Down In the Gutters

Our work continued today on the outside of the house.  As the title implies, that encompassed both washing the siding and getting close to the house gutters on the front and back sides of the house to give them a good cleaning.

The day dawned much cooler than the last couple of stormy, hot days, so I got outside just after 8:00 a.m. to cut the lawn.  Rick and I have been alternating weeks to cut the grass, and this week was my turn to finish that task.  I wanted to cut the lawn before Rick hauled out the power washer and hoses to continue our work on washing down the house.

The lawn was completed in about an hour.  It really needed to be cut!  This past week blessed us with hot temperatures and lots of rain, so we had perfect grass-growing conditions.  Additionally, we had put weed and feed on the lawn earlier this year, so all of the conditions were right for a good, healthy lawn.

Rick sprays the facia and the front gutters on the front of the house.
Since we have gutter guards on the gutters, dirt accumulates where
the water flows over the lip of the guards into the eaves trough. 

Once the grass was cut, we hauled out the equipment to continue to work on the filthy siding on the house.  Rick had completed washing the moldy north side and the moldy porch roof in the back.  Today was our day to tackle the front gutters and facia, the garage door, and a small area of siding as our house steps from one level to the next.  Thankfully, most of the house in front is covered in brick, so that did not need attention.

Rick washed what he could from the ground on
the small bit of siding seen from the front yard.

The front does, however, contain a deep porch, and it has been years since the ceiling on the porch was scrubbed.  We hesitate to spray water there because it gets into the attic through the ventilation holes, but the holes were so plugged with dirt -- probably from the road construction last year -- that no air was getting through the holes either. Something had to be done to restore that ventilation to the area above the porch.

After about an hour's worth of work, the gutters, facia, ceilings, and soffits look much better.

The rest of the siding had to be washed from the roof.

Then Rick went back onto the roof.  He washed down the top of our gutter guards.  That should prevent some of the dirt from washing onto the front lip of the gutters for a while.  Then he sprayed, scrubbed, and rinsed the small section of siding that is only accessible from the roof.  That, too, looks much lighter and brighter.

The good news is that the job is complete.  The bad news is that Rick said our roof soon will need to be replaced.  That is not really a surprise since the roof is probably 25 years old.  The roof will be yet another item on our "to do" list for which we need to start putting aside funds.

After he finished the front, we moved to the back yard and washed both walls on either side of the porch along with the gutters on that side.

The house looks both brighter and cleaner.  We still have the south side to complete, but that will have to wait for a cooler, hopefully cloudier day.  That's the last side to complete, and we both admit that this is a job we hope we do not have to repeat next year!

Grime (and Mold) Does Not Pay

Today was a beautiful day to get outside and to get some work done.  We either could have worked more on the landscape, or we could have hauled out the power washer to start to scrub the house.  Rick opted for the power washer.

As he went to Home Depot to get some ZAP siding cleaner, I started to stage some of the items we would need to wash the house.  The north side of the house particularly was filthy and had started to show signs of mildew and mold.

Rick sprays down the north side of the house.

Rick wet down the house first with the cleaner mixed with water.  We let it sit for a few minutes and then both attacked the side of the house with soft scrub brushes.  Thankfully, we had kept the soft brush with the long, long handle from our camper-scrubbing days, so we were able to scrub from the peak of the house to the ground by just using a step ladder and the long brush.

Step 1: Spray the roof with cleaner.

Step 2: Use the long handled brush to loosen the grime and mold.

Then we moved to the back of the house.  Rather than continue with the siding, Rick wanted to see if he could clean the roof of the screened-in porch.  (Why do we call this structure a porch in Wisconsin but a lanai in Florida?). At any rate, the porch roof was filthy and full of patches of mold.  Rick said the mold looked like crustaceans on the piers and docks down in Florida.

A view from the inside shows the washed and
unwashed areas.

He climbed to the roof and started his work.  Just as a power washer will remove mold from a sidewalk, the same thing happened to the porch roof.  I could not believe the results.

A final rinse resulted in a much brighter porch and house.

The porch roof took a tremendous amount of time and work, but the brown, blotchy roof is now beige again, and it lets so much more light into the kitchen that the transformation is incredible.  Now that we own the power washer, I hope that we can do a light washing of the roof each year to prevent the mud, mildew, and mold from forming once again.

