found it.  I let it sit that way for two years because I couldn't bring myself to repaint and texture.

Yesterday I still couldn't bring myself to repaint and texture.  I came up with a bizarro idea instead!  Using my 3D stencils I covered each random gash with a plaster fleur-de-lis.  The goal is to sand them smooth and then glaze them to mostly match the wall when they're dry....  No pattern... As random as holes in the wall -- but way cooler.  I can live with that.

(Above) Porch columns:  Five years later.. finally restoring our columns.

We also finally gathered the wood and initiative to replace the rotten boards on our previously flooded columns.  Thankfully we discovered that the columns themselves were in good shape underneath... and only the cosmetic trim had turned to mush.  

(Above) One of the columns about.. uh... nine or ten months ago?  We were happy to find that only the (indoor/untreated) trim had actually rotted... but not happy enough to actually work on it.

Since we have to do this anyway.. we decided to  go ahead and add some height to the base of our columns -- they always seemed a little off-balance to me with those stubby little bases.  Hopefully the finished products will make us happy.....  But those are a long way off.  We have the wood almost completely in place on two... none caulked or painted of course... and there are nine columns in all.  

No rush.