Home Ownership – Page 2 – Mom's Guide to the Galaxy

Home improvement: a driveway!

Home ownership is a constant challenge of maintenance and ents, deciding which projects take priority in the budget each year, and occasionally scrambling to include an unplanned project – like my new furnace a couple years ago.

I knew when I bought the house that I’d have to fix the driveway at some point – the inspection write-up included “replace cracked and settled driveway” and walkway. There were times it didn’t bother me so much, but those uneven sections could be a painful jolt when shoveling snow (or mulch), and the gap on one side, an unfortunate bump any time I backed out of the garage, were unfortunate reminders that I needed to hire someone to replace it.

During the summer, I looked into several companies and requested estimates. The company I selected – Taber Builders – had a bit of a backlog, and pouring concrete is dependent on the weather, both on it staying dry for a day or two, and staying above freezing. A couple weeks ago, I was given last week as a possible date. It proceeded to rain most of Sunday and Monday, so I was pleasantly surprised when I got a call Tuesday morning saying they could start that day, and pour within the next couple weeks.

It should come as no surprise that several parts of this process are quite loud. The first phase of the project was to break up the old concrete and remove it. A couple days later, the crew returned to smooth out the surface of both the driveway and walkway, laying the wire mesh across the entire area. They did make sure I had a safe route in and out of the house, which I appreciated.

Bright and early Saturday morning… no, actually, they started arriving before the sun was up, so just early Saturday morning, several vehicles parked along the street, including a concrete mixer. Right at 7am, the mixer noises started. Starting with the walkway, then the driveway, they poured the concrete, and then spent a significant amount of time smoothing it out and making sure every bit was level (except for the one spot that’s a ramp down towards the yard).

A couple crew members were back on Monday morning to remove the wood framing the concrete and most of the caution ribbon, leaving just the end of the driveway blocked off as a reminder not to drive on it for at least a week. My car is currently parked on the driveway’s skirt, perpendicular to all their hard work.

Frances and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Morning

Saturday started like any other day: I woke well before my alarm with four cats on the bed, and still got up early enough to shower before feeding them. After feeding them, I made myself breakfast, then went for a walk, planting Pokemon in several nearby gyms. I hung my laundry on the side patio, and decided to move my awesome new minion rain barrel to middle of the mulched area. I realize, it’s not a practical spot for a rain barrel, but I get to see it out the window every day.

I decided I should pull the trellis over to support the honeydew that volunteered by the radishes. I noted when I pulled it off the mulch that the indoor planter, emptied of plants and stored upside-down by the shed, had been resting slightly on it. I picked its placement and opened the shed for a digging tool, to better push in the supports. I then dangled some honeydew vines over the trellis (adding insult to injury, these need to be re-hung), pulled a weed, and put the tool back in the shed.

Carrying the weed still, I was walking towards the side door when the first yellow jacket stung. Thinking it a mere wasp, knowing there was a wasp nest further out in the yard that I’ve been dealing with, I made a brushing motion towards my right shoulder and said “wasp.” The second sting hit my left leg, at which point, the cursing began. I swung my hand that direction and glanced at my right shoulder, noticing a yellow jacket attached to my black t-shirt.

Moving faster now, I flipped open one of the compost bins, dumping the weed I was carrying into it. Standing outside the side door, I brushed off the various spots that had been stung and shook out my hair, in case any of the beasts was hiding in there. I stepped into the garage and felt another sting on my shoulder. Imagine, if you will, a pixie only as tall as your thumbnail jamming a tiny poisoned dagger – repeatedly – into your skin. I stripped off my shirt and dropped it on the floor, searching for the miniscule monster that was causing my pain. Unable to find it, I shook out my shirt and fled into the house, rushing into the hall bathroom before pulling off my shorts and checking them for any intruders.

For some reason, Cassandra, who had just woken up, was looking at me weird.

Having confirmed that none of the yellow jackets were in the house with us, I addressed my injuries and prepared Cassandra’s breakfast. I stepped out to the garage again during that preparation and realized the last – and presumably first – yellow jacket was trapped in there. With Zuko’s help, might flying insect hunter that he is, I found the offending creature and smashed it with shoe in hand against the window screen.

As I wavered on going to the farmers’ market – for bread (again) – I remembered the company, Clean Pest Solutions, that dealt with our ant problem a couple years ago. I couldn’t tell from their website whether they would handle yellow jackets, so I submitted a quick note on their contact form and headed out to do my shopping. I might have been five minutes from the house when they called me back.

Yes, they could handle yellow jackets. Their next available date was Monday… was that OK? They could send someone out with a bee suit to address the issue, along with some preventative measures around the house.