After he finished the roof, I took a regular hose and washed down the inside of the porch.  We are having guests tonight (Lindsay and family), and the weather is pleasant enough that we just may dine on the back porch.

Bold Bunny

While I was busy this morning, we were going to go over to Lindsay's house this afternoon to help Christopher remove a couple of pine trees.  A downpour this morning washed out that idea; taking down damp trees with power tools is not my idea of healthy living.

The sun is out now, so with luck we will dry things out and be able to cut trees tomorrow afternoon.  Until then, I have been tending the gardens around our own house.

Our neighbors to the south (corner duplex) both have wooden decks slightly raised above ground level.  Wooden decks tend to attract wildlife such as chipmunks and rabbits.  This leads to the following formulas:

Wooden deck = rabbits seeking nesting areas
Papa Rabbit and Mama Rabbit = lots of hungry baby rabbits.
Front garden = luscious, succulent new hostas.  (For the past two years, rabbits have eaten one particular hosta down to the ground.  This year, I transplanted a hosta from the back yard into the front garden in the hopes that the larger plant would be strong enough to survive an occasional nibble.)

The results:

Almost all of the leaves are nibbled off the transplanted hosta,
so I had to surround it with a chicken-wire fence just to protect it.

Within the last few days, I have discovered that if the rabbits cannot eat the little hosta, they will go after the larger bushes:

Note the chewed off leaf tip and the large hole
the rabbits have snacked on in the adjacent hosta.

This morning, Rick opened the front door and called me to see what he was viewing.  I saw the following:

Basking in the sunlight, the nibbler in question boldly rests his latest meal
right next to the bushes he now is eating!

Not only do the rabbits have the audacity to eat my hostas; this one in particular decided that he would sun himself right next to breakfast so he would have have to travel too far for lunch.

My mother tells the story of being a kid in the 1930s and playing outside with her three brothers.  A rabbit was eating my grandmother's garden, so the boys were trying to scare it away by throwing stones at it.  They all missed and the brave, stubborn rabbit stood his ground.  Then my mother picked up a stone, threw it as hard as she could, hit the rabbit squarely in the nose, and watched as he immediately dropped dead.  Of course, she felt terribly guilty afterwards.  I am not sure, after seeing my vegetation destroyed, that I would experience those same emotions.

So where is Mom with a good rock when I need her?

Tickles, Turtles, and Dishwasher Traumas

Bad weather, lots of distractions, and just plain not feeling like doing much all have somewhat turned us into sloths.  We need to shake out of this feeling.

We have started that this week by watching Owen for two mornings while Chris and Lindsay were at work.  What a wonderful imagination a four-year-old has to share with the world!  We built forts with blankets in the living room, cut down low-hanging branches in the back yard (which Owen hauled up the hill to the curb), shot off rockets in the park, had tickle-festivals, colored many pictures and created a few original art works, studied a HUGE turtle from a safe distance, supervised Grandpa while he installed a dishwasher, and snuggled for a little quiet time after lunch.  We had lots of giggles and fun, and everyone slept well at night!

This turtle crawled up the side yard and crossed the street.
It was at least 10 inches across and over a foot long from head to tail.

The big event on Wednesday was the new dishwasher.  The people who lived in the house before Lindsay were elderly and cheap, so no one was surprised that the dishwasher started to give them trouble.  They knew a new one was in order, so they bought one a couple of weeks ago, and it was delivered on Wednesday.  We had gone over to their house on Tuesday to remove the old one (which, thankfully, the delivery men hauled away), so we were ready to go on Wednesday.

A job always goes more smoothly with a good supervisor.

The new machine came mid-morning, and complications with wires, plumbing, and the fact that the dishwasher is NOT located next to the drains by the sink all resulted in a "one hour" installation turning into an all-day affair.  Frustration!  When we finally left on Wednesday, the plumbing was all in place, but a "sassy screw" (according to Owen) refused to let Rick access the electrical box.

We returned on Thursday morning, and while Owen supervised, Rick finally was able to open the electrical box and to wire in the dishwasher.  Success!  (Owen's supervision must have been the key.)

The other success we had this week was installing new sun shades on the south side of the back porch.  The shades give us relief from the sun and a little privacy from our neighbors now that the large trees between the houses are gone.  We don't want to keep the shades down all of the time, but when we are eating or relaxing on the porch while they also are outside, the privacy is great to have again.

The new sun shades give us a bit of privacy from the neighbors.

