Still painting

I've been painting again. I picked a color called Simplify Beige for the pantry. Here's why.
1) Mountain Air - my first choice, did not look good after I painted two walls with it.
2) We had a can of Simplify Beige at home from painting our hallway and stairway (at the house we live in now) so I would have some extra for touch up. As you can see by the little white dots, it's not easy to paint o.s.b. (a type of chipboard)
3) These walls are going to be covered with shelves, so you will not see much of the wall when it's all said and done. It's the pantry.
I also painted the

mechanical/electrical room.

I don't like painting behind stuff like this...

or this....but I did. (the white is primer - it is now gray. Serious Gray!)

I've decided...

I am not good

at picking out paint colors. I have about 20 of those little sample cans.

(Hey that kind of looks like Africa on the left! - Kind of...)

I've also decided I'm going to go with creamy colors on the walls...

and add color by painting furniture and cabinets with all of those little sample cans. And add more color with pillows, blankets, pictures and other fun stuff.

We hired someone last night to hang gutters, after several phone calls and four estimates.

Also, I went to our family reunion on Sunday and found out one of my cousins is taking HVAC classes at Ivy Tech in Kokomo. He said his class is looking for a project to install heating and air. Pick me pick me!!!

Cindy

Painting the West end of the house

As I was preparing to paint the side of the house, I looked down to see this gal/guy? Hmmm, whadayathink? Think it has a stinger? I don't see one, but I was careful not to step on it. This is NOT a honeybee, btw.


So, this is what I was painting. This side of the house will someday have a screened in room attached to it. And if we would have put siding on the house, we'd just have to take it off when we put on the room. So we went with something called T-1-11. It's a wood product and has to be preserved.

It has grooves in it, somewhat similar to what car siding would look like. We went back and forth all summer...paint...stain....paint...stain. Our neighbor, backhoe man, said for his wood on his house he put a mixture of half and half, linseed oil and turpentine. He explained that back in the day when contractors used to keep their wooden ladders in the back of their pick-ups, that's what they'd use to keep them from falling apart. I used a paintbrush to do all of the grooves first, and I painted this bottom half on Wednesday.

Looks pretty good huh? Well, you can see how high up it is to do the top half by the height of the ladder.

But nothing to worry about, scaffolding man, who is now ladder man, (my Dad) came over to give me a false sense of security by holding the ladder while I painted the top half. It worked. He did say he'd catch me on the bounce. Which means I'm gonna hit the ground first....geesh. Sorry about the butt shot. We put the roller pan on top of the green ladder so I could roll the wood, after I brushed in the grooves.

Mom brought dinner over, and when she said it was time to get back to work, Dad suggested she paint this! Good thinking Dad. (I'll show you what "this" is later. It'd be easier to show you in pics when it's finished, rather than try to describe)

When I was climbing that green ladder, I was a bit nervous. It's the tallest 'regular' ladder we have and this side of the yard has a huge slant to it. Plus it's still a bit soft as the grass hasn't completely come through yet. At least it isn't the mud bog it was a month ago.

That green ladder was nuthin! Nuthin I tell ya!

And yes I was a bit nervous....

and when I was painting this part I was flat out scared! I was.

When I painted the section right before this one, I looked down. Mistake. Do NOT look down. So when I got to this part, I knew it was higher than the section before, when I looked down. I did not look down here, but I stopped when I had a few more steps to go and said, "I gotta come down I can't do this." Dad said, "OK, I'll do it." Me. "You are not doing it, you wanna wrench your knees even worse." (he just had knee replacement surgery in December and is going to therapy for the other knee) So I stood there a minute, got my wits about me, and climbed on up. And I ended up painting it all with a brush because I was climbing up and down just to reach the green ladder with the pan on it.

And viola', it's done!!!! YEEEAAAAA~I have been dreading doing this all summer.

But now, the wood is ready for the weather. Good thing too because I didn't even have everything put away when the rains came.

Cindy Bee

Yard work - done - finally - sort of!

After several tri-axle loads of stone (#2 and #52 specifically - I never knew rocks were numbered until now)

And us picking up rocks

and more rocks,

and more rocks....for weeks.

43 bales of straw

400 pounds, give or take, of grass seed, and fertilizer,

and hours of back hoe time from backhoe man

What used to look like this

now looks like this.

we have two rock walls,

extending from the retaining walls by the walk out basement (all of those rocks/boulders were picked up on our property by the way)

The entire walk-out area is graveled. We have a landscaping plan that will be done later.

We used an old piece of sandstone, original to one of the previous homes on the property, for the entry step.

We have a gravel driveway leading from the driveway, to the walk out basement.

The front yard is mostly seeded and covered in straw now.

