The Fence is (Finally) Done...and No Match for the Other!!!

I received a text a couple of weeks ago from my Mom with a picture of tall aluminum posts right behind my privacy fence.  It was obvious that the car dealership directly behind me was building a fence of their own...and one that looked like it was made to protect Jericho.

Well, when I came back earlier this week, I had the opportunity to see that completed fence face-to-face.  And, my oh my, what a sight.  It completely trumps my six-foot privacy fence...and looks a bit outlandish to me.

The new monstrous fence behind the fixed fence.

Talk about privacy!

I asked the fence installers how tall it was, and he said it was a nominal 8-foot fence...but quickly added that the poles are slightly out of the ground above the rocks.  Yes, I would guesstimate it's closer to nine feet tall!!!  I was actually thrilled that it was a wooden fence, though, and not the aluminum chainlink fence that I thought it was going to be.  But wow!  So much for my neighbors cutting through the old path they used to take to the mall.  After we cleared out the brush, we learned from neighbors that they used to cut through there before it became all overgrown.

Well, not no more!  No one is getting through!

So much for the shortcut!

Dad and I had a pretty simple agenda today.  We wanted to finish removing the fifth and FINAL fencepost that was still in the ground.  We had a much cooler day, were well-rested, AND only had one post to do.  So we had at it, and we had that post out in short order.  Granted, I had a bit of extra energy today from pretty tense relations going on with me and my boss at my current job, and I told Dad it was pretty easy to take out my stress and frustration on that dirt today.  And, boy oh boy, did that dirt move pretty fast.  We had that post out in probably 35 minutes...concrete and all.  A good start to a good day.

The last fence post!

Thankful for that Illinois black dirt!  No rocks in this one!  Woo hoo!

Time to fill in the hole!

ALL OF THE FENCE POSTS ARE UP!!!

We went ahead and fixed the second (and only remaining) gate today, too.  We had taken it apart as it was a part of the smaller fence that we dismantled weeks ago.  We built it back up, and it works as it should.  A GREAT day!

Re-setting the wood pieces and latch we took down a few weeks ago.

All fixed!

That was all we had planned, so we called it at that!  It's kind of nice having a short work list and just knocking it out.  Little by little, it's coming together...

I bought five gallons of paint for my painter for the living room.  I went with "Gray Frost" so we'll see what that looks like!  It's about time to say good-bye to the yellow!!!

The last time I will be selling yellow walls!

Let There Be White!

Sometimes you don't even know what you don't know until you know that you didn't know.

I knew from Day One that I was going to have to paint the ceiling in the living room.  For one reason or another, the ceiling above the fireplace was dark and sooty.  I don't know if the previous owners had a fire without the flue open, but judging by the darkness, it's likely this was over the course of time.  So who knows.  It looked like an 1800's house.  But I was ONLY planning on having the living room ceiling painted.  Frankly, outside of the fireplace, I didn't think the ceilings looked that bad in the rest of the house.  When I would walk into the house, I would never find myself saying, "Hey, these ceilings are dirty."

Boy, oh boy, was I wrong.  Sometime amidst the conversations with my painter, he recommended painting ALL of the lower floor ceilings.  I wasn't going to argue!  Hey, if my painter is recommending and volunteering for something, I'm all in!  So all the ceilings it was!

I bought a five-gallon bucket of ceiling paint and left it for him.  Well, today was the day he started, and I can't even begin to describe the difference such a simple decision is making.  The rooms are brightening before my very eyes.  It's truly incredible!

Out with the "white" and in with the real WHITE!!!

Notice any difference?

I didn't know that the ceilings weren't white until I saw what white looked like next to them!!!

Needless to say, I'm ecstatic about the decision.  It is obviously going to add some time for the painter, but the house just looks sharp.  He has his work cut out for him, but what a change!

The one place where I knew I had to paint the ceilings.  Above the fireplace was black!

What a difference!

I love it!

The house is going to pop!

Now on the outside.  One of the projects on my list was to rake up more of the pine tree needles.  I am wanting grass to grow all around the trees, so I started raking.  And I just couldn't believe the amount of needles being pulled up!  No wonder grass wasn't growing!  It COULDN'T!  There was no room to breathe.  I would fill up almost an entire truckbed full of needles!