A little landscaping has our backyard trees trimmed so they do not mug us while we are mowing the lawn, and my lilac bush, once again, is shaped the way I want it to look.

Next week we will tackle taking down two pine trees in Lindsay's back yard.  The weather is supposed to be cooler, and as long as we don't get a lot of rain, the task should not be too daunting.

Barren Landscape

We had planned on leaving the remaining evergreen trees in place until after this Memorial Day weekend because we know that the neighbor always has a huge family party on Memorial Day.  Those plans changed when we suddenly heard a chain saw in our yard this past Tuesday.

The man from Ashplunkt, the company that clears trees from power lines for the city, was supposed to come two weeks ago to "top" our trees so we could remove them safely.  He never showed up, so we cut down the first two trees by ourselves.  I wrote about that in our last blog.

On Tuesday, he was in our yard, climbing into the middle of one of the three remaining trees, hacking down the center of it to remove the tallest branches from the wires.  Rick went outside and told him he did not have to do so, but he said that he promised us he would cut them, so cut them he did.  Unfortunately, that is all he did.  He cut the main trunk near the top, dropping the cut branches into our yard, or leaving them in the neighbor's yard, or leaving them still caught and tangled into the middle of the trees.  Then off he went.

Terrific.  We went outside and were greeted by three butchered trees.  The lower and outside branches were still intact, and the upper part of each tree had a "V" shaped opening where he had removed the branches that touched the wire.  Actually, he removed SOME of the branches, but not really all of them.

I am ill with a sinus infection.  Rick was coming down with the same said infection.  We both were tired and felt like crap.  But we could not let the trees stand as they were.  So we brought out the gloves and SawsAll, and we started to haul branches to the curb.

When the workers from the city came to chop up the first load of branches, the driver, Matt, told us to pile the branches with the trunks all together, and to leave the branches as long as we could.  OK.  No problem.  We hauled the downed branches, lining the curb from our property line to over halfway to the opposite property line.  The piles all towered above my head.

Then Rick cut down the remaining three trees.  By the time we were finished, we were both too exhausted (and I was too sick), to care about the stumps.  That had to wait for another day.  We finished just in time for Rick to call Matt back.  Matt said that he would swing by our house the next day to pick up the branches.

Where giant trees once stood, we only have
dirt and wood chips left. The yard feels very open
and exposed.

The following day we traveled to Appleton to order shades for the patio, and by the time we returned, our trees were gone. Thank you, Matt!

Rick called a stump removal firm, and the owner came on Thursday to grind down the stumps.  He spent 35 seconds each on the first four stumps, one minute and three seconds on the largest stump, and about 10 seconds each on the dogwood and lilac stumps.  We would have taken hours to dig out those stumps, and he had them ground down in less than five minutes.  We gladly paid him his reasonable fee.

Of course, we now face all of the piles of dirt/ stump bits/ and mulch left over.  We also need to remove the 25-year-old landscape fabric that is firmly embedded with pine tree roots.  Rick and I worked all morning filling the back of the truck with what we could dig out.  When we unloaded it at the yard debris site, it certainly did not look like much, but we are glad it is gone.

We are about half-way finished in taking out the debris from this old garden, but that was as far as we could venture on that project today.

After lunch, I mowed and trimmed our lawn.  At least the neighbor can have her party overlooking a fairly civilized-looking neighboring landscape.

The cement to the right in the picture was black with mold.
You can clearly see where Rick stopped washing for the day.

Rick took our power washer and started to wash the mold off our front walk and our driveway.  He still has a bit to go, but the energy only goes so far.  He also washed the concrete floor in our screened in patio.  That needed mold removal also!

We both are exhausted tonight.  We will take the rest of the weekend off, and we'll get back to the gardens next week Tuesday when the yard debris site opens once again.  Until then, we plan to relax and to enjoy the next couple of days.

Inside and Outside

Our work on our Wisconsin house continues both inside and outside.  I thought I would include some shots of our completed weaving studio now that the paint has dried which enabled us to move our weaving gear back into the room.  I love the new blue color on the walls; the room now feels more "homey" than the sterile white walls that once surrounded us.

Due to the lighting, the walls look grey in this picture; I promise
that they really are a light blue.

The coverlet that Rick wove many years ago hangs on the wall
and fits into the room nicely.

The wall opposite the window wall contains a closet and has room
for the warping board.  A bookshelf holds materials and patterns.

