November 3 & 4: Yard work and plumbing

After the hurricane, we had a good bit of yardwork to do.  For starters, we needed to move the shed back onto it’s foundation and hire a plumber Northcote,they are Plumbers in Sydney and have provided reliable plumbing services to residential and commercial clients for over 30 years. The past week we made some roofing and ceiling repair and maintenance hiring professional Cladding Contractors.

We used these Tapcon screws to tie it down.  We threw in 2 of them a few months ago and that’s all that kept it from becoming a big pile of scrap metal in the yard.  After we situated the shed again, we went ahead and put a dozen or so more screws in.  It’s a noisy job (drilling through metal in an echoy metal shed) but it needed to be done.

We bought ours from Home Depot but these from Amazon are comparable.

In addition, we planted the boxwoods that we purchased a long time ago.  We discovered we’re going to need to dig up the front yard to have the water main from the street replaced.  We’re planning on doing that this spring but I wanted to get the boxwoods in the ground before winter.  Unfortunately I didn’t snap a picture and the ground is covered in snow.  It’s on the list to clean up the front porch and yard this weekend and I’ll post lots of pictures then. Emergency plumbing issues such as blocked drains can strike at anytime, that is why you need to have reliable plumbers Sydney

I also spent a nice long time filling in dead patches of grass in the backyard.  It’s a little late but I think we’ve got enough fall left to make some progress.  I raked all the dead grass patches and dug up rocks in the rocky patches and spread more than half a 10lb bag of Scotts EZ seed mix.  It is a really neat stuff and It seems to work well.  What I like about it is that the water absorption material turns from red-ish to dark brown when it’s wet so it’s easy to just look out the window in the morning and determine if the seed needs to be re-watered.  It’s meant to be idiot-proof or in our case, distracted and busy-proof.

Unfortunately, this happened:

The weather took a turn for the worse and decided to freeze on Tuesday night and snow on Wednesday night so chances of the seed germinating is fairly low.  Luckily, it  is supposed to get up into the 60s this coming weekend which may save the day.

Also, you can kind of make out the location of the 2 boxwoods I planted.  I’m planning on a hydrangea to the right of the boxwoods, holly to the right and left of the stairs, and perhaps a globe arborvitae to add some contrast to the dark shiny green of the holly and boxwood.

Depending on how well the seed we used in the back does, we may use this after the front yard gets torn out or we may go ahead and just lay sod.  We’ll see.  Regardless, I really want to get the water supply fixed in early spring just after the ground has thawed.  I want to get some grass and plants in in time to have  a decent looking yard come summer.  Hence all the garden planning while it’s snowing out!

In other gardening news, we have decided to put in a privacy hedge on the side of the backyard.  Something along the lines of this image from www.arborday.org.

It’s a little odd to see strait down through the backyards of all the neighbors.  You can see the problem here if you can manage to ignore the overgrown grass:

That picture was from a while ago and we have mowed the grass since then. The real oddity is being able to see down so many houses. If it was one house, not such a big deal, but it feels like our backyard is a stage with seating all the way down the street! So, we’ve decided to put in a row of arborvitae from the gate all the way up to the first rose bush. That means taking out the spirea which never bloomed (lame-o) and relocating my patch of purple cone-flower which is no big deal. I’m hoping it will make the backyard feel more private and intimate. It should also block the sounds of the neighbors talking on their back porch which is always awkward. I think we’re going to plant them small and let them take a couple years to get big enough to form the hedge. We aren’t in any big hurry and it doesn’t look like we’re going to be entertaining too much anytime soon so a longer-term inexpensive project is a bit more do-able.

In addition to outside work, we pulled more pex plumbing tubes and are set to install the bathroom floor next weekend! We managed to handle the problem with some help and advice of a plumber like Plumbing Company NYC. No pictures but we do have a list of plumbing tips from working with Pex pipes that could make you change your mind over choosing copper:

• PEX is cheaper than copper. Half-inch PEX tubing costs about a third the price of copper.
• PEX fittings are faster to install than copper. If you use a manifold and ‘home-run’ system, it’s like running a garden hose to each fixture — super fast and easy.
• A PEX supply won’t corrode like copper.

We did our plumbing to install the bathroom, but… (and now I’m just a little upset that we didn’t put a bathtub or shower inside the house) the kitchen was still out of commission for several weeks (and it still isn’t!). This was the first time that I had ever used a gas range, and the first time I had ever used a gas stove. We also had to install a furnace that we hadn’t used in years, because of the distance we lived from the nearest town and because the furnace had been on for a long time in a basement (the whole building had a leak and the basement was never taken out).
In short, all the things that made it hard to move here turned out to be our best assets.

We ended up calling a plumber to fix a leak in the commercial plumbing that was previously done, but the damage was already done.

“The problem was, I was so angry with the landlord because he’d given me the bad news I couldn’t leave the apartment,” she recalls.

After some more time, she was able to move out, but the experience has left her feeling disillusioned with the rental industry.

“The rental industry is so bad right now. I would give it two stars if it was a one star. I was so angry with the landlord I couldn’t even leave my apartment to go to my car,” she says.

The former owner’s response to a similar situation was to “tell her he had a contract for the apartment and that he would not make her move out.”

Finally had to book affordable plumbers through Handy near me.

The room looks the same as before but with 6 more hours of back-breaking work in it. I’ll be so excited when we get back to projects with bit before and afters