I showed the gentleman where the issue was likely to be (I was right!), confirmed that there was a shovel in the shed, then retreated indoors as he geared up the bee suit and filled his tank from the front hose. Then I stood in the bay window as he pulled my indoor planter away from the shed, dug into the dirt with the shovel, then retreated – a couple times, once all the way to the front yard – before he began spraying the area. Eventually, he dug out the nest and carried it over to the window where Zuko and I were watching, before disposing of it. (Zuko was trying to hunt all the flying insects outside the window.)

After finishing and shedding his bee suit, I was told to leave the area alone for 48 hours – including leaving the shed, which he sprayed inside and around, open. This was apparently the most aggressive nest he’d encountered, making me grateful that I’d hired someone to deal with it.

If you’ve never dealt with yellow jacket stings before, they start small and spread out over time. The near circle on my left leg was about 2 inches each direction Monday morning; by the afternoon, it was 3 by 4 inches, still somewhat rounded. It seems to be the worst one, though I don’t know if that’s due to location or if I was stung there more than elsewhere. I recommend putting yellow jacket interactions in the “don’t try this at home” category.

Two and a half days later, I ventured out before dawn in a light rain, illuminating my path with a headlamp. I cautiously approached the shed – open these past two days – looking inside for any buzzing creatures or the beginnings of a new nest. Having spotted none, I peer in, shining my light on the other half of the shed and moved a couple items they could have hidden under. Satisfied to find no signs of yellow jacket life in my shed, I secured both doors, wondering where the lock was. (I was able to spot it from the bay window – it’s on top of the shed, which will require a step stool for retrieval.) I’ll have to keep an eye out for new nests, and I’ll store the empty planter in the garage once it’s fully rinsed of both the yellow jacket carcasses and stuff that killed them.

When life gives you lemons, make lemon meringue pie.

I know, that’s not the traditional saying, but I generally march to the beat of a different bagpiper. I think it’s safe to say that 2020 has provided a significant number of lemons to every day life, and there’s only so much lemonade you can drink. So I like to look for something that takes a bit more effort. After all, life went to the trouble of giving me something.

The latest lemon to hit my life was when the support rail of my bed broke last week. It wasn’t unexpected, as it’s the second time one of the wooden rails broken, but the first time was a tiny break near the bolt. This is a full-fledged, half the length of the bed break.

Broken wooden support rail in a bed frame.

I suppose I could tell a funny story about how it broke… an epic battle between Arwen and Cassandra, which the bed lost. But it wasn’t that epic – Cassandra was holding Arwen, and fell back onto the bed when the cat struggled to escape. I heard the crack from the next room.

My lemonade approach would be to order new support rails, or finally get around to ordering a new bed, which I had been looking at for a while. I can honestly say I wasn’t surprised that it broke; the previous break was a couple years ago. I was more dismayed at the timing, since shopping is a bit difficult at the moment. I have ordered a new bed, figuring it’s a good use of stimulus money.

But what about the bed frame? I can’t exactly donate (even if places were open) or give away a broken bed frame, even after gluing it. That wouldn’t feel right. Our spring trash day, when we can put bulk items out at the curb was cancelled… and if it hadn’t been, was actually the day the bed broke, so the break would have been after the pick-up anyways. And to be honest, it’s a reasonably nice (if broken) bed… a pretty wood color that was originally a crib, converted to a toddler bed, and now a full-size bed.

And then I realized what my lemon meringue pie approach would be. With the feet planted into the ground, the support rails will be the right height for a raised garden bed. The size is just about right to reach into every part of the bed for gardening and weeding, possibly with pavers, or even by splitting apart the support slats from the bed itself, and rejoining them as walkways. And the head and foot of the bed are effectively built-in trellises.

Of course, this takes time to set up. Even though I’m not digging deep, I submitted a dig request to mark the utility lines, just to be sure. I need landscaping fabric to reduce weed growth, and a mix of dirt and compost to fill the bed once that’s all done. I’m looking forward to planting sunflowers in it this year, as the spot I’ve chosen is remarkably sunny.

I bought a furnace.

I can’t say that’s a phrase I ever wanted to use. A furnace certainly wasn’t on my top ten things to shop for list. But I knew it was coming.

I had hoped my boiler would limp through one more winter. Last winter, it gradually lost water over a period of three to four weeks, with no obvious leak. That implied the leak was somewhere in the pipes to the radiators, but those pipes are buried in the foundation throughout the house. I learned how to bleed the system – drain the water and the build-up of air into the garage work sink to allow the water to replenish – buying functionality for another pair of weeks, until the room temperature variances started again.

As with all home improvement projects, I did my due diligence and requested estimates from multiple companies. Ultimately the one I chose was not just because they included a maintenance package and removal of the boiler, but because their sales representative explained what he was looking at in the house and attic, and what they needed to do for each piece of the puzzle.

