Spring Projects

One of our spring projects, replacing the fence, is taking forever, due to incompetence on many levels. So I will go ahead and show photos of other activities. These are in addition to the annual cleaning of the flower beds, de-thatching the grass, pruning the trees and bushes, fertilizing, etc.

We started by replacing the sun room door
(3/23/2016), which looks the same before and after;
we had previously added the storm door

Sun room door from the inside

Delivery of materials for a replacement fence took two tries;
first they delivered only the gate, saying we had taken the other
materials with us, even though they were special order! (4/16/2016)

Handy dandy forklift is nearly 10-feet wide (4/16/2016)

The forklift attaches itself to the back of the truck
(4/16/2016)

The old fence on the east side (4/18/2016)

The fence on the east side has been removed (4/18/2016)

The new fence on the east side (4/18/2016)

However, the fence company would not replace the three-foot fence that ties in to the neighbor's house, even though they removed the old one! So Kent and I had to build it!

We built this section (4/27/2016)

Meanwhile, the fence company couldn't finish our fencing job with "stick-build" materials, and screwed up the gate posts so that they had to order a narrower gate. So the materials were picked up to go back to the store.

Handy dandy forklift just fits in the driveway
(4/27/2016)

With the configuration of the fence, we never saw the back of the garage, until now.

The area was filled with thorny vines, and stones,
and it drained towards the garage

Now it is cleared and drains away from the garage
(4/17/2016)

Side door bell before (4/19/2016)

Side door bell after (taken from the front door)
(4/19/2016)

Re-did the block "patio" for the trash cans (4/24/2016)

We kept bumping our heads on the old chandelier,
and the individual lamps would all
swing together on one side

We replaced it with a find at the ReStore
thrift shop of Habitat for Humanity (5/4/2016)

Then, of course, the dimmer switch to the dining room light stopped working, so we had to replace that!

The old front door, exterior (4/19/2016)

The new front door was supposed to be installed on
4/19/2016, but the installer who came said he couldn't
do it with the door that was ordered; we had to wait until
5/11/2016 for installation; the door looks dark
because of the screen in the new storm door

The old door frame, exterior, where the crosspiece
blocked the light from reaching the stoop (4/19/2016)

New simpler frame, same old dentil piece

The old front door, interior (4/19/2016)

Getting ready to paint doors, from the right:
sun room door, front door, side door (5/22/2016)

Kent finishes painting the side door (5/22/2016);
the side door had been replaced before we bought the house,
but it had never been painted, and it is required to be
painted for the warranty!

The newly painted side door

Side door from the inside

The old fence in the back (4/18/2016)

Part new fence in the back, and old fence removed;

again delivery of materials took two trips,

and our two-piece gate is now a one-piece gate! (5/31/2016)

Finally the new fence is installed, although
now we have mis-matched fencing (6/1/2016)

The old fence by the patio (4/18/2016)

No fence by the patio, because we finally removed it ourselves!
Kent came home from work early and I don't know
what he had planned to do, but he found I had removed
all the old fence panels and so he helped
me to remove the old fence posts (5/27/2016)

Four-leaf clover in our yard: we need the luck!

New fence (6/1/2016)

The driveway before a gate (4/18/2016)

Wrong gate ordered, but was installed so we could close
off the back yard for Gus (the dog!) (6/1/2016)

We installed the post on the right of
the garage tie-in fence, as the installer
does not do that... (6/9/2016)

We also installed the post next to the house;
note this fence ended up 6" above the ground!

Monday, June, 20, 2016

Now it is the first day of Summer, and so the Spring Projects should end! Still awaiting the proper gate for the new fence, and still not finished with the caulking project.

In this house the window frames, door frames, and baseboards have pulled away from the wall through age, and with any new re-modeling, it looks like they never did caulk around the frames and baseboards. I have gone through the second floor re-caulking. Since I was moving furniture, I decided to clean the floors, only to find there were hundreds of paint spots to scrape up, plus the paint along the edges from a sloppy job doing the baseboards. More scraping! And there was old telephone wire along the baseboard in two of the bedrooms that I pulled off, which meant more scraping and sanding! Sometimes the gaps were so large, I had to put in filler before I caulked. So the caulking project took longer than expected, but the rooms have thus been thoroughly cleaned, including backs and undersides of furniture!