A little bit of everything

I didn't really have a good plan headed into the weekend. With the heat, I wasn't sure what I was going to do when. I needed to mow the lawn and do some trimming (2 weeks is about 4 days too long to let that lawn go right now). I needed to treat more Poison Ivy I found (I mentally note living Poison Ivy when I'm in the yard and wander around once a week to squirt new patches.)
Over the course of the weekend, I cleared the 10' left of the back wood line to the little path to the composting foundation. Under the blackberry and multiflora rose and poison ivy, I found a pretty little spiraea - a friend of mine versed in these things thinks it's S. latifolia, "Meadowsweet". (Thanks Camille!)

The bugs love this bush. Bumbles and all sorts of flies all over it.
Curiously, no honeybees though.

Little by little, I'm reclaiming the edge of things. Not having a truck to haul things away to the brush dump is starting to be a real impediment. I have to start seriously thinking about what is going to replace my trusty '07 CRV - at 270k miles, with a shot heater core and a dead AC compressor, it's going to be time soon. I like the idea of the Ranger or the Tacoma - not too big, but big enough to haul away all the yard waste with.
I did the mowing and the trimming around the pop-up rain drops, and cleared away the ferns that were encroaching on the left side of the driveway near the shed.
I also decided that this was the weekend to do the basement stairs (since it was cooler and drier down there than upstairs.) I don't have any before pictures, but image it a dark chipped grey. There's no good ways to photograph this (no light in the stairwell, I should fix that) but there's the after:

Washed, primed and painted a light "thundercloud" grey in the Benjamin Moore "Patio Floor" paint line. Now it matches the door to go out the bulkhead, and that pleases me. As a glossy, it should be easier to keep clean. I also painted the two support posts at the bottom of the stairs to match - they had be kinda-sorta painted over the years - (really I think it was someone just cleaning extra paint off their brushes) - but now they are nice and clean too.

Speaking of the basement, I managed to hit 45% humidity in the basement last night! For the first time since installing it, I heard the dehumidifier click off for a little while. 

I've scraped all the rest of the devil's spackle off the wall in the upstairs bedroom (taking bits of the wall with it as I went, grr,) and purchased a 3.5 gallon bucket of regular old dust-control drywall compound. Hopefully that will start to come together a little faster now.

I installed a wifi repeater, so now I get internet all over my back yard. That wasn't really the purpose though - the point was to put up a Ring device to monitor who might be behind the house. Now I've got a lot of great short videos of me mowing the lawn and watering the flowers. It's entertaining, if nothing else!

The side effects of drying out -

When water evaporates, sometimes things get left behind. There's a fancy term for that, called "efflorescence" - the salts get deposited on your masonry.
 On walls, it looks like a white stain. In my basement, it looks like a science fair project.

Not snow. Or frost.

Must be aliens.

Salt aliens.

It's hard to tell, but that fluffy white stuff is a crystalline structure "growing" out of my floor. Dehumidifier is doing it's job! This weekend I should vacuum the basement again.

Dryin' out!

I have been doing a ton of research over the past couple weeks (well, months, really) about a dehumidifier for my basement. It's really wet down there, even after the gutters. (They helped, but didn't solve the issue.) What I've got is a good case of rising damp and a super porous foundation of dry-laid field stone and some roughly dressed granite.
I knew that manually emptying a dehumidifier wasn't going to work to fix the problem, because I'm not home to dump it so much of the time. I looked into dehumidifiers with pumps, but they all got terrible reviews. It seems that you can dehumidify or pump, but you can't do both, economically, with one machine. I agonized over this, because even cheap dehumidifiers aren't cheap, and I hated the idea of spending money on something I knew going in was likely to break.
Then one day, a happy accident of key word searches yielded a different idea. If a combo dehumidifier and pump stunk, what about separate gizmos? It's not like I'm trying to dehumidify a finished space, I don't need this to be pretty - I need it to be functional.
That led to me purchasing:
• a Frigidaire 70 Pint Dehumidifier,
• a Little Giant Automatic Condensate Removal Pump (with Safety Switch and 20ft. Tubing.)
• a 25' heavy duty extension cord
• and a 10' garden hose (that I needed to cut down)

After a lot of reading and a little monkeying, the rig was rigged! And it worked!