Unassembled pieces of ductwork along with my stuff in the garage

Switching from a boiler and window air-conditioning meant there was no ductwork in the house yet, so we spent four long days with people crawling around in the attic and hammering away in the garage. I pulled what little I store in the attic down, moved furniture around in the garage, and parked outside for a week in December.

When they were done, I had a working furnace, a smart thermostat, and more importantly, peace of mind.

And an air-conditioner. Because I have ductwork now, and it will be far more efficient than window units.

The things you notice working from home

This isn’t my first work from home rodeo. You’re going to notice things in your house and neighborhood that were outside your scope of awareness before: the thunk the washing machine makes as it switches to the spin cycle, the water running through the pipes if you have a boiler, the creaking as a strong wind pushes the house, the way one cat announces before she uses the litter box and the other howls as she prepares to produce a hairball (typically while I’m working out). You may wonder why the small cat makes a thump when she jumps onto the counter, but the large one only thumps coming down.

Even in these strange times, you’ll notice things about your neighbors too. You’ll find out which ones hire a lawn service (and wonder why everybody on the block hires different ones), notice when the truck that always leaves at 5am is home or gone, and wonder why the curtains across the street are still closed this morning when they’re usually open before you head to work.

You may hear the guy who talks to himself – loudly until he notices somebody outside – as he rides his bike, or see the couple that takes morning walks year round, even in our winters. You can watch the birds at the bird feeder as they alternate with the squirrels, observing the different visitors as spring advances. If you look carefully later, you may see the evening visitors… woodchucks, raccoons, and skunks.

When you inevitably return to normal office settings, you will know so much more about your home and neighborhood if you take the time to look and listen now.

Goals we set are goals we get.

We’ve reached a new year – 2020 – and as I do each year, I take the time to look back on my victories from last year and the goals I’m setting for next year. I realized belatedly that a couple of my goals related to organizing around the house didn’t meet the SMART requirement – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-based. Specifically, they weren’t really measurable – “organize the shelves” doesn’t have a defined end.

I completed two project management courses as part of my perpetual goal of maintaining my certification; I started a third, which I should finish early this year. I added a new garden bed and grew delicious strawberries in it, had some delightful kale and pea crops, and lost every squash plant in the garden to hungry woodchucks. This year’s garden plan (still in progress) includes planting squash in the higher bed, where the woodchucks are less likely to eat the plants before they have fruit.

My old shed is gone, I’ve re-used most of the bricks that we found behind it, and am expecting to plant sunflowers where it used to be. It’ll be a while before that planting happens, since we’re barely into winter at this stage. My first seed catalog has arrived, so I do expect to have a plan done by the end of this month, but I don’t expect to put any seeds in the ground – not even kale or spinach – until at least late March.

I deferred a couple goals to this year, such as re-doing the master bedroom closet and testing for my hapkido black belt. I added other goals that replace them, at least in terms of me having time to accomplish everything – I think I started 2019 with 11 annual goals, and I finished with a list of 15. I’m starting 2020 with 20 annual goals and 12 weekly ones, which include a minimum number of German lessons on Duolingo each week and using something from the freezer (clearing out old harvests well before the next one needs freezer space).

What are your goals for the year?

Behold, new doors!

As I mentioned in September, the door out from the garage was desperately in need of replacement. So was the front door – in addition to the breeze I could feel coming in under the door on windy days, there was an increasing gap at the sides because the metal door had shrunk in the frame. Obviously, this is less than ideal, particularly in Chicagoland winters.

I did my due diligence, requesting multiple quotes for the two doors and storm doors. (That seems like a fancy name for screen doors, but they actually have glass that slides up, so it can be sealed in the winter.) One of the interesting things I encountered was that multiple vendors sold doors from the same regional producer, so I was able to do a direct comparison of that pricing.

Old and new doors - front door on top, side door on bottom The front door is fairly close to my large front windows, so I didn’t see a need to include a larger window in the door; the windows look out onto the path from the driveway already. Instead, I picked a similar window size to the existing door, but went with slightly decorative glass.

In addition to the locks on the normal doors, the storm doors include locks, which makes them ideal for leaving open as screen doors in the summer. The old doors were white on both sides. I decided the new doors should match the gutters and went with brown on the outside, but kept them white on the inside.

Next up on the home ownership front is a big decision… there is a leak somewhere in my radiator pipes, which are buried in the slab otherwise known as my foundation. I’m faced with the expensive process of trying to locate it – or paying someone to come “bleed” my pipes multiple times in the winter to get the air out, again – or replacing my boiler with a furnace and adding air-conditioning while I’m at it.

Bricks and mulch and backache, oh my!

It’s been a busy pair of weeks here between the shed removal and preparing the garden for winter. When we demolished the shed, we found a stacks bricks hidden behind it. I couldn’t tell how many bricks there were, since the stacks were at an angle, partially because the dirt there is uneven. Some stacks were higher than others, and some bricks were fairly solidly sunk into the dirt. I hoped there would be enough to brick around the star-shaped bed in the front yard; with a solidly defined line, I’ll be able to tell when the grass and weeds begin encroaching on the mulch (as opposed to when the mulch has spilled out onto the grass).