Rick has moved on to the next finished room in the basement.  That larger room used to be our weaving room, but we have turned that into my sewing room and our exercise room.  He spent the morning painting the ceiling and adding the first coat of blue onto the walls.

While he was doing that, I was out on our back screened-in patio unwrapping the patio furniture from their winter covers.  Everything outside is absolutely filthy this year.  The whole house needs a good power washing, and the porch was no exception.  I had hosed down the patio covers yesterday.  Today, since they were dried (even with the rain we had last night), I took them off and folded them away.  Then I swept the floor, de-cobwebbed the corners, and took the furniture outside onto the grass for a good scrubbing and hosing down.  The furniture is in place, but that whole back structure still needs some serious work... including a new roof.  We'll have to see how it looks after we finish with the power washing.

Earlier in the week we continued to remove the overgrown trees from our lot.  Although we love having the trees block our backyard and porch from the neighbors' decks, the trees were so overgrown that they infringed on the neighbor's property by a good three feet, and they were starting to grow into the power lines above them.

The first tree starts to go down.  We cut off most of the branches
before taking down the main trunk.

The second tree was not as wide as it was "squished" between
the first and third trees in line. 

I had removed the smaller dogwoods and lilac bush earlier, but removing the trees took both of us.  We started at the bottom, taking off smaller branches in the multi-trunked trees.  As Rick used the SawsAll to take off the limbs, I dragged them out to the front of our property for the City to come and grind up.

We had five huge trees on the south side lot line of the house.  We removed two of the five so far.  The piles of brush out front are so large that we did not want to add any more to them for fear that the City would refuse to take an overwhelming pile.  We also did not want to kill any more grass under the stacks.

The pile of brush on the curb does not look large, but it is almost
chest-high when I walk up to it. 

I called the City and was hoping that they would have sent a truck out to remove the first pile.  Sigh.  No luck yet, but I know that we are "on the list" for pick-up.  We have a marathon race going past our house this coming weekend, so we hoped that the City would get the brush before then.  Today is Wednesday.  Keep your fingers crossed that the brush is gone by Sunday!

We cannot cut any more until this first load of brush is gone.  Another reason I wish they would pick it up is because I would rather cut down trees while the weather is cool.  Cutting trees when the temperatures are in the high 80s with high humidity is not my idea of fun.  Hopefully by my next post, the first pile will be gone.

The lilac in the back yard bloomed this week.

My lilac bush bloomed this week.  I love the smell of lilacs, so we are thinking of planting more bushes in the back yard between our house and the house to the north of us.  I have one small lilac bush already in the back yard.  I keep it trimmed low so it does not get woody and too large.  I would love to do the same with a few others.  Stay tuned...

The lilacs smell wonderful!

We have neglected this house for so long that this will be our summer to really start to complete some badly-needed maintenance.  Rick said, "Having two houses is a lot of work."

My reply was, "What better things do you have to do with your time?"  These two houses will keep us from getting too bored!

Fleeting Time

We get up each day and marvel at what day we see on the calendar.  The old adage "time flies" certainly seems to apply to our lives right now.  We both have been working hard, and we have been making progress, yet we both feel that time is slipping away like oily water through our fingers.

Part of that sense has to do with the number of appointments we have had this week.  Monday Rick spoke with an insurance broker about supplemental insurance to go along with Medicare.  On Tuesday he went into the dentist to get a crown.  On Wednesday, we both had doctors' appointments, and after those early morning visits, we got to work.  Yesterday, we spent the whole day traveling to Wisconsin Rapids to visit with my mother whom we have not seen since we returned north.

With the ceiling painted white, Rick cuts in
Lake Placid on the entry wall next to the closet.

Your work on Wednesday involved both inside and outside work.  We decided that we would move the equipment out of our lower level exercise room and turn that room into a weaving studio.  After Rick moved everything into another room, he taped the room and painted it.  We had picked out a light blue paint called Lake Placid.  He was not sure how he liked the paint when he had started the first coat.  He said that it looked purple to him.  By the time the first coat was on the walls and dried, though, he liked it much better.

Rick paints along the baseboard aided by light from the single
window and the two banks of fluorescent lights in the room.

