Category: Home Improvement

So this weekend I finished off my fixing-up-the-side-yard project by re-grading the area where the foundation had cracked to avoid water from pooling there again. I made a trip to home depot one evening last week (can’t stand that store, but they’re the only place around open after 6 for that kind of stuff) to get supplies. I got as much dirt as I thought I’d need, which also turned out to be about as much as I could haul, 18 cu. ft., which was 720 pounds, plus some stones and grass seed. Once I started it was clear I’d need more dirt, so Jeannie went to our local Ace Hardware (a much nicer store: smaller, well stocked, helpful and great service), for another load. She called ahead and they loaded up her car for her. In the end I used about 36 cubic feet (1.33 cubic yards) of dirt.

While I was at it I added some stepping stones for a little footpath, and re-seeded the area for new grass. I used a product we call “the blue stuff”:  it’s a combination of grass seed mulch and fertilizer, and it works great. We ought to have new grass in just a couple of weeks.

Here are some pics of how it turned out. Thank goodness that job is done. We want to move on to tiling our bathroom this fall, but another fixit project has emerged that will have to come first, and it promises to be even less fun than this one: The other day we noticed a damp spot on the ceiling of our laundry room, directly beneath our bathroom. Oy!

Ah the joys of home ownership. Having things means having to fix things. Is maintenance a creative act? I suppose in the sense that it opposes destructiveness it is, and also that you may make something new along the way to fixing something old and broken.

Earlier this spring I noticed some cracks in the concrete along the foundation of the north side of my house. The concrete is below the siding, a protective/decorative layer that covers the actual foundation of the house. It’s a generally damp and mossy area, and in the spring sometimes puddles can form there. I suspect the cracks were initially caused by water freezing.

Meanwhile just outside out front door one rainy day, there was a mushroom growing from the bottom of the door frame! It turned out the wood down there was rotting cuz the weather seal had worn out and was leaky, so the end of this piece of wood was sitting in a puddle in the door jamb every time it rained.

A couple weeks ago I finally got around to tackling these projects. For the door, I cut away the old rotting wood, the bottom few inches of a piece that runs vertically on either side of the door frame. Then I cut a couple pieces of new wood to fit the void, glued ’em in to place and filled in the gaps and cracks with wood putty. Later that day I sanded of the excess putty and gave it a coat of paint. More paint and new caulk would have to wait for another day.

As for the foundation, I thought I could just put a little fresh cement over the cracks to seal it. But no. When I started to clean the moss and dirt out from the cracks, it became apparent the facing cement had separated from the layer underneath as big slabs of the stuff fell away. Some moisture had gotten up between the layers, and tree roots followed. So I ended up digging a trench along the side of my house to get to the bottom of the damaged area, and pulled of quite a bit of the facing cement. This took the better part of a day and I had only exposed the damage, not even begun to fix anything. What I though would be a quick fix turned into a major project!

From here things turned slow because I only have a little bit of daylight left in the evenings when I get home from work, and we were away the intervening weekend, so I had to break things down into bite-size tasks and do a bit each day. This worked OK for the front door. I ended up having to give it a few coats of paint for adequate coverage. It only took couple minutes to do the paint, and then wait a day for it to dry. Finally I was able to put down new caulk and the job was done.

An interesting consequence of this was that there is a population of ants who make their home under my front steps. When I sealed up the repaired area I must have blocked of the way in and out of their home, because that night I opened my front door and there were dozens of ants in the space between the front door and the screen door, and some were making their way into the house! We sprayed the area and put down ant traps, and that was pretty much the end of the ant party. They have found a new way out, because yesterday I saw a bunch of ants climbing around the side of the steps near my rose bush.

With the foundation it took better part of a week to clean the area and apply a layer of patching cement just to cover the crakes that were left when all the bad concrete was removed. So two weeks after I started I put down a whole new layer of facing cement, a job that took the better part of a day and was not really a whole lot of fun. Finally last night I put down the patching cement to seal the joint between the old and new cement. So we’re in the home stretch now. The only thing left is to refill the trench with dirt.

Of course this leads me straight on to the next project. I want to get some dirt to fill in the low spot so rain water will flow away from my house rather than form a puddle. While I’m at it, there a few paving stones around the area that were left over from when I built my patio. >I want to buy a few more and make a proper little foot path. I hope to get this done this fall.

I’m happy to be able to say that we’re done with our kitchen tile project, and it’s a success. Lots of steps involved, the tiling, grouting, sealing, caulking, and finally touch-up paint. But that’s all behind us now, and nothing left but a nice looking kitchen. Later this year we’ll see about the bathrooms …

Section the first.

Section the second.

Section the third.

Detail of the fancy tiles above the oven.

Lately we’ve been working on putting up tiles in our kitchen. When we bought our house we made a list of thing we wanted/needed to do to fix it up, and putting tile in the backsplash area was in the plan from the start. Right when we moved in I painted a good part of the house, including the kitchen, but left that area unpainted, figuring I’d get around to it soon. Well five years went by, and we were busy with other things, but last Thanksgiving we kinda messed up the wall carving the turkey, and discovered the limitations of cheap paint (it can stain) so it was time.

Now neither Jeannie nor I had ever done any tile work before, although I’m pretty handy and she’s an expert in stained glass. Still it seemed pretty daunting to get started. But we bought some books, and made some trips to the tile store and figured out what tools and materials we needed, and finally picked out some tile and bought everything.

We put up about half the tile last weekend. Honestly the prep work, planning measuring and cutting takes more time than the actual laying the tile. Here are some pictures of our kitchen as a work-in-progress. Hopefully I’ll be able to report back in a week or two that we’re done it was a great success.

A bit of tiled wall, with our tools.

As you can see, we’re about half done.

We have something special planned for the area above the stove. Jeannie picked out some nice accent tiles.

We have 7 electrical fixtures to contend with in this small space. Making these U-shaped cutouts was tricky. Luckily Jeannie came thru with the glass grinder!

I had to pull out a tile because a screw on the electric box was sticking out and the tile wouldn’t lay flat.