That's not a leak, that where I splashed water when I was pouring it
into the little pump to make sure it worked.
(It worked.)

I don't have a reading of what the humidity was when I left on Friday morning, but it was so moist the water was condensing on the water filter cover attached to the radon system and dripping to the floor. I left it running continuously to try to draw it down hard, and by the time I got back on Monday night, it was down to 60%!!
I have the machine set to 45%. We'll see if with all this rain the little machine that could can get there.
I'm afraid of what the electric bill will be, but it'll be cheaper than the house rotting from the inside out.

The hole is good for something!
But I need to get a longer hose to get it further away from the house.

So that's the expensive and thrilling conclusion to the saga of of moisture issues in the basement. With the addition of a fan in the crawl space, hopefully it will be well and truly under control.

Everything's out to poke me.

Or make me itch.
I made pretty significant progress in slashing the back treeline back to the woods this past weekend. I've resorted to tossing all the old brush and yard clippings into an old  3-sided foundation hidden behind the shed, or putting on the lower original pile that is *huge* at this point. The problem is there's no good place on the property for a burn pile right now - everywhere is too close to something I don't want to burn down - the road, the house, the shed, or trees.
If you remember, a lot of my wood line looked like this:

After trimming and mowing and pulling and a whole lot of rubber gloves and Round-up, I've beaten it back to look like this:

You can see the open spot there on the right, where I cleared a path up into the woods. The very path that the deer used to get to the rose bush (and then relieve themselves.) I threw down some grass seed without much hope that it will grow. I'm hoping it sprouts this fall - it's just too hot and dry for grass right now.
I got from the far edge of the path opening all the way around to the other side where there's a short path to the foundation where I dump the trimmings. I can't go mush further here, as from the dump path to the shed is a solid mass of poison ivy at this point.
That's where I decided that the gloves were coming off. (Just proverbial. That would have been a bad idea. Keep the gloves on.)

I went to Tractor Supply and bought the largest container of special brush killer they had. Came home and spent Sunday morning stalking the property, hosing down the 3-leafed devil everywhere I could find it. If I want to have a garden, I'll have to bring in top soil, but I was just done. Done.
I also mowed the lawn and whacked back some of the brush that was encroaching into the lower lawn, but that's going to take a more concerted effort to control.

I hope all this work pays off next year and I'm some sort of maintenance level with the parts I've done this year.

It's on.

It is the most dangerous time of year.
Home Depot has a sale right now - 50% off trees and shrubs, including roses.
I was good. I walked by them all.
Until I walked by this pretty, compact, "Coretta Scott King" rose (which I think was mis-labled - the blooms look nothing like the internet pictures.)
I got it home. Planted it carefully in one of the few area open that I could.
Fertilized it, fussed over it and enjoyed it.
Woke up this morning, and looked out my kitchen window to admire my pretty rose.
No roses.

3 days.
3 days and the deer came through and ate every single bud off the bush. Open ones, closed ones, all of the buds are gone.

Deer. One reason why we can't have nice things.

Long time gone

It's been a while since I updated. Two weekends ago, Ian and I attended an SCA event down on the Cape, so that ate up all my free time. When we got back, I came down with a stomach ailment that left me on the couch for two days and pretty useless for two more. The weather didn't help much, with it being so hot I didn't want to move.
Then it was the 4th, so I went to hang out with Ian and watch him work on his shop, and then went to my folks to visit and check on the bees. (Bees appear to be doing great, but I need to order them some new frames.)
Yesterday I finally had a little time to get some yard work done. At the top of the driveway where it curves around the house, I'd noticed a few little pink flowers hiding in the brush.

What are you?

