family

The last week of May and first one in June were hoppin around here.  I started off touching up house paint where needed, then stopped myself and changed to power washing first.  Why repaint it if it only needs washed off?

Two days of spraying cleared off most of the discoloration, but a lot of the house still needed some fresh paint.  The entryway especially.

Earlier, I’d also simply touched up the black shutter paint.  Afterwards, I saw that didn’t solve the problem, and went back to scrape off all loose paint and redid each shutter (at least on the first floor).  It was worth the effort, knowing this will last further into the future.  Typically I walk around the house every year or two and dab paint on bad spots. 

But over time, that isn’t enough. A thorough washing and scraping before getting my brushes and buckets of paint out means I can hopefully skip a few seasons my usual redos. 

This trick postpones the need for hiring a pro to repaint the entire home. 

Speaking of home maintenance, this corner has been an issue for the twenty years we’ve had this addition.  We’ve had a half dozen pros out to give advice and make changes, but still had water seepage into the breezeway.

Well, while power washing, I put a hole right through the wall!  I knew the sprayer could strip paint, clear piles of mud the dogs had thrown onto the deck, and also zip the skin right off my shin.

But I didn’t realize it could decimate water rotted wood.  

Rich ripped out all the siding and wet guck, rebuilt and sided the wall.  I siliconed and repainted.  While having the wall opened up, we think we found the leaky area that contractors had missed, since we had a view to the inside that they hadn’t had access to.

Rich thinks it’s fixed now, and when we run the garden hose over it, we see no water pouring out the bottom into the breezeway.  Still, we are going to add extra guttering to detour the rain away from that vulnerable spot we unearthed.

Stopping the river that ran through the breezeway inspired me to take on two other run off issues.  They didn’t hurt the house, but often left standing, muddy water on the gravel or patio.   Rich and I dug out trenches to divert the rain away from this spots and filled them with larger stones.

In this area, the bricks were buried under so many years of mud, I forgot they existed.  The power washer not only revealed them, it showed me the path the water took.  Basically a huge puddle in this area, no movement at all.  So we dug out two trenches, starting shallow and getting deeper further out.

(the pile of bricks are the ones we removed to dig the trench, I need to relocate them to a flower bed that could use an edging repair)

So far, the garden hose proves that our efforts worked, and after a big rain, all seems fine.  Now, over time, mud will back up again, but it might take ten years or so.  Maybe we will fix it with a French drain then, but for now, our dry river beds of rock will do the trick.

While we were in a rock hauling mood (ha, yeah, right, no one ever wants to haul rocks) we decided to freshen up the other gravel areas.  Not redoing, just cosmetically tweaking them by using the sprinkle technique of Rich and Sugarwings walking around with an open bag and drifting more rocks over the existing ones while I followed with a rake.

Of course while it would be better to spread a truckload, these bags of river rock from Home Depot were helpful, if not perfect.

Although in this spot, I needed to use a full bag, these stones had washed away, or sunk into the ground pretty bad here.
 

While the weather kept giving me perfect springtime days, I figured I might as well keep working outside before summer heat hits.  So, next up was water proofing these stairs and the deck flooring Rich had replaced last month.  The original framing was dark, but I went with a honey tone for the new areas, because I liked the contrast.  

It was a surprise for him on his birthday, and a gift he much preferred over something from a store.  We also had a sit down dinner for a dozen or so friends to celebrate his day too, and will be having another party to follow this week.

Next up?  Well I just repainted the guest bathroom and need to finish the decor.  And something needs to be done about my flower pots.  Many of the plantings look like this.  I dusted with diatomaceous earth, and hope that helps.  If the flowers don’t make it, I’ll need to replant.

I’ll have pics of the new bathroom when it’s done.  Looks like I’ve run out of steam for now, after two days of sales at Good Juju, I simply could not make myself finish the job yet.