Pushing the woods back

Over this past weekend, I started pushing the woods back again. Flower beds need to be cleaned out and put to bed for the winter, and the Hosta is showing signs that it was lightly grazed by frost - I want to get it cleaned up before it turns to mush. It's so icky to clean up after it's frozen and thawed.
I started around the driveway, just trimming back what my sister and I cleared in the spring. I worked around to the front near the road, and gave that a good cleaning, finally getting to the telephone pole which eluded me in the great front clean up. Then I started up the side of the front lawn, reclaiming a flower bed that hadn't been touched in years. This basically involved clear cutting it back. I left a few phlox and asters to bob in the breeze for the bumble bees.
The bed was made up of hosta, phlox, iris, ferns, moss, and a rose that might be intentional. It also contained bittersweet, grape, poison ivy, blackberry, and multiflora rose. I actually left the poison ivy alone, and after carefully cleaning around it hosed it down in Roundup. As I worked my way up and close to the house, the bittersweet and rose were so thick it had choked out the poison ivy. But now I was in the territory of nature's own razor wire.
I also gave the yard a good trim, lowering the deck slightly so that I can over seed the grass. I'm sure it could use airation, but it could also use a good smoothing. Moles have gotten in and made a mess out of the south side of the lawn, but I spent much of the weekend walking all over it. I'm not don yet, so hopefully they will take the hint.
The pictures aren't all that interesting. There isn't much for scale or comparison.

Took two days to get through this bed. Another day to get up to the septic cover.

Looking toward the road - there was a tree being smothered under there.
The mound that's left there is a giant multiflora rose

Turning slightly to my right - there's the tree, and there's the cap to my septic.

And turning more right - there's the cap to the septic, and the path to the school-bus sized pile of yard waste that the brush is hiding.

So Busy

Last I left you all, the mold guys were done doing their thing. I had tried to do some yardwork and was defeated by surprise flowers.
Well. I made up for some lost time this past weekend.

Before.
Note the rust at the bottom of the door and sidelights.

During - There's no pictures of the sanding step, but it was in there.
Here I've cleaned the door, masked off a bunch and hit the problem areas with a rust retarder.
Also, filled the pinholes at the bottom with a filler.

During - Sanded down the filler, and hit the door with the first coat of oil based primer,
which promptly gave me a headache.
Subsequent coats were done using my respirator.

The weather stripping around the inside of the door was all shot at the bottoms, so I ripped it out and replaced all of it.

Second coat of primer?

And done! All in, there are 3 coats of the Ben Moore DTM white paint on the sidelights
(left over from the bulkhead) and 2 (3?) coats for Kilz Oil based primer on the door
(which was terrible to work with) and 2 coats of Ben Moore's Exterior grade
in "Prussian Blue" left over from the shed door.

In between coats on the door, which spanned two days, I decided to replace the exterior light. It was an adventure (I still don't know what breaker it's on, but it's on the left side of the box somewhere) and in the end, it was replaced and looks nice.

Pretty! I've since replaced the bulb with one of the fancy looking Edison LED bulbs.
Details, you know?

TaDa!

Now to work on getting a step there to bring that door up to code. There's a place up in the Fitchburg are that has reclaimed slabs of limestone that might look nice for short money. Now that the water isn't pounding on that area (yay gutters!) it's an option. The front of the house just looks so much more handsome now. I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out. I hope it holds up.

Other things that happened -

Found behind the outside light in the wall. It was loooong ago dead.
But it led to Operation Winter Prep, since the nights are getting colder.

Step one: Operation Winter Prep.
There are seven deployed in the basement, baited with dried cranberries and peanut butter.
I tour them every day or two.

Winter Prep step two: Fill in the hole in the foundation.
Here the frame was still sort of in place. A claw hammer and crowbar later it was gone.

Here I've started to dry fit the rock my coworker friend Erika gave me out of her yard.
They are mostly perfectly sized, I just need to go back for a few more.
I'm also going to get a length of PVC to put through the wall here
so I can still run the dehumidifer out of the house after I mortar it shut.

One of my "mammoth" sunflowers that I planted late, and in a bad location.
The biggest one is about 8", petal to petal, but so perky.

Last night after work I started whacking away at the front yard over grown mess. There are no pictures. It's a disaster of piles of debris. I'm about 1/5 done and that was 2 hours. Maybe I'll take pictures and share that process later.
So far I've uncovered Hosta, Tall Phlox, Rose (Intentional? Not sure?) Iris, ferns (Sensitive and something tall and plumey) - Also Blackberry, Goldenrod, Bittersweet, Grape, and Poison Ivy. I'm trying to leave some of the goldenrod and still-blooming phlox for the bees, but everything else is getting cut back. Just short of scortched-earth is the only way to reclaim this and keep my sanity.

The mold has been mitigated, and the bulkhead painted.

Tuesday I took a day off from work because the Mold Men were coming!
Puroclean sent a two-man crew out and one of them spent a good 5 hours up in that cramped filthy hot attic crawlspace documenting and cleaning. There's no action shots, but they did send me a nice document with some before and after pictures.

The top is before cleaning, the bottom is after.
The profusion of roofing nails made it difficult to get super detailed.

I plied them with gallons of water and a bag of potato chips when they were done. After the bill was taken care of, I had what I'd been waiting for.

(They really need to take my check and get their printer heads cleaned.)