Raking up the pine needles.

Sooooooo many!!!

A bed full of needles and branches!

And speaking of not knowing what you don't know...so I went to remove a couple of patio stones from out of the ground by the deck.  You could just barely see them, but I knew they were there.  So I took a spade and popped them out of the ground.  But after I saw both of them laying on the ground, I saw a pattern starting to take shape...it looked like the beginning of a patio walkway!  So I took my spade and jabbed it into the ground at the exact spacing from the two that were now out of the ground.

Hmm...two stones out spaced this far apart.  I had an inkling of something more...

CLANK!!!  Ouch.  Bad idea.  The spade stopped instantly.  Though it looked like it would pierce the earth, it hit solid stone.  ANOTHER one.

Well, I knew exactly what I had now.  So I just started jabbing into the "grass" and finding buried treasures of stepping stones.  It was so crazy I went and grabbed my dad to show him.  I was literally turning up stepping stones from what looked like lawn.  Over...and over...and over again.

Just what I expected...a stone path!

All but two were HIDDEN under the earth!

I had to cut the house work short as I had brakes to replace on my truck.  I received a bid of $992.00 to fix a broken brake line, and I said nope, I'll do (most of) the work myself.  So on to the next project for saving money...

And just for fun because I love how it turned out...the deck again!

So much better!

Organizing the Garage

I had originally planned on having the day off from the house today, but I had a day of free time and figured I might as well put it to good use.  I loaded up my wrought-iron patio table and chairs and headed to the new house to do a little garage cleaning.

I purchased a couple of storage racks from Lowe’s yesterday, taking advantage of a Labor Day sale knocking the price down 24%.  I debated on just one, but after today, I am glad I went with two!  After putting one together last night, I put the second one together today.  Takes about 20 minutes.  The method was simple:  pick something up off the floor and put it on a shelf.  No, but seriously, that’s really all it entailed!

Don’t walk by something.  Pick it up, put it on a shelf.  Little by little, I started seeing a garage floor again!  So it was pretty easy work.  It was a bit warm in the garage, but it was one of those projects where you see instant results.

I also tackled a VERY important project upstairs.  When I had originally inspected the house, we had tried out an upstairs window.  Well, when opening it, the window basically split apart.  The glass window actually came out of the wooden casing.  I have known about it for well over a month now, but it just stayed off my radar for being fixed.

Well, I walked inside today to the sound of the air-conditioning running, so I figured I would take a look at the window.  Sure enough, air was pouring in all across the top of the glass where you could slide something straight outside.  There was probably a ¼” gap.  I went downstairs and picked up the rubber mallet that I had been using to install my shelves.

I knew the risk of what I was about to do, but I just slowly started tapping on the window.  It didn’t budge.  I tried again.  Maybe it budged?  I tried again.  Slowly at first, I started to see the glass move back into position.  Once the glass fit back into the groove in the wood, it moved more freely.  A tap here, a tap there.  And finally I could feel the glass rest fully into its position.  And no broken glass!

The window now works great, slides up and down freely (and stays together), AND locks.  A rather important success.

I finished cleaning up the garage and unloaded the patio table.

Before...the garage is a mess!

And After...you can now move around!

I also re-installed the finicky patio door latch from last night.  It still doesn’t lock properly, but, hey, it’s on and functioning.  Maybe some day I will figure out why.

It was a short day (1-2 hours) and an easy day.  But it was nice to mark off a couple simple projects.
One not-so-simple project that awaits my return is the large and growing spore that I have in my downstairs bathroom.  This was not there a couple of weeks ago, so it is alive and active, but it sure lets you know it’s there.  It’s literally a vertically-growing and horizontally-expanding mess of mold spores.  Tower and flowering!  It’s gross.

The Towering Flowering Mold Spore.

But if I was honest, that whole bathroom is gross.  Behind the toilet shows grave signs of water damage.  Even the vanity shows signs.  This wasn’t originally on my Projects to Do checklist, but it’s a no-brainer.  I will have to completely re-do the bathroom.  Trim, toilet, vanity, floor, and most likely subfloor.