I thought that the color was fine.  The second coat helped even more; now that the room has some color on its sterile white walls, the room looks more homey and and inviting.  Since we have limited light in the basement, we were a little worried about the room closing in, but with the one high window in that room, it turned out well.  Rick also painted the ceiling, so now the whole room has a refreshed look.

The first coat of blue starts to add personality to the otherwise
colorless room.

While he was working inside, I went outside to start the destruction of our overgrown landscape.  About 20 years ago, we planted four evergreen trees, three dogwood bushes, and one Miss Kim lilac to provide a natural border between our property and the rental property on the corner next to us.  The Miss Kim never filled in the way we had hoped, the dogwoods were half-dead and scraggly, and the evergreens are so overgrown that they are on the neighbor's property and into the electrical wires.  They all have to go!

Two dogwoods are down, so I had one dogwood and the Miss
Kim lilac next to the shed to cut down yet.

We also had another smaller evergreen tree that someone planted way too close to the house on the southeast corner.  To keep the tree away from the house, I kept trimming it until it was in a wedge shape.  Each year I also had to lop off the top because it was growing under the eaves.

With all four bushes gone, I have only to remove the stumps yet.

I trimmed the dogwoods, the lilac, and the small evergreen tree.  The larger trees have to wait until the electrical company can come in to "top" them away from the wires. Then we can safely cut down the rest.

The small evergreen was too close to the house.

Now only the trunk remains.  Once we remove
that, we will plan where to plant the new
lilac bushes.

To get our privacy back on our screened-in patio, we considered various alternatives.  We thought we would just build a six foot fence where the trees had been, but that is impractical since the land slopes down just before our yard ends.  Six feet of fence would not give us the privacy we want.  Additionally, digging a fence post hole in the root-infested and clay soil would be very labor intensive.  And the fence materials themselves would cost us over $1000.

Our alternative is to hang sunshades inside the screened in structure of the porch.  When we want shade or privacy, we can simply lower the shades, and the materials costs will be substantially less -- as will be the labor! Saving both money and effort seems like an intelligent choice to me.

On the north side of the house, where we removed the evergreen, we are considering planting some better-spaced lilac bushes.  They will give us color, privacy, and plants that we can easily prune and control.  Again, this seems a good choice.

Today we went to the paint store for another gallon of paint.  We have decided to finally add baseboard to the main room in our basement.  That larger room will become our new exercise room and sewing room.  We have almost a full gallon of paint left over from the new weaving studio, so we bought one more gallon of Lake Placid to finish the main room too.

We have only been back a week, but we have made progress in choosing what jobs we want to complete in working toward meeting those goals.  We need to pay attention to this house now to make it our northern vacation home for the summer.

Happy May!

We leave for our drive north early tomorrow morning, so this will be my last post from Florida for this winter/ spring season.  This has been quite a work-filled yet productive year!

Although the list is only 18 items long, it encompassed months of intense work and thousands of dollars to complete.

This season we did the following:

1. Gutted and remodeled the master bathroom.  We kept only the already-replaced toilet and replaced all the rest.
• new ceiling fan
• new drywall and ceiling
• new electrical outlets
• new lights
• re-polished terrazzo floors
• new tub and Swanstone tub surround
• new granite countertop
• new Kohler sink
• new Kohler shower and faucet fixtures
• new Kohler toilet paper holder, robe hook, and towel rack
• new quartz windowsill
• new baseboard
• new paint
2. Had electrical mast moved to north side of house with new electrical box
3. Had back wall of garage re-stuccoed
4. Bought and installed new hallway light
5. Had new roof and roof fan installed
6. Had new front sidewalk and porch extension poured
7. Purchased freezer for garage
8. Poured two new slabs
9. Purchased and assembled two storage sheds
10. Purchased and installed new Elfa shelves in the garage; added workbench space
11. Purchased and assembled bench for the front porch
12. Purchased two small pictures for the bathroom
13. Purchased and installed pavers from front yard to back yard around patio slab
14. Repainted back patio area of house and front porch area of house
15. Purchased and planted Areca palm in the back yard
16. Washed all of the windows in the house
17. Washed the fence
18. Purchased new artwork for the hallway

Whew!  Gladys has seen a remarkable (and expensive) transformation, but we are happy to say that the inside remodeling is complete, and we have a good start on the landscaping on the outside.  We are leaving Gladys looking pretty snazzy, so we are happy with the progress we have made this year.

Perhaps next year, we can start to act like a couple of retired people enjoying the good life in Florida.