The South east side of the property before

is now seeded and covered in straw (did I mention 43 bales of straw being laid down in 100 degree temps. )

And these areas used to be big holes, right up against the house. We would worry because those holes were by the basement wall and when it would rain they would fill up with water. In the winter that water would freeze. We were afraid water would seep through the basement or the thawing and freezing in winter time would crack the basement wall. Those holes are now filled in.

The west side yard - seeded (and now covered in straw)

The back yard was left like this

after the well was put in the ground.

Now it looks like this.

And what started it all....the East side of the garage

is now seeded and grass is coming up. And the trees are gone.

Some day we plan on putting evergreens back where the other trees were, but for now, we're letting grass grow....everywhere.

If anyone wants to spend a LOT of time watering grass, come one over!

Cindy

Check it out folks!!!

We still have a little work to do today and we'll be seeding it tonight...hopefully.

Cindy

Two men and a lot of work!

Dave and I thought we'd be moved in by now, and we'd have time to get this work done while living in the house. In theory, finishing one end of the basement sounded much easier and quicker than finishing the whole house. And I'm sure it will be, however, it is still taking longer than we thought it would. We decided we'd better get some of this outside work done now, before the snow starts coming down again.

We've never built a house before, so we are learning a lot. And when I say built a house, I mean we are building it not having it built. Funny thing I met some people last summer who said they "built their own house too". When I started asking them questions about heating, duct work, carpentry...well they had to have this done and that done and they were under time deadlines etc. They did not build their own house.

However, if you have been watching this blog from the beginning, you know that we did have the basement poured, the walls framed, the siding and roof put on by others. And let me say just about everything done by others have had a problem somewhere along the line. So far, and thankfully, nothing huge wrong, but still, things needed to be changed or repaired.

So, let's get on with it.

This is the walk-out basement area..the area we plan on living in while finishing the house.

See in the above photo how high the dirt is against the bottom of the house? Too high. And that's how it was left after they finished the basement.

And this is what happens in the walk-out area every time it rains. At times, when it was raining last spring, we were afraid the basement was going to flood.

A neighbor of ours has a backhoe," backhoe man", and offered to lower the dirt level, grade it, and make a drive to the walk-out. No more sliding down the hillside trying to unload the car!

Now you see where the dirt is against the house. Much lower. We plan on putting some little gravel there, then put old bricks on over the gravel. (remember, I'm having a brick-moving party) That will raise the level a bit, but it shouldn't flood.

This is another load of gravel. Gravel costs about $300 a truckload.

Now...see this hillside. This has been a huge concern to us for the last several months. We decided to get it taken care, while backhoe man is in the mood to do it, and then maybe we'll stop waking up at 3:00 a.m. every time it rains, wondering if the hill was in the driveway.

The first problem...see the drainage tile coming out of the hillside? I didn't think so.

See it now? Yup..buried in the mud. The job for this tile is to drain water away from the house. But every time it rains, the tile gets filled with mud. Do you know how many times Dave has dug this thing out?

We have one on both sides, behind both retaining walls.

So, backhoe man pulled the dirt away from the retaining wall, and we filled it with gravel.

Dave cleaned out the old drainage tile, which was full of mud, and also put in another tile. The new drainage tile drains down the hillside, not in the walkout area.

Fixing the drainage problem helped with the water, but also by putting gravel behind the wall, this winter when the soil freezes and thaws, hopefully the wall won't fall in. Because see here, it has a big crack in it. This was done when the electrical was put in, but we didn't notice it right away. It's noticeable now, after last winter with the freezing and thawing.

Here's the other problem with this hillside....

The gravel driveway... at around $300 a truckload, I think we needed about ten for the driveway. When you gravel a driveway you don't just put down this smaller gravel to begin with. You put down the bigger rocks...Then after they get packed in, you put down gravel. (If you don't believe me, walk in our neighbors driveway after a rain. You will sink!)

And because of the hill right above our driveway, what once looked like this,

now looks like this :-(

and this...

And every time it rains, and you drive on it, mud gets all over your car. It's a mess as you can tell. But until we fix and seed this hillside, there is no need to put gravel back in the driveway.

And that folks is why we decided to get this project done. Well....and Mr. Backhoe man has been very generous donating his time. He's the same guy that yanked the trees in the last post. We found out that the ONE tree would have cost us around $1500.00.

Only thing is, backhoe man has a tendency to dig up power lines....

Yup...that'd be two men, beer, a backhoe, and Duke energy!

They got it fixed within two hours...Dave helped.

So did backhoe man.

Here's how it's looking so far. Not bad eh?

In the meantime, Dave has wired the entire basement...so now we can turn on lights in every room downstairs!

He also put lots of wires in the ceiling.

and duct work preparation...

and water line...

and viola'!!! A ceiling!!!!!

Cindy