When you bring in some fill-dirt to modify the shape of your yard, one thing you’re never told is that there are dormant plants and seeds just waiting to pop out. Since our yard has been done I have seen a number of plants (and weeds) in our yard that weren’t already there and weren’t planted as part of the plan. Some of them are interesting so we give them a chance, but some are bad like new types of grasses and weeds we never wanted. I think the best of the random things to pop up are the variety of green onion that has popped up. The worst? There weird incredibly fast growing very large leafed plants that are are tough to kill. I think I’m going to have to dig them up because even RoundUp has been ineffective so far.
This weekend we planted a new ponderosa lemon tree to replace the old dead one. Hopefully this one makes it. It already has unripe lemons on it. Also all the dead weedy grass where the lemon tree is was removed, yay!
Then to top it all off we went to Ikea and got curtains. Tonight those will get hung.
We also tried out Leo’s Taco Bar on the corner of 17th and Brommer which makes it less than a two-minute walk from the house. The food was pretty good and reasonably priced. I think Taqueria Vallarta is better but this earns points for convenience. They also have breakfast burritos which I haven’t tried yet.
Sep 302006
Today I got about 6 solid hours of weeding in and my hands are feeling it. I know I should wear gloves, but the gloves make it harder to get a hold of things to pull out. Maybe if there were microfiber gardening gloves. Is there such a thing? I think I’ll have to look into that.
Also while at Costco I found a new motion sensor light to replace the one in the back yard that just decided that something was always moving. It was fairly inexpensive and came with bulbs but I put in compact fluorescents instead.
Sep 292006
I don’t feel like I’ve done enough, just some errands and sit in meetings all day.
Since I’ve started a more sensible eating plan I’ve been losing some weight I should lose. This morning I was finally below 210. My plan? I eat when I’m hungry, not when I’m just ‘not full’. I don’t eat until I’m full, just comfortable. If I’m unsure I wait a little and eat more if I need to. So really, it’s just me paying attention to my body and not stuffing food into it.
Now I just have to work on the weeds tomorrow and do the cleaning I was supposed to do this week before Nicole gets home.
How White and Nerdy Are You?Jul 262006
There are some pictures of the window in the area by the kitchen that used to be the dining area. We put 3Form plastic with reeds in it so some light can go between the laundry room and that area while not having to actually look from one room to another.
I forgot the pictures of the shower glass in the bathroom which really is the last of the bathroom pictures I think. We did forget one thing in all the bathroom plans and that was where to put towel racks or hooks. We think we have that worked out so there might be one more picture, but everything else really is done.
Jul 252006
Jul 052006
Saturday we tried to go to Sacramento to Nicole’s brother’s BBQ, but after 2 hours and only getting 80 miles and hearing that traffic was the same the rest of the way we gave up. On the way back home we decided to get lobsters to compensate at 99 Ranch Market so we got two 1.5 and 1 3lb lobster. Yum!
Sunday we emptied the office and the other bedroom which took about 6-7 hours since this is where everything has piled up during the remodel.
Monday we primed the office, painted the bedroom, and then painted the office. We also got baseboards for the bedroom. Mmmmmm fumes.
Tuesday we painted another coat on the two rooms so now they are done and a lot of things that had no home can finally go where they belong.
Oh yeah, we can use the shower in our bathroom now that they installed the shower glass. Unfortunately there are scratches on the shower glass so they are bringing us another one in two weeks.
Jun 262006
I haven’t posted and house updates in awhile because I haven’t really known what to post. Mostly we’re waiting for some last few things. In the bathroom I painted the trim behind the “floating cabinets” and the bathroom pocket door. Now we just await the glass that will allow us to shower without spraying the bathroom.
In the kitchen the garbage cabinet has been fixed to be a one-piece pull-out instead of two doors that had to be opened all the way before you could pull out the cans. We’re still waiting for under cabinet lighting and the installation of the blower unit for the down draft.
What’s left aside from that? Painting the office and the other bedroom. Then finally things will be able to be moved into their places. One of the problems of remodelling something is that you decide to do other things while everything is messed up.
For us, that meant re-texturing the living room and the master bedroom and a wall in the “tv” room. We also have an electrical panel switched from the projection wall in the “tv” room to a wall in the laundry room. The water heater has been replaced with an on-demand heater (I can see it has cut gas usage by 1/3). The old water heater took up a corner of the office room so there’s 10 more square feet in there now that the heater is on the outside wall. Since the kitchen floor was being put in we had them re-coat the rest of the floors with more of urethane. We removed the shelf in the laundry room and shortened the interior window that looks into it so that needed a wall build-up. Also since we needed new windows in the kitchen and bathroom we decided to get new windows throughout the house. Re-texturing, windows, and all that means that when we’re done we’ll have painted pretty much the entire house.
If the dryer’s heat is working but things aren’t getting dry it’s because exhaust air isn’t working. I knew that already. That’s bad because it can start fires, but that didn’t happen here and I knew that too. The likely culprit was the flex hose (knew that) but amazingly there was very little in there.
The problem was the vent opening on the outside of the house. It has a screen inside of a mesh just small enought oprevent a bee from gaining entry and just small enough apparently to gather up enuogh lint over time to become completely blocked. More likely is that lint formed little clumps over time that were then caught up and blown to the screen where they got stuck. Anyway, some cutting pliers to remove the screen fixed the problem. I’m not really worried about critters getting in there. Hopefully I don’t regret saying that.
May 012006
This weekend I pulled another two green-barrel loads of weeds, bringing the total for the month up to four. The remaining weeds are very tiny or grasses and clovers where it’s hard to get their roots, they are also in open areas where no plants will be going. I’ve sprayed the back yard for those and still need to do the front.