While the nice men were dealing with the issues in my attic, I couldn't just hang out and do nothing. I also didn't want to be underfoot, so I went outside and started cleaning up a flower bed in a funny cement planter that needs to go. I figured I could empty it and back fill it with gravel to create a pad for a generator. I got out all the yard tools and started wacking away at it when I discovered the most curious thing.
Crocuses. In September.

Before

After

Crocus. Actually not a true crocus, but a "Naked Lady"
Autumn Crocus, which is a member of the lily family.

Well. I couldn't be killing these lovely little flowers trying to move them right now, so I had to find something else to do.
I was standing right next to the bulkhead, as seen in the right of the before and after photos.
The kind of rough, a little rusty, in-need-of-love bulkhead doors...

Ok. New plan. Paint the bulkhead.

Scrubbed.

Before. I didn't want the little rust to become big rust.

I love my palm sander. Once of my best purchases.
Took it from course up to fine , paying special attention to the rusty spots.

First coat of white Ben Moore Direct To Metal paint. I remain skeptical.
I had to drill out the handle.

First coat. I rolled it, and it's kind of patchy. I'm not a fan of this whole "Paint + Primer" trend.
I just wind up putting on multiple coats anyway.

Coat number 2 drying a few days later.

After a number of hours of dry time, I through the plastic over it while I went to VT and it was supposed to pour.

New handles! So much cleaner!
Such a crappy picture, making it look like it glows!
(It doesn't glow.)

So that was a nice little project to get out of the way. I have to deal with the poorly painted and pealing flashing above it, but the doors are in better shape now.
Next up will be the front door.
I'm anxious. But it will be ok.

Perky.

Shutters!

Well, it was another action-packed weekend.
Not really.
It was a "getting my crap together" weekend.
I needed to follow up on my new-to-me car and get it a sticker Saturday (check.) Then I came home and tidied - straightened up the shed, cleaned the first floor of the house, put away a ton of tools that had accumulated in the dining room while I worked on the stairwell. Put stuff back in the new-to-me car that had come out of the old one. Gathered up all things that needed to be laundred for the next day. Then I took the shutters off the house. They were filthy, and I thought it would be easier to scrub them on the ground than bobbing and weaving around on a ladder.

Before - with shutters.

After - without shutters. And Holy Wasp Nests, Batman.
Luckily none were currently occupied.

The scrubbing. Before and after. This one shutter took about an hour of scrubbing.
After trying out a bunch of stuff (borax, oxyclean, magic erasers, et all), in the end,
CLR mold and mildew remover and Magic Erasers did the best, fastest job.
For a moment I considered just replacing them, but looked it up and at the size I need them
they would have been over $100 a pair. Hruumph.

Nice clean shutters drying in the sun. They are not uniformly clean, but they are better.
I think it will look fine from the road.
That vinyl hangs onto crud like no one's business

Oh. Hey.
BTW, CLR will eat (or at least discolor) the brand new seal coat on your driveway.
*sigh*

I kind of like it without shutters. I bought some of the house wash stuff that you screw onto your hose
and gave the front of the house a bath before I go sticking the shutters back up. I'd given thought to leaving
them off, but the siding has faded so you can see the shadow of where they were.

Sunday I woke up and took myself out to breakfast (a rare treat). From there I hit Home Depot and then the laundromat before coming home to mow the lawn. (I should have hayed it. Three weeks was 1.5 weeks too long.) Hung out the clothes to dry and finished with the scrubbing.

I talked to the guy at my local hardware store (Koopman's) and I need to pull a permit for the shed roof, and get him a sketch so that he can give me a price on the materials. I'd really like to button up the shed for good before winter. I'll see if I can afford it.

In other news, the Mold Men come this Wednesday! Yay, more expensive home improvements I will never see!

Basements, driveways, and mudrooms, oh my!

I was a long weekend for a variety of reasons. But!
I got the basement stairwell as done as ti's going to be:

The paint is a light blue-grey semi-gloss.

Pre-lightswitch plate and railing re-install. The motion sensitive LED battery light is nice.

I've since added back the switchplate and railing. It's as done as it's going to be.

The guys showed up at 8:30 to start sealing my driveway - all 172' of my driveway. I felt they did a really good job, and the end result around 4 pm looked like:

Do not cross for 4 days!

All nice and black!

So that's ticked off the list.

At some point this weekend... Saturday morning? I discovered that the freezer is no longer freezing on my fridge. I lost a bunch of stuff, put the still frozen stuff in a cooler and hoofed it over to a friend's house to stuff in their chest freezer for now. Knowing I was going to have to replace the fridge, and wanting to replace it into the mudroom instead of the kitchen, I started demolishing the mudroom Sunday morning.

Closet doors off.

Shelves can't stay and accmomodate a modern fridge.

The closet was added before the outer wall of the mudroom shifted.

Closet and shelves out. Electric box will need to just be moved.
(That is the cold air intake to nowhere.)

Next up - Remove the rest of the closet shelving/rod parts, fix the walls, pull up the carpet. Try to determine where the electrical comes to that wall from. Try to get the electrical in the wall and not spidering out as a web of conduit. Eventually fix the floor, level things, and get the fridge in this room.

The idea is to put the fridge and a stacking washer/dryer on that back wall next to each other. I know putting a dryer basically on top of a refrigerator is a bad idea, but there's precious little room in this house to accommodate both. I might start with a washer and do a lot of line drying (eventually).