I started digging out all the brush (which contained a lot of weeds and black raspberry, which acts and feels a lot like razor wire.)  I uncovered that plant, and then another, and another, and... over 10 plants later, I culled out the sickly little ones, staked up the bigger healthier looking ones, and put down 10 bags of mulch.
Between the lilac bed, and now the Surprise Roses bed, I'm up around 25 bags of mulch. At 2 cubic feet per bag, that's 50 square feet. Next year, I'm just going to have it delivered loose. The one nice thing about the bags is the portability. Lot of plastic waste when you're done though.
After uncovering the roses, I started working my way up along the back tree line. I had been mildly annoyed that while I own 1.6 acres, I couldn't access about 1 of them because of the prickery barrier at the treeline. I found a place that with a little encouragement turned into a natural access, once I bush-wacked my way in.

This isn't exactly before, but it's a really good representation of before.

After cleaning, but before mulch. I forgot to take a picture post-mulch.

Make-do fence. This open area already existed but was full of prickers - it might have been the access path before it grew up.
Now cleaned out it looks like you can walk up the driveway into the woods,
and I don't want just anyone using it as an access to the conservation area.

Uncovered roses! They have no scent, and are awfully cute. I think they might be ramblers?
I've given them a little support to get them off the ground, and be able to keep the area more clean now.

So pink!

*Edit - After some digging, I think it's possible that these roses are some long-neglected "Dorothy Perkins."

Long live the Lilacs

(I hope.)

There was a large overgrown flower bed outside my back door. It's between the house and the shed. It was so overgrown I could barely see the shed from the bathroom window. It contains Peonies, Irises, Hosta, Phlox, False Solomon Seal, Honeysuckle, and white Lilac.
There is also blackberry, raspberry, wintercreeper euonymus, goldenrod, black walnut saplings, maple suckers, and poison ivy, all of which I pulled out with ruthless abandon.

The Hosta/Peony/Phlox end of the bed is overgrown and needs to be divided (by quarters!) but that has to wait for fall. The Honeysuckle/Lilac end of the bed needed to be pruned after flowering.
I have read,( and seen), that you can rejuvenate old lilacs by cutting them back HARD. I took a deep breath and started cutting back. And cutting back.
It was a long work in progress, because I'd do a little when I'd get home from work. There's no great before pictures - just imagine a lot of green blocking one building from being able to see the other.
As of last night, I only need about 4 more bags of mulch, and I think this bed is done until the dividing.

View from the shed. That whole mulched area was just a tangle of plants.
I've put brown craft paper under the mulch to act as a biodegradable weed barrier.
I'm hoping it slows the poison ivy, forcing it to struggle, so I can see it and pull it easier where it emerges.

View from the house. I'm hoping I didn't murder the lilacs and the honeysuckle.
The honeysuckle can be invasive, so if I killed that, I won't be sad.
But I will be a bit miffed with myself if I killed the lilacs

I figure I'll divide/move some of the hosta and irises around to even out the edges.

Adventures in Electricity

Sunday, Ian came over and we set about having adventures in homeowner electricity. There were a bunch of things I wanted to get done, and I know that they were simple enough tasks, but I just didn't have the confidence to tackle them myself.
There aren't a lot of pictures, because I was busy learning, helping and doing. But this one makes me happy.

This is the new GFCI outlet in the kitchen. The one that was there would trip when I'd turn off the light over the kitchen sink. When we pulled the old one out to look at what was going on, we discovered some questionable wiring practices, and also that the outlet was a little older than I'd have liked. We re-did the wiring and replaced the outlet. I LOVE the little indicator light. It turns red if it trips. So far, no tripping!
We fixed the outlet in the den that got smashed to smithereens when a large picture fell off the wall. That was uneventful. We ran a line down from the second floor that will eventually go to a roof vent fan - also, relatively uneventful. We also ran a line over to the scary corner of the basement, which was a bit more eventful and frustrating than it should have been, but in the end we overcame, and now I have 4 working outlets - 1 for the LED strip light and 3 for tools and/or a dehumidifier.
It was a long day, I learned a lot, and now I'm a little more comfortable fixing outlets and switches. Many thanks for Ian for holding my hand through it.

