Dana and I did some final picking up around the house. We’ve tossed up some new photos. More tomorrow.
Author: Ariel Benjamin
Border Patrol
Dana finished the brick border around the north end front garden. Becky appears to have finished weeding the garden plot in front of the car-park in back. Dana also added ground cover stones and borders to some of the areas on the south side of the house. Dana and I also picked up yard debris and filled another 5 trash bags.
Still Raining
When I woke up this morning it was still raining so I got to skip watering. Yeah!
Thunder Storm
Murphey’s Law seems to be in full force. Practically as soon as the sprinklers were turned off, the skies opened up and dumped a full on thunder storm.
Sprucing up
Dana and I did some sprucing up around the house. A big part of that was getting the old couch into the garage (as it was too big to fit through the doorway in the basement). We also started getting the newly carpeted room in the basement put together. One end of the room now contains the start of our workout center and the other end has a desk and shelving containing our tools (nicely organized in bins). Check out the photos.
Watering
Dana got the sprinkler running out front. She started by saturating the area under the tree so the new plants have a good shot to take root. She then watered the yard.
Mowing
I came home and mowed the back yard. It has a lot of discoloration but it actually doesn’t look that bad. It certainly makes the plantings on the outside edges look nice. Can’t wait to redo the lawn out back.
Ground cover
Dana come home midday and went plant shopping with Annie, our neighbor from across the street, at Paulino Gardens, Inc. They came home with a variety of fun looking plants and planted them in the circle around the silver maple in the front of the house. They look dwarfed by the tree but they should grow to fill the area and even drape over the edging stones. Dana also picked up paving stones and more ground cover stones at Home Depot to edge the north edge of the front yard and began laying those out.
Watering
I decided I could skip watering this morning because the ground was so wet. Perhaps it rained overnight.
Carpeting and other such projects
Alright… not a yard issue but since we did the work all together I thought I’d report. First, Dana spruced up the back porch with a nice tablescape. Check out the photos. Then we went down in the basement and attempted to finish our carpeting project. Earlier in the day Dana called Home Depot to talk to their carpet guy. She asked if we could get away with just using the power stretcher or if we needed to use a knee kicker as well. He explained that the carpet that the saleseman at home depot sold us the night before, is not stretchable. He said the carpet, which we were told was stretchable by the moron who sold it to us, was actually limited to gluing. Because we have tack strips bonded to the floor, we needed something to go over the pad and the strips. He suggested that we hand stretch it. We gave it a shot and we were pleased with our success. It looks like a pro install (if I do say so myself). Check out the photos. As a result we now have a home gym and office space! This should also double the finished square footage in the basement (which is never a bad thing).