Curb Appeal, Part 2

So, now that the front walk was down, we could concentrate on the front gardens.

We were left with a 24 ft foundation garden on one side of the front porch, filled with ratty old St. John's Wort. On the other side of the front porch, we had a triangle-shaped garden, filled with an ugly evergreen bush (see the previous post for a picture) and a bunch of Hen and Chicks -- small, cactus-like plants that grow like the Dickens.

The weekend after doing the front path, we started on those two gardens.

My job was to pull up all the St. John's Wort. Not an easy task -- that stuff has an extensive root system. You'd pull on a patch of it. and end up with roots 3-4 feet long, extending down the garden to other stalks of the plant. Crazy. After I finished that, I straightened the front line of the flower bed, since it was about 8 inches wider by the porch than by the corner of the house.

Evan's job was to get rid of the hideous evergreen bush. Wielding a chain saw, he slowly but surely whittled it down well below the ground level. By then, we could determine that it in fact had giant roots that weren't going anywhere. So Evan chopped it down as far as he could, and piled dirt on top of it to bury it. It shouldn't return. And he got rid of all the Hen and Chicks. They're probably still growing in our compost pile, hardy little buggers.

Evan then took a field trip to the gravel yard, to pick up some topsoil/compost mix, which we spread over both gardens. Evan then turned the soil, in order to mix in the topsoil/compost with the old dirt. This also serves to aerate the soil, making it easier for plants to grow.

We also spread the soil over the bare parts of the lawn, turning the soil over. Over this, I sprinkled grass seed.

I'll take a break here to tell you how much Copper loved the new topsoil/compost mix. The first thing he did when we let him into the yard was roll in it. And eat it. And roll in it some more. He was also a big fan of the grass seed, which he kept leaping into the air to grab as I sprinkled it.

Fast forward to yesterday.

Our new plants arrived! We had ordered 28 different plants from a mail-order nursery called Spring Hill. They had a big sale going on, so we ordered their Complete Foundation Sun Garden -- on sale for about $85, including shipping. You can see the list, and pictures of each flower variety, by clicking the last link. One word: hydrangeas! My favorite!

And then fast forward to today.

When I planted all the plants, except the Magnolia (we're not sure where to put it yet).

Can you see them?


Garden to the left of the front porch.


Garden to the right of the front porch.


A close-up of one of my hydrangea bushes! A tiny baby!

Curb Appeal, Part 1

Morocco was fantastic. If you subscribe to our travel blog, you can read all about it there.

But when we got home, we were greeted by (1) one very enthusiastic beagle, and (2) gorgeous sunny weather! Yay for spring! Yay for a spring in which it rains during the week and is gorgeous and sunny on the weekends!

Which meant we could finally lay down our front walk! Woo hoo!

You may recall that it started out treacherous, with cinder blocks laid in a pattern sorta resembling a path:



And then, while I was nursing a nastily-sprained ankle, Evan got inspired. He pulled up all the cinder blocks, dug out a path, bought a bunch of gravel, and compacted in the newly dug-out walk way. It's still scary in this picture, but only because it's Halloween:



And then it started to rain for months on end.

And finally, it stopped raining as much, and we though, "hmmm, we should get that new front walk in..."

So, as part of our Home Depot spree, we ordered a pallet of concrete pavers, to be delivered before we left for Morocco. Which happened, but with one small problem....

The delivery guy left them in front of our house, but rather than putting them on the grass, opted to put them on the sidewalk. Blocking off the sidewalk. Which by the way, is illegal in Seattle. And he doesn't move them when I say, well, they're on the sidewalk, and we'd prefer them on the grass. Don't know whats up with that. And he leaves.

So I'm looking at 3000 lbs of concrete pavers that need to be moved off the sidewalk, right away.

I'm forced to because Super Woman.

By which I mean, I move them. All. Myself.