Adventures in plumbing

The kitchen sink had been leaking. Where it had been an occasional drip, it turned into a once a minute drip, and then a once every 10 seconds drip.
Intuition led me to believe that it was the hot water side leaking, and since my hot water is electric, this had the potential to be pricey if left unchecked.
While I was at Ian's over the weekend, we stopped by Lowes and I picked up the Moen Torrance Faucet and Sprayer. I had wanted a single handle design, and something that looked a little nicer than what was there.

Let's get this done.

The first thing to do was to get the old one off, which was a bit of a struggle. It had been on there a while. But tools and proper angles won the day, and it came off. The hardest part was getting off the two white nuts that held the old fixture down. There was just no good angle to get a wrench on them easily.

NUTS.
(Also, notice the rust.)

Oh yay! Happy day! It came off! And what did I find under the base plate?
No plumber's putty and rust. Lots of rust.

Old fixture is in the sink in the lower right.
That clear plastic gasket wasn't doing jack to keep the water out.

I had thought this might be the case because of the orange water that would leach out from under the plate when I was wiping up the area after dishes. I had no idea it was this bad though.
I got out the Barkeeper's Friend and a Scotchbrite and got to work.
The problem is that no amount of elbow grease will put back metal from where it's been dissolved.

All the black marks are pitting and pinholes.
The brown is surface rust.

I couldn't be replacing the basin last night at 8 pm, (well, I could, but I didn't want to.)
The intention (foolish as it may be) is to redo the kitchen eventually, so I'm going to try not to worry about it, and just keep the area as dry as possible from now on.

FYI - this faucet, for what I paid for it, was awfully cheap. A lot of the parts are plastic, and just don't feel like they are going to hold up over time. Also, the directions were sort of junk - they completely missed a piece, and were very difficult to follow. I get that everyone's cutting corners, but geez.
I did get it installed, and I'm pretty pleased with the results.
It doesn't leak, which is the whole point, so I consider it a success.

Tada! New faucet.

A pause for something different

This weekend I put the house on pause and drove out to Ian's, where we, along with 8 other friends, constructed his long-awaited shop. He needed a space where he could could work in out of the elements.
My good friend Monique took much more comprehensive pictures from the beginning, which can be found here, but I took a few between activities.

It was a pile of shaped lumber at 9 am on Saturday morning.

This plate gave us a heck of a time, but wood is resilient.

Bill surveys the work from above.

Mighty like ants.
From L-R: Ken, Bill, Ian, Dave, Windy, Lillie, Monique, and myself (on the ladder).
Not shown: Claire and Dave 2.

Bill and Ian pause for a moment with the flooring on the first floor almost done.
Everyone was sort of on auto-pilot at this point, and pretty well beat.

Dinner! Toss an old door over the work bench and throw out a Burgers and Dogs spread.

The light at the end of the day was very Hudson River School. Very appropriate way to end things.

We all agreed that the only way to make this more Instagram worthy was to add white Christmas lights.

It was a great time, and truly inspiring what can happen when you get a group of like-mided people all pointed and pulling in the same direction.

Buckets!

Mom had started a bunch of tomatoes, of which I now have 3. There's no obvious vegetable garden are, so I elected to use the 5 gallon bucket method. I just need one more cage to even things out, but This variety (I think it's Cherokee Purple) can go over 5', so I might need to build them some sort of trellis.

Buckets of tomatoes!

Better luck next time

I had to go out to the farm and check on the bees - good thing I did, one hive was getting cramped and thinking about planning a swarm. They have enough room now, they should be happy for a few weeks.
It meant that I only had one day to get things done, and it got hot fast. I got a trash bag worth of poison ivy pulled, the lawn mowed, the driveway swept and the cracks treated with vinegar, and the overgrown white lilac taken down by the back door. (Thus making the brush pile big again. sigh.)
That garden currently looks like crap - like an over gown toddler got loose with scissors and mauled the bushes. There's a honey suckle in there that caught part of the pruning, but still needs more. A few thing happened about the same time - I noticed some very healthy poison ivy growing in there, and I wasn't properly gloved for dealing with it; it reached peak hot for the day; and I ran out of giddyup. This last part was probably because I wasn't drinking or eating enough. I called it quits, dragged myself to the shower and then to bed for a nap. (I don't nap.)
I had wanted to get the last of the basement clean out and the cellar stairs painted, but that wasn't going to happen. I felt like I'd been hit by a truck, so I made dinner and binge watched some Tv.

