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Home maintenance and yardwork Updatia
Apr. 2nd, 2006 10:57 amManaged to get most of a slew of things off my To Do list yesterday, hopefully we'll finish off some more scheduled items for today.
I went to a local(er) nursery to explore their options for mulch delivery. Last year, I used a place that was 1) significantly further away and 2) bought a handful of 3 cubic foot bags at a time. This place only does bulk, and to make the $25 delivery fee worth it, I ordered 6 "shovel fulls" which - by guesstimate - is equal to somewhere between 360 cubic feet and lots more than that. That will more than satisfy all mulch orders for the year, so much back-and-forth with a trunk full of heavy mulch each and every weekend from now through August will be saved.
They'll be dropping that off around 4:00pm today, so I'm not sure how much I'll get in place around the foundation, but it moves pretty quickly. Only one fork and one wheelbarrow, so I'm on my own, unless Justin feels like trading off. He'll be watching Brandon - playing outside, really - because Deb will be going to drive her sister around car-shopping and attending some kind of school-related award function for her cousin (not sure on the details of that!)
Yesterday, we made it through some of the monthly mundanities - vacuumed out the HVAC screen, tested smoke alarms, and treated the upstairs drains with Flow! bio-septic stuff. Broke the screen on the basement's air filter while cleaning that, so we're filterless - I didn't want to run it without the charcoal filter and I didn't want to leave it in, for fear its fibers would rub against the electrical plates and cause an inflammatory situation. At the hardware store, we also picked up two 50' hoses, some hardware cloth to make a sifter and to protect trees from Bambi and other rodents, and a replacement garden hose nozzle.
Justin and I installed the additional two hedge hydrants - garden hose spigots on stakes - at the end of the 50' hoses, so now we'll have (in essence) three outdoor faucets - one in back, one by the garage, and one by the edge of the front porch. In addition to giving us 50' more in some directions (we now have *almost* enough hose to reach half the front yard!) it will help keep the hoses from causing problems snaking around the foundation plantings. The only challenge to the task was to feed the garage-bound hose under the deck. We used a somewhat-stiffer soaker hose with a capped end to pilot the way. Unfortunately, it likes to stay coiled, and we had a hell of a time forcing it under the 10-15' wide deck - bit too far to just reach under! Finally, though a coil poked out enough that Justin could grab it and pull - then all we had to do was attach the hose and pull. The mulch will finish the job, burying the hoses and keeping them out of site (and protected from sunlight, which, like to Darkness, is their destroyer. Well, sunlight and freezing temperatures, but that doesn't sound as dramatic.)
Today, in addition to mulch relocation later, we have to clean the dryer vents - first with the wet/dry vacuum inside and the brush coming in from outside, and then the last bit of bendy parts done from the inside out. Justin and Rachel didn't get their outdoor chores done. It was a bit too wet for them to pick up leaves from Stone Stream, and Rachel was excused from that and relocating driveway rocks from her garden to the driveway (they get displaced during winter shoveling.) I did help Justin with his pick-up-sticks bit, but I don't think I'll get to mulch the leftover leaves (not sure if I'm going to skip that step or not) and put down lawn fertilizer.
I went to a local(er) nursery to explore their options for mulch delivery. Last year, I used a place that was 1) significantly further away and 2) bought a handful of 3 cubic foot bags at a time. This place only does bulk, and to make the $25 delivery fee worth it, I ordered 6 "shovel fulls" which - by guesstimate - is equal to somewhere between 360 cubic feet and lots more than that. That will more than satisfy all mulch orders for the year, so much back-and-forth with a trunk full of heavy mulch each and every weekend from now through August will be saved.
They'll be dropping that off around 4:00pm today, so I'm not sure how much I'll get in place around the foundation, but it moves pretty quickly. Only one fork and one wheelbarrow, so I'm on my own, unless Justin feels like trading off. He'll be watching Brandon - playing outside, really - because Deb will be going to drive her sister around car-shopping and attending some kind of school-related award function for her cousin (not sure on the details of that!)
Yesterday, we made it through some of the monthly mundanities - vacuumed out the HVAC screen, tested smoke alarms, and treated the upstairs drains with Flow! bio-septic stuff. Broke the screen on the basement's air filter while cleaning that, so we're filterless - I didn't want to run it without the charcoal filter and I didn't want to leave it in, for fear its fibers would rub against the electrical plates and cause an inflammatory situation. At the hardware store, we also picked up two 50' hoses, some hardware cloth to make a sifter and to protect trees from Bambi and other rodents, and a replacement garden hose nozzle.
Justin and I installed the additional two hedge hydrants - garden hose spigots on stakes - at the end of the 50' hoses, so now we'll have (in essence) three outdoor faucets - one in back, one by the garage, and one by the edge of the front porch. In addition to giving us 50' more in some directions (we now have *almost* enough hose to reach half the front yard!) it will help keep the hoses from causing problems snaking around the foundation plantings. The only challenge to the task was to feed the garage-bound hose under the deck. We used a somewhat-stiffer soaker hose with a capped end to pilot the way. Unfortunately, it likes to stay coiled, and we had a hell of a time forcing it under the 10-15' wide deck - bit too far to just reach under! Finally, though a coil poked out enough that Justin could grab it and pull - then all we had to do was attach the hose and pull. The mulch will finish the job, burying the hoses and keeping them out of site (and protected from sunlight, which, like to Darkness, is their destroyer. Well, sunlight and freezing temperatures, but that doesn't sound as dramatic.)
Today, in addition to mulch relocation later, we have to clean the dryer vents - first with the wet/dry vacuum inside and the brush coming in from outside, and then the last bit of bendy parts done from the inside out. Justin and Rachel didn't get their outdoor chores done. It was a bit too wet for them to pick up leaves from Stone Stream, and Rachel was excused from that and relocating driveway rocks from her garden to the driveway (they get displaced during winter shoveling.) I did help Justin with his pick-up-sticks bit, but I don't think I'll get to mulch the leftover leaves (not sure if I'm going to skip that step or not) and put down lawn fertilizer.