Carefully stacking about 16 of them at a time on our dolly, and carefully lowering the handtruck down the step into the yard, I slowly but steadily, moved 324 concrete pavers, restacking them in the front corner of our yard. It took about 2 hours -- faster than I thought, actually.

And I did this in the rain.

Even though I valiantly saved the day, we still didn't get the path down. It was getting to be crunch time for our trip, and we just didn't have time. So, the pavers sat in our yard for 4 weeks, until the first weekend we were back home.

And then, we got down to business.

Evan went and bought sand. Then, he shoveled the sand from the back of the truck to the wheelbarrow, from the wheelbarrow to the gravel path. And I used a hoe to spread it around, as evenly as possible. And then we threw the dog back in the house, because he kept walking around our newly spread sand (he was unhappy at this development). Then I cut a board to the width of our path, which Evan used to smooth the sand.

After that, we broke out the plastic edgers, which are long strips of plastic that get nailed into the ground on either side of the path, in order to keep the pavers in place, once laid. Using our fancy board, we slowly worked down either side of the path, carefully measuring and nailing the edging strips in place.

And then the fun part -- laying the pavers!

By this time, Evan's dad had come over to help. So, they carried pavers over to me, and I carefully lined them up, getting them as close as possible. We had to cut a few pavers (using a chisel and a hammer), in order to get our running bond pattern (example) to line up around the curve of the path.

After all the pavers were down, and lined up correctly, Evan and his dad alternated using our fancy board, and a rubber mallet, to tamp the pavers down. This involved laying the board across the pavers, and hitting it as hard as possible with the hammer.

And then, we got out MORE sand! And spread it over the pavers, sweeping over and over again to push the sand into the cracks between the pavers -- the sand compacts between the pavers, and holds them in place. It involved a lot of sweeping, and then some more sweeping, and then coming back to places you'd already swept to discover that the sand had settled, and you still need to sweep more sand into those cracks. We also tamped again, to help the sand settle. And then we swept some more.

And here's the final result:



The dark spot is water, from me watering the newly planted grass seed on either side of the path -- trying to make the lawn pretty again after tearing it up for this path.

Ain't it nice?

In the near future, we plan to run a path down the side of the house, splitting off of this path and going to the back yard. You can see where we've dug out some already. We still need to pull the old cinder blocks up, which constituted the previous side path (much like the previous front walk).

So, we still have a pile of pavers in the front corner of our yard (and a pile of sand). It'll be gone soon enough, and I'll have more pictures to show you!

The Saga of the Washer and Dryer

OMG - if I never have to buy a washer and dryer again, I will die a happy woman. Almost the entire process was a nightmare.

We found a washer and dryer that we wanted, and that would fit into our hall closet, stacked, without any problems. OR SO WE THOUGHT.

After talking it through with the extremely helpful Home Depot staff, who we even talked into giving us a discount (since they had raised the prices on us!), we decided to go for it. We got all the requisite paperwork, including rebate forms, and went over everything that we would need to send in, and where to call if we had any delivery issues. We also confirmed that it would be no problem to convert our dryer from a rear-vent to a side-vent, something we had to do, since our closet isn't deep enough to accommodate a rear-vent.

Keep in mind that we had confirmed this process with Home Depot before deciding to buy the dryer.

So then we scheduled a date to have the washer and dryer delivered. We went with Thursday, March 22nd, because it would give us plenty of time to prepare the closet, and also give us a day (Friday) before we left to do laundry before our trip.

So fine. Everything is settled and we're happy.

Fast forward a week, to March 22nd.

I work at home, which allows me to greet all deliveries and generally take care of home renovation stuff during the day. That day, in the morning, I get a call from the delivery people that they had a guy quit that morning, so they would be running late -- but not to worry, everything would get delivered by the late afternoon. Ok, no problem.

Fast forward to the afternoon, around 4pm. I get a call from the guy in the truck, saying he's on his way over, and will be there within half an hour. Ok, great.