Mission accomplished! And then some… the star used about 80 bricks, the mulberry bush another 60, and I’m now working on ringing other garden areas, such as the hibiscus plants. By the time we finished those, there may be enough bricks left to ring the peonies.

Top left: star-shaped bed with old mulch and partial circle of bricks; top right: star-shaped bed with new mulch and full circle of bricks; bottom left: mulberry bush with a small circle of mulch and weeds; bottom right: mulberry bush with new mulch and a circle of bricks

Once the bricks were in place, it was clear something else was needed… fresh mulch! Most mulched areas need refreshing at least once a year, both for look and weed suppression. I frequently stop at the city’s mulch pile for a couple buckets at a time, but I knew I needed more for this project. I had several yards of mulch delivered and am quickly distributing it across the yard, with a goal of clearing the entire pile in under two weeks. After all, it’s technically fall, and we have no way of knowing when the temperature will drop.

Guess where the backache comes in…. Hauling bricks and mulch around the yard is not light work. Fortunately, the bricks are right by the raspberries, so we can stop in-between for snacks.

Demolition!

One of my goals for the year (that I didn’t list here) was to demolish and replace the shed that came with my house. We’ve known since we moved in that it would have to go eventually – the base board is supported by a few bricks rather than a foundation, the doors didn’t quite fit together when they closed, and one side of the roof had retained moisture to the point where it grew mushrooms along with other molds. And that wasn’t the side where water dripped in!

When I opened the shed in the spring, I discovered that somebody had been living in it over the winter, courtesy of a hole dug through the far wall. This, on top of the many hard to spot hornet or yellow jacket nests (all abandoned by this point) was the tipping point. The yellow jackets were a problem the first summer here, leading to this little tidbit one morning:

“So this morning, I took a big bucket of soapy water outside after layering up really well and proceeded to totally whiff when flinging the water at the shed door. I aimed too low. On the plus side, I didn’t disturb any of them, so I was able to refill the bucket and try again.”

The yellow jackets had built nests on the inside of both shed doors, which made retrieving gardening supplies … nerve-wracking. Having discovered them just after a trip to Menard’s, I looked online for options other than bug spray, and found out that soapy water adheres to their wings and prevents them from flying, even once it’s dry. And the water dissolves the nest.

Now, three summers later, we finally reached the demolition stage. The upper left photo shows the roof after I started peeling shingles off – the wood was damaged enough it was breaking during the process. The upper right photo was taken during the fun process involving a pry bar and sledgehammer, with a controlled approach to make sure the shed fell into the garden rather than the neighbor’s fence. The bottom two photos are the remnants, with the smaller pieces lined up against the wall waiting for the city’s semi-annual trash day; the big pieces will take a couple people to move. The base board will come up as well – there’s a rotted section just before the bricks.

The bricks? Yes, those came with the house too, hidden behind the shed… who knows how long they’ve been stored there. I have plans for them, though not for the rolled up fencing that’s entangled with raspberries at the moment.

Home maintenance decisions

Owning a home thrusts you into a constant process of making difficult decisions. When a problem starts, do you fix it yourself or call a professional? Do you repair it or replace it?

At times, that decision is obvious. When I bought this house, I knew the windows would need replacing. None of them were broken, they were just an older model of casement windows that weren’t particularly good at insulating the house. Newer windows are all double-paned, and the frames are meant to last longer. Additionally, the casement windows were a pain to open – I had to remove the screen, unlatch the window, push it open, then put the screen back in.

This summer, my dryer stopped spinning. Looking at the notes from my home inspection (always get one before buying a house!), it stated that the washer and dryer were dated and should be replaced at some point. While I debated between a replacement and repair, I improvised a stand for my clothesline and started air drying my clothes again. The dryer has since been repaired – the belt had broken, which isn’t a terrible expensive repair – and when I had my water softener serviced for the year, that guy commented that you can’t get durable machines like my washer and dryer anymore. That made me feel better about my decision to repair them.

On the other hand, I have a wooden door out the side of my attached garage with a crack in it. And while it’s neat to look at the light shining through it and make Doctor Who references, come winter it will reduce the efficiency of the heater in the garage. The garage is home to my washer, dryer, well pressure tank, full-size freezer, hot water heater, and boiler, plus occasionally my car, so maintaining a proper temperature in the winter is somewhat essential. So that’s on the replacement list.

Meanwhile, the lock on my front door just needed a bit of WD-40 when the key wouldn’t go all the way in. It’s a never-ending process of updating the house, the garden, or both, along with deciding whether to do it yourself or hire a professional.