We continue
21 July 2018 | Aurora, Colorado
Bill/sunny and already hot
And so the jobs continue. We’ve now gotten confirmation that our floor is to be done but we have no idea when. Still need to be contacted by the company that is doing the work. The plan is to take out a couple of boards in the bathroom and then sand down the rest of the boards in the nearby closet, dining room and kitchen. What we find strange and a bit of an over charge is the fees to remove everything in the closet and dining room. The estimate calls for two men to spend three hours emptying out what we could do in less than thirty minutes. Of course there is another three hours by two men to put it all back. Just don’t quite see that. The insurance company has already cut a check and it’s being sent to the contractor but I need to discuss with them this part of the billing as they want these two men working twelve house total to be paid over $500!
When we first moved in back in 1996: we made our our “secret garden” below the house. I went at it with a big front end loader and moved a lot of dirt and out in a stone wall The problem we had was that the gutter system for the house was going to put a lot of water into that new garden area, something we didn’t want to happen. To stop this, I put a big piece of plastic pipe on the end of the downspout and put it under the flagstone floor in the area and ending outside the fence for the back yard. Over the years, the plants in the area where the pipe ended choked and clogged the end of the pipe so not a lot of water made its way out. I thought there might have been a clog in the gutter as water poured over the tops of the gutter the last time it rained but it was fine. It looks like I was going to have to dig out the plant(Lilac bush)to get to the pipe. On Thursday, I got up early when it was still cool and went at it with a long steel post hole digger and shovel. It took a while as I had to cut all the branches off the bush but with enough prying and digging it finally came out and I could get to the end of the pipe. I found it clogged with dirt which I dug out. Inside the pipe, I found the end of a root from the lilac. I slowly pulled on the root and as you can see from the picture, it was over ten feet up into the pipe. With it pulled out, we now have a nice cleaner pipe for the rainwater. Now all I have to do is wait for the next rain(maybe today). There was still another Lilac by the fence and since Tracy is allergic to them, I dug it out yesterday morning. We still have one left but it quite healthy and while we will be trimming it back we won’t dig it out(maybe).
The yards, both front and back got another coating of fertilizer to help green up the grass and I sprayed again with an herbicide to try and kill all the weeds. I mowed the front yesterday with a hand held sprayer on my belt full of weed killer so when I saw more weeds, they got a nice spraying.
Tracy is still tackling the basement throwing out all kinds of thing. We had a really nice “SkiBob” in the basement that we listed on Craig’s list a few days ago and it sold yesterday. More space to refill.
Shipments of things we need for Zephyr have started to arrive. A new set of silicon collapsible bowls and a new dish drainer showed up yesterday.
We just keep slogging along doing task after task working outside till about noon when it gets too hot. Not bad till it hits the mid to high 90s. Then it’s back inside for more chores. It’s getting better but the trash man isn’t going to like us again.