But here's some pretty pictures of what's flowering!

Single peonies and Siberian irises

I have found one hill of white/yellow irises out back.
I'd like to divide and sprinkle this around to breakup all the purple, but there's not much of it.

I do have one double peony plant!
Big floppy happy plants.

There's a mock orange out by the shed.
It needs a hard haircut, and the branches above it need a hard trim.

Single peonies

Iris and False Solomon's Seal.

The rhubarb is going to flower.

Front of the house. That whole bed is purple iris, purple spiderwort, and poison ivy.
This whole area needs to be reworked, but I'm afraid the only solutions are going to be well beyond my budget.

Let there be light?

When last we left our excitable homeowner, she'd finished making the front foundation pretty.

Prettier.

Earlier in the day, I'd gotten it into my head that I wanted the concrete planter stand gone from the front of the house. There was only one, to the right of the door, it was kind of ugly, and if I was going to do something, I was was going to do it once and right.
At about 9:30 am, I got out my gloves and sledge hammer and started whaling away on the cube. It reminded me of the pads in the cemeteries where you'd put a cement urn for flowers. Considering I'd just helped my mom put flowers in just such urns, I had them on my mind. The center square was different than the rest, but I chalked it up to weathering with a long gone urn on top.

It didn't want to budge. At all.
I started putting some heft into it - my very best "I'm going to win that danged stuffed critter at the fair game" hammer blows. The center started to break up!

Progress!

I started to pull out the center pieces. It was coming out very... uniform.
Specifically square.
Almost as if the center had been poured after... the edges...
After pulling out about 4-6" of cement, I encountered sand. Lot of it. The sort of sand that felt sharp and masonry-like.
And in the sand was buried bricks.
I was hoping for treasure. (This house is wanting for treasure.)

It was at this point that something clicked in my brain. There's a funny window thing in the basement, small and square-ish and boarded over from the back.
Could it... was it... no...

Oh But Yes It Was.

At some point, after the granite step was put in, someone took the time to pour a window well for this one tiny window.
They didn't bother to pour the rest of the apron the seven or so feet to the corner of the house.
(Just a blob of a window well.)
Which then later someone else decided they didn't want any more, so they slapped a piece of 1/4" plywood behind the window, filled the void with grey cement bricks, poured a ton of sand over the bricks, and then iced this halfassed cake with cement.

Excavating the window well from the outside.
This is where I got half of the grey bricks I used for edging this side of the house, and the sand to sort of bed them.

Excavating the window well from the inside.
Shop vac to the rescue.

The frame for the window is shot. As you can see, it's gone on the bottom, and the sides are eaten/rotted almost all the way up.

This leaves me with a conundrum.
On one hand, it's nice to have natural light into that part of the basement. I'm sure that's what they were thinking at the time when they put it in. It can't be made bigger - on one side is the massive piece of front step granite, and on the other side is a massive piece of foundation granite that holds up the house.

On the other hand, while functional, the window well is ugly, and it's Right There. If it was more neatly poured, or not stuck to the front of the house like a concrete pimple, I'd probably just rebuild a window for the space and call it good.
But it's not somewhere else.

Eventually, I think I'm going to remove the window well, (or at least the top bit) find some stone, and close it up right, probably when I'm re-pointing the basement.
For now, I've got some of my super-handy roofing slates covering up the hole so that small mammals don't decide my home is their home.

I'll have to deal with it at some point before the winter.

The slate is almost exactly the right size to cover the hole.
Rodent, but not insect proof.