Beethoven In Trance - Episode 58

Long time no blog, can't remember where was I in the last blog.

Anyway, deep into the summer of 2009 and we have been busy.

We kicked off our garden project this spring with a bang. We shopped around the nurseries in town, spent over hundred for all kinds of flowers, vegetables, and herb. After completing the routine of preparing the garden soil, we planted some tomatos, pepper, eggplant, cabage, and some peas in the garden we put down last year. We also re-did our flower bed in the front, and put down another flower bed to the right of the entrance steps next to the maple tree. My wife is obssessed with gardening this year, she wanted another garden soon after. We then spend another weekend putting down another garden with some bochoy, and squash. But that's still not enough, she lined up an army of vegetables in pots on the drive way, which makes driving in and out of garage a fun experience. Fortunately, cabage came out great, as well as tomatoes. We had heirloom, roman, and beefsteak this year. Roman sucks, no flavor, no juice. Heirloom is the best, beefsteak is in the middle. We also had some jalopeno, but very small yield. Hebanaro is coming out too, but very small. Eggplants come out much slower. Suggar snaps, peas and green beans are all growing fine. We have been enjoying our vegetable in dinners.

Other than garden, we started our bathroom remodel project this June. It's been a long and messy project. Our initial plan is to retile the bathroom walls around the tub, then change the fixture, paint the whole room, then refinish the bathtub. The budget was around $700. As soon as my neighbor and I started to taking off the tiles, we realized that we needed to replace the dry wall behind the tile as some of them are rotten with mold. We then found the walls are covered with wall papers, and we needed to peel them off before we paint. One thing led to another, before I knew it the poroject became something involves extra help from a dry wall guy, and a plumber. We had a quote from one of the plumber friends of my neighbor and it was $800. My neighbor said no, and called up his cousin, who happens to be a plumber. He did the job for $300. The dry wall guy (another friend of my neighbor) showed up and started to install the dry walls, it was $400 at first, then after patching all the walls and fix up an air duct below the vanity. It became $650. Then, we bought the paint, the tile, the caulk, the grout, adhesive, sealant, and fixture. The total cost tripled to $2000. Luckily, my neighbor has the tile saw, we cut the tile and installed ourselves. I painted the room with four coats over weeks. Then, we called in bathtub refinisher who is charging $300 for scraping the paint then recoating it. The guy came out in the middle of July and did the job. He left a small pool of paint at the bottom of the bathtub making it an uneven surface. My neighbor didn't mind and wanted to let it go. I called the refinisher again, and they came out to check and decided to redo it (sounds familiar? it happened when we refinished our hardwood floor). Anyway, he came out again after 2 weeks, sanded the extra paint down, then recoat the whole thing. While he is inside doing the job. I was outside watching my neighbor standing in a lift trimming the tree in my backyard. The tree has grown much and leaves were hanging over the roof. We were concerned that one day the thunderstorm will hit the tree hard enough and the branch might hit the roof. Now the tree is trimmed, we lost some shades though.

So, we had our bathroom out for use for two months. I have been taking shower with a garden hose in the back at night, and also in the basement next to the sink where there is a drain on the floor. We just had our bathtub back this Tuesday when the coating was supposed to be dry, as well as all the caulk and sealant on the tile. The new shower head is cool, we used the new curtain, which is pretty. We have a much brighter bathroom (certainly the four light bulb working full throttle has something to do with it). We got the fixture on clearance in the home center, there was a piece broken and I was planning to buy a replacement or return the whole thing and buy a different one. But the plumber (who quoted us $800 for the job) he suggested us call the manufacture and ask for a replacement. Well, he was right. Thanks to his advice, my neighbor called the company and we got a new replacement part for free. Basically, we got a complete working unit at a clearance price. Nice.

All in all, at $2000 price tag, this project still looks like bargagin. We did a lot of work ourselves, my neighbor certainlly did the most of the heavy lifing. We took his family to chinese buffet and dim sum places in the last couple months and they loved it. I also made them some beef noodle stir fry and they loved it too. They even asked for the recipe, which I don't have as it's my own creation. So, we saved on painting, tiling, taking the walls down. We got our plumber cheap, while drywall is not so much. The bathtub refinishing cost is ok, and we got two coats out of the price of one. We had a bargain with the fixture as well.

Since I was painting the bathroom walls, I had all the tools out. So I decided to paint the hand rail on the entrance door step outside. We got the paint from clearance in the homecenter, $2 or $3 per quart. Color is very acceptable. We picked some purple, pink, and bright yellow. We painted the handrail purple (it's a exterior paint). Then we painted a park bench pink. I also got some polyurathym from clearance, and I plan to stain the pinic table after I power wash it. I also need to paint the garage door as well (after power washing it).

Now we did our garden, remodeled our bathroom, trimmed the tree in the backyard and bush fense. We still need to power wash the drive way, the picnic table, garage door, then paint the door and stain the table. We then might be able to call it a day in the yard this year.

Inside the house, I shop-vac the cool air return duct because there is a place inside of the duct collecting dust. I painted the door trim (which was painted with the wrong color last year) of the entrance door. There are still some details to do, and another coat of paint needs to go on the silt. I also touched some of the baseboard around the floor in the major traffic area because they were stained when floor was refinished.

We have been having water leakage in the basement since we moved in. My neighbor mentioned that he used to have the same problem and it was caused my tree leaves and roots blocking the drain pipe. He solved the problem with couple bottles of Draino. That was what we did couple weeks ago. We first ran hot water into the drain around the house through the down spot at the bottom cornor of the house, then dumped the Draino and waited couple hours. Then we ran hot water through again. And this trick seemed to be working. We had a few thunderstorm since then and we had no pool of water coming in the basement. The edge of the floor is wet, but no pool of water came in. That is a great news. We will do that trick again this year before the winter after we clean out all the leaves in the gutter.

Last weekend, we were outside in the yard stripping the leaves from the branch that my neighbor trimmed from the tree. It was an 8 hours project in a 90F summer day. My wife needs those leaves for the compost. We now have to save all the vegetabls and left over fruits for her compost. Fun!

We left our skylight on the second floor bathroom open last year for some time and the cold wet weather has done some damage to the dry wall around the window. I had to take one piece of the wall down and I now have to install a new piece, patch cracks, and paint it. But first, I need to clean the room with all the debris and shop vac the leaves collect on the window frame. This is another project.

My parents are coming September 2nd. I would hope to finish the project by then. I have two weeks to go. One weekend for this, another for the power washing. Will see how it goes.