So, I'm in my office, the window for which faces the street. Everytime I hear a vehicle go by, I look out the window to see if it's a delivery truck. But I don't. I see a Lowe's delivery truck, several cars and trucks, and a Penske moving truck. But no delivery guy. 5pm? No delivery guy. 7pm? No delivery guy. Evan gets home around 7:30, and still no delivery guy.

By this time, the call center for the delivery service has closed, so we can't call them. So Evan calls the cell phone number on my caller ID that belongs to the delivery guy. He picks up, Evan asks what happened to him -- and he replies, "uh, we don't have your name on today's delivery schedule." What?! But he promises to call back if he finds anything out. Which he never does (and he also doesn't pick up the phone when we try to call him back).

So, we're a little pissed, and confused as to why we were called about the delivery, but it never happened.

The next day, we call the call center. And they tell us, "oh, a delivery was attempted." And sure enough, they have a description of our house. So, we're livid, because nobody ever pulled up in front of our house, walked through our gate (which would've caused Copper to start barking), and knocked on our door. We keep telling the call center, that's not possible, we were home, and absolutely nobody attempted a delivery of anything to our house.

Finally, finally, they agree to give us the local number for the delivery service. So we call them, and they tell us the same thing, and we tell them the same things right back. And then the guy drops some key information about the delivery vehicle being a Penske truck. Which, if you remember from earlier, I saw drive by our house. And drive past our house. And never once stop in front of our house. And leave our road altogether, without stopping. So I gasp, and tell the guy exactly what I saw. And he responds that I clearly saw the truck, so I knew a delivery was attempted -- to which I replied, um, NO, a random Penske truck, with no other markings identifying it as a delivery company, does not tell me that that was my delivery guy. What was I supposed to do, run outside and throw myself in front of every truck that passed by, in hopes that they were carrying my washer and dryer? C'mon now.

So, finally, finally, they come around and see our point. The delivery guy drove past our house without attempting a delivery, and told his bosses that he did. But I had eyewitness testimony to back up my side of the story. So they agreed to figure out a way to get it to us that afternoon.
(They had wanted to reschedule the delivery for the following week -- we told them, um, NO, we'll be in Africa. That's why we scheduled it for this week.)

So, that settled, I waited all day for the call that they were on their way, which finally came around 5:30pm. The day before we had to leave for vacation. The delivery guys show up -- and actually STOP in front of our house this time. They unwrap the washer, and bring it in. No problem. They unwrap the dryer. Ummmm - BIG DENT ON THE DOOR.

I just start laughing. At that point, what else could I do?

So I signed a form for them to take the dryer back, and scheduled for them to come back the next week, on a day that Evan's mom would be at our house, Copper-sitting.

They hook the washer up, and it works great. But we have no dryer, so it's useless to try to wash any laundry.


The washer, all hooked up.

After Evan comes home from work (late, thanks to our pro bono case... grrr...), we go through all of our laundry to determine what we need to take with us to Morocco. We throw it in a bag, jump in the car, and drive to Evan's co-worker's house in the University District well across town. Having heard our saga, she volunteered her washer and dryer to us. We got there late -- around 10pm -- ate some delicious pizza and had a few stiff drinks, did our laundry, and then drove home at midnight to pack for our 8am flight.

So we fly off to Morocco thinking everything will be settled on the following Wednesday, when they redeliver the dryer.

Does it? Of course not. When the dryer delivery guy shows up, guess what? They don't change rear-vent dryers to side-vent dryers. Were we not told by Home Depot that it wouldn't be a problem? UGGGGGGHHHHH. So anyway, they can't install our dryer, because there's no way to vent it now. And to boot, they forgot the stacking kit, so even if they had been able to change the vent, they wouldn't even have been able to stack it.

We find out all of this when we get back from Morocco, and find this:



One uninstalled dryer, sitting in our furnace room.

