Tag Archives: home improvement

Breaking eggs…

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Today was largely the part of the project where we shatter the eggs in hopes of making an omelette at a later date. Lots of concrete came out. Lots of shrubbery went away. The air conditioner is, somewhat precariously, perched a foot higher waiting on the backfill to arrive tomorrow. The window well is cleaned out and ready to be reset. Basically three guys did in eight hours something that would have taken me three months to plow through a few hours at a time. Is it worth the cost? Probably. But that doesn’t make it any less humbling.

Tomorrow the real digging is going to start. Trenching will crisscross the yard in an effort to redirect every possible drop away from the house. Combined with the improved elevation that should theoretically resolve most of what ails this particular side of the house. For the time being I’ll be satisfied with that – even while knowing there’s at least that much work to do in the front at some point.

Still, I’m willing to call the first day a success… even if the actual heavy lifting is yet to come. All in the name of a dry basement.

The stuff of dreams…

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Since before we bothered with something as trifling as writing down our great deeds, human beings have made a point of moving stupefyingly large amounts of earth to build their monuments. There are pyramids in Egypt and Central America. Stone circles dot the European continent. We’ve excavated a highway of water to connect the Atlantic and Pacific – and then sent buildings racing a thousand feet into the sky. Historically speaking, we’re monument builders.

The little project I have getting underway this week isn’t monumental in any way. In fact by the time it’s finished and the grass sprouts telling the difference between before and after would give you trouble if you weren’t intimately familiar with the ground we’re covering. Even so, in my own little way I’ll be cutting into the earth in an effort to make my surroundings more hospitable… and by that I mean I’m writing a ridiculously large check to someone else who will actually do that while I stand in the kitchen drinking coffee and watching the work in progress.

As long as it means I can be a little less twitchy every time the rain falls, I’ll at least be monumentally happy with the result, even if there isn’t much to see for the effort. New hardscape, underground drainage for the back yard, and a slope that means water isn’t naturally inclined to flow directly into the basement and garage… be still my middle aged, suburban heart. It’s the stuff of dreams.

Five years and another $60 or $70,000 and we might just have this old homestead properly beaten into shape. In retrospect it may have been more cost effective to just knock down some trees and build my own henge…

Thirty years…

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This was the first weekend that felt almost settled in quite some time. There were a few household chores – running improvised drainage away from several downspouts, cutting the grass for the first time, tinkering around with a few other small-ish fixes, cleaning, laundry. The rhythm of the routine is starting to imprint itself on the new place. That would bother some people. I find it remarkably comforting. The weekend felt like a big step towards the place feeling more like mine and a little less like someone else’s. There’s still more distance to go on that score, but it’s progress.

I’m learning where the dog’s favored spots are and which parts of the floor creak no matter how softly you cross them. Like people, I’ve learned that no two houses sound exactly alike. Maggie and Winston have done a better job figuring out the house’s sounds than I have. Their random barks at things going bump is down to only once or twice a day. Me, on the other hand, my head is still on a swivel at anything that doesn’t sound familiar.

I’m trying to remember that I’ll be paying for this place for the next 30 years so there isn’t really any rush to knock all the things off my list at once. Maybe that means I’m growing as a human being. More likely it means I’m painfully aware of the all too obnoxious combination of limited time and limited finances. I’ll just let you be the judge of which scenario sounds most likely.

The Money Pit…

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I bought a house two days after Christmas in 2007. The plan was to live there three to five years, build a little equity and then cash out and use it as a down payment on a house with a little property around it. Well, what I didn’t expect was the magical imploding workplace, a passionate desire to be almost anywhere other than Memphis, and the worst housing market since someone decided they should start keeping records on such things. That’s the short version of how I became an absentee landlord for the second time in ten years.

If you’ve been keeping up, you know all about the $500 driveway repair that bloomed into a $5000 project to repair a ruptured sewer line, and re-pouring 400 square feet of concrete. The latest turn of fate as raised the stakes on that little project. Let;s just say that the latest estimates have found their way into the low five figures… and that’s before anyone has so much as started digging. As it turns out, all 1600 square feet of concrete driveway now needs to be broken up, the sewer line trenched to a depth of 6 feet from the curb to the house (and pass a new city/county inspection), and then the giant gaping pit in the front yard has filled in so the concrete people come to lay a brand-spank-me new driveway from the garage door to the street.

If you hear an enormous sucking sound coming from the south-western tip of Tennessee, don’t worry, that’s just my house; the Money Pit, the Bane of my Existence, the Evil Soul Crushing Destroyer of Joy, also doing business as a delightful 3 bedroom, 2 bath contemporary on a well kept 1/5 of an acre that I’d burn to the ground with a smile on my lips and a song in my heart if it wouldn’t mean going to jail.

97%…

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The only items left in the Great Patio Build of 2008 is passing the final electrical inspection and hanging the ceiling fan and floodlights. That should be finished sometime Monday. There are still a few construction odds and ends in the yard, but last night I was actually able to sit out there without stepping over lumber and weaving between extension cords to cross from one side to the other. Value added or no, I’m exceptionally pleased with how it has turned out. I don’t say it often, but this was an aggravation that was well worth the time, trouble, and dirt.

Rock…

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It was supposed to be a project over the long weekend, but coming home this evening, I found (literally) a ton of field stone had been shoved off a truck and spread across my front yard. That’s the sort of utter disorganization and chaos that I simply can’t tolerate. Three hours later, the front flower beds are edged, the pallet is broken down, and I may never be able to stand up straight again. The light was fading fast when I was wrapping up, but as far as I can tell, it looks damned good for my first effort at dry stone stacking. It’s always fun when home improvement meets OCD.

Full disclosure…

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In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that finding a virtually original craftsman house in Memphis is a little like looking for a surrender in the French national archives… they’re so thick you can’t help but trip over them. Now that I’ve had a few days to restore my objectivity, I can say with relative certainty that I’m not going to rush out next week and make an offer on a house that happens to be 900 miles from where I actually live. I’m making great strides in curbing my tendencies towards impulse buying.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this place is absolutely beautiful. The garage needs rebuilt, a back deck that is completely out of character needs to be pulled off, and there is a profound need to install a central air system. Though I can’t be sure, I suspect that the electrical system would probably need to be completely rewired to provide the sort of juice I would require. It’s not an insignificant amount of work to a house that is otherwise in grand condition. The thought of pulling down a ceiling and expanding a master suite into the dormered attic has already hit me as well. A rough order of magnitude on the work I would want to do approaches another $50K on top of the purchase price and as much as I like to think I’m qualified to do everything, I know the reality is different.

Lots of things to consider… not the least of which is whether I want to roll the dice on the chance of my actually moving down there in the next six months. A cursory search tells me that supply currently outstrips demand, but can I overcome love at first sight?