Ahh, the joys of foreclosure ownership!  Surprises are always right around the corner (of the toilet).

And in fairly exciting fashion, I picked up my second piece of furniture for the home!  I was on Facebook last night when I saw a new For Sale post for a large dining room table and chairs.  In typical irony, I instantly recognized the first picture as a table and chairs that I had wanted a month ago from the same site!  But I never heard back from the seller, so I thought I was out of luck.

Well, the seller responded back to me last night, and I was first in line.  The mammoth table stretches 70” long and 44” wide.  It came with four large-butt chairs, and it appeared to be in good shape.

The table and chairs as advertised...

So after a lovely Labor Day cook-out with family, I made the drive out into the country with Mom and ended up plucking this behemoth table and chairs out of a trailer for $135.  If it’s all in good condition (some scuffs and wear marks, for sure), it appears to be a GREAT table.  It’s HEAVY!

After unloading the table and chairs into the garage, it looks like a good buy.  Now it’s time to paint the ceiling and walls in the dining room, add a wooden floor, and get it out of my garage!  Ahhh, there is always so much to do

But that’s another checkmark off the Interior Checklist.  Purchase Dining Room Table and Chairs.  Check.

The Deck is Done!

Mom and I headed over to the house after church to wrap up a project.  Like me, she couldn't stand to think of the deck project not being complete.  I wasn't in a huge mood to be working all day, but I also wanted to see a project complete.  So to the deck!

The deck as we left it last night.  Lookin' sharp!

We had the posts and remaining floor left to do.

One of these is not like the other...

Mom started staining right away, while I sanded the support posts.  From my expert analysis of logic and time to think, I have concluded the previous owner updated the deck boards but kept the original posts from the first deck.  This is simply due to the fact that the post stain colors match up with the stain colors I find on the siding from a bad paint job.  And it makes sense.  Bad deck?  Just replace the boards!

But because the posts were original and off-color, they needed sanded before they could accept stain.  So Mom worked on the boards while I sanded.

The post after being sanded.

Unfortunately the posts are original to the previous deck!  They are showing some wear!

All ready for stain.

In about an hour, we had the deck 100% complete!  What a GREAT feeling!!!  Thanks so much for the help, Mom!!!  Can you see any difference from when I bought the house?!  What a change!  GORGEOUS!!!

The deck is done!

Voila!

Gorgeous color!

Before...

And After!!!

We tried to program the keypad for the garage door, but we weren't having any luck.  And I was tuckered from the weekend, so I called it a day.  I took advantage of a Labor Day sale on the way home and picked up two more shelves for the garage.  But I was ready to go relax!

But another HUGE project before winter hits is complete!!!

Over the Forest and Through the Woods...

Dad and I started the day with a goal of getting two more fence posts dug up from the (un-needed) small fence today.  And then clearing out the brush from the west side of my fence at the edge of the property.

And, oh, what a productive day we had!!!

We started around 9:00 A.M. and started with the fence posts first.  You have to take advantage of the cool air while you can!  Well, this project went very poorly.  We were unable to dig with a spade because of the MASSIVE amounts of large rock buried beneath the dirt.  We tried a chisel, but even then, we realized we were getting nowhere fast.  For some reason or another, that part of my backyard is just nothing but large white rock.  We worked and wondered what used to be here.  Rock quarry?!

The two posts we wanted to tackle today.  We ended up giving up and chopping them off below ground!  Nothing but rock when we dug!!!

So the decision was (wisely) made to just dig below the dirt as far as we could and cut the posts with a chainsaw.  We figured the dirt ALREADY held secrets of stone that we had no idea about, so what were two more concrete footings going to add?  We chopped them off and covered them back up.

But we went further.  We decided to go after a THIRD post since we only had a goal of two anyway today (and we already had those done!).  The third post was surrounded by mostly soft black dirt, so we did this one the right way.  We dug down the 2 1/2 feet, broke off all the concrete, and lifted it up.  Even then with just one post, this was work!  Nothing more difficult than moving dirt.  But we had progress!!!

The third post came out "cleanly."  Notice I did not say "easily."  But we had good soil, so we dug the 2 1/2 feet down!