Our first day back from vacation, I'm on the phone with Home Depot to find out what the hell is the matter when them telling us that a side-vent would be no problem. I end up talking to some higher up who tells me, no, the delivery guys don't do side-vents -- you were given false information when you bought the dryer. And that we would have to order the part to do the conversion, and do it ourselves. But of course, they don't carry the part.

So I call GE (the manufacturer) to find the part. They've never heard of it -- can't find it in their system. So I get transferred to another department, who tells me that, yes, the part exists, but only retailers such as Home Depot, etc. carry it. So I call another Home Depot -- no, they don't have the part. I call Lowe's -- no, sorry. I call a bunch of smaller appliance stores -- nope. Finally, I call one last appliance store, and get the parts department voice mail. Which I leave, describing exactly what I'm looking for. And then I give up. Because seriously, this part DOES NOT EXIST.

About an hour later, I look at my phone and notice that I have a voicemail. And it the parts department head from the last store I called. And he has a lot of information for me. Apparently, the part doesn't exist anymore, and hasn't existed for years (they last sold one in 2002). BUT -- our dryer wasn't actually made by GE -- it's a joint venture by Frigidaire and Westinghouse, which just happens to be sold under the GE brand part of the time. And the part for the Frigidaire/Westinghouse dryer DOES exist, under a different part number. BUT, he tells me, it's really not worth buying, because it's just a piece of venting and an elbow vent -- something we could totally make ourselves.

Which we decide to do.

So, Evan works hard getting the new side vent just right, in order for the delivery guys to come back out and install the dryer. But when they show up (with the stacking kit this time)? The dryer doesn't fit through the closet door.

The side vent makes it about an inch too wide.

OMG

I talk it over with the delivery guy, and he explains to me what we need to do to install the dryer -- pretty straightforward now that the stacking kit is in place. We can handle things ourselves from this point on, as far as installation goes.

But have we done that yet? Nope. The dryer is still sitting in our furnace room, waiting to be installed.

Maybe we'll tackle it next weekend.

Fin.

Squeezing in as much as we can before vacation!

The week before leaving for Morocco, we decided to go on a home renovation tear. So, we went to our friendly Home Depot and bought: a washing machine, a dryer, an attic ladder, ducts, roof vents, a new front door, pavers, and all the little things we thought we needed to get everything taken care of. We also research and ordered a bathroom light/vent combo.

And then we called Todd, our handyman. Seriously, you didn't think we were going to try to do this all ourselves, a week before going on vacation?

We had to do a little prep work first, though.

We decided to put the washer/dryer into our hall closet, stacked. In order to do so, we first had to strip the wallpaper and take down the scrunky homemade racks, and then paint.

[photos to come]

And then we had Tim, our helpful plumber, swing by and plumb the closet for us, since it had not previously been used as a home to a washer/dryer (the older washer lived in the furnace room, and there was no old dryer). Tim is awesome -- always right on time, efficient and friendly (and cute -- for all you single ladies!).


Our new washer/dryer hookup.

Of course, our lovely paint job was ruined, because Tim had to cut the wall open to put the new pipes in. Evan got to spend an evening putting up new drywall, which hasn't been painted yet, as you might be able to discern from the picture...

The next day, Todd and his helper Charlie came by to start on the projects we wanted to accomplish. They spent the first day installing the new attic access, and venting the soon-to-be-installed dryer. They also installed a new bathroom light/vent fixture, since we didn't have either a vent or an overhead light in the bathroom previously -- it got pretty foggy in there.


Vent sticking out of the ceiling in the hall closet.


Piece of venting waiting to be installed (after the dryer arrives).


The new attic access, closed. It needs to be painted, but we haven't quite decided how we want to paint.


The new attic access, open!


The new bathroom light/vent. Very quiet!

Very last thing: Todd and Charlie removed our old, hollow front door (which someone totally could just kick right through, if they wanted to), and installed our bright, shiny new front door. With a stained glass window! How classy, right? We're thinking about painting it dark green, with a white trim, just to give our house a slightly different look.


Welcome!