And so now it was on to the forest.  And I do mean forest.  It's hard to be definitive with time on this one, but I have to estimate that the previous owner had let this part of his property go for around 10 years.  For as Dad and I already learned last week, the firewood had already started to decompose.  The wooden pallets that the firewood set on were reduced to soft dust that fell apart when you went to lift it up.  And, oh, the sprawling weeds and trees and bushes!!!  They had just taken off.

The brush as we started today.  Notice the "wall" of brush straight ahead.  It was so thick!

I mean, this stuff was THICK.

Where do you even begin?!  This stuck was THICK.

The good news is that we had already progressed a good amount yesterday.  But the bad news is that we quickly learned that the back portion was quite a bit thicker than the front portion.  The bushes were larger, the small saplings were more dense, and the trees were 20 foot tall!  But we progressed.  Inch by inch, foot by foot, weed by weed, we progressed.

What was mind-boggling to me was the amount of trash that was hidden in the weeds.  We had TONS of Styrofoam cups, gobs of ripped plastic, a hubcap with a tree growing through it (that was tricky to remove!), aluminum cans, a tarp, a tin can, oodles and oodles of plastic packaging (think Beef Jerky as an example), a chair cover, and more.  It was gross!  The mall is just south of here, so I am sure a lot of trash gets blown around, but it hit this forest filter and just stopped.  I hope this isn't a sign of years to come!!!  I don't want your trash!

Styrofoam was the name of the game.

Junk, junk, junk.

Metal, plastic, foam, we had it all.

And a hubcap!  Notice the tree that grew through the hole on the left, then grew BIGGER than the hole.  I had to dig underneath the hubcap and chainsaw the tree from below!

But we worked.  Cut, load, haul.  We had to be careful of one particularly thorny plant (the most thorns I have ever seen on a plant) and low-lying branches.  I scraped by neck so hard on a low branch that I had to bend over and just wait for the pain to subside (several hours later Mom showed up and the first thing she asked is, "What did you do to your neck"?).  It hurt!

I've seen thorns in my time, but wow!!!  And this isn't the worst of it!

Ok, ok, so I get it...you don't want to be touched.

But the more we cut, the more progress we saw, and it just became motivating.  I remember the first time I saw daylight on the other side.  I just cut my way back to that daylight!  Then I went left and right clearing up more.  Dad would load the trees into the truck as I cut, and we just worked.  Work, work, work!  I knew this foreclosure was going to be work, but wow!!!  This was old-fashioned, sweat-inducing work!  We ended up hauling out three more full truck loads of brush, trash, and pine needles today.  All in all, we took out FIVE truckloads of brush.  Ridiculous!!!

The first load of trees and brush going out today.

This load was nothing but pine needles and small brush from the ground!!!

The last load!  Woo hoo!!!

But the satisfaction is totally worth it.  And not only do I appreciate the new look, but we can tell the neighbors do, too.  I can't tell you the number of cars that stop to look at the new path.  I guess neighbors used to use this corridor to walk to the mall in years past, but it's obvious they haven't been able to do that in a decade!!!  But every once in awhile, I will look up or walk out front, and a car is just stopped in front of the house taking a look!  I love it.

Mom showed up around 4:00 P.M. from a quick trip to Chicago with some sweet tea, and it's hard to put into words just how timely that refreshment was!!!  She took to fixing a few of the missed paint spots from yesterday in the garage, and she was itching to finish the deck, too!  My body was telling me otherwise, but you NEVER say no when someone offers to help!

So I sent my very sore dad home to dump the last load of brush, and Mom and I resumed staining the deck around 5:15 P.M.  We worked until we had to call it quits at sunset a couple of hours later.  But we are 80% done!!!  I think I can finish it up in about another 45 minutes.  I didn't like the color at first, but it is growing on me little by little.

Oh, what a day.  But I can check off another project, and I am so close to two more!  The fence is almost 100% complete, the brush IS 100% complete, and the deck is almost 100% complete!  A great day!!!

And nothing is complete without the satisfying Before and After pictures.  So here is how the yard looked last week...and then after today.  Great job, Pa!!!

Before...

And After!!!

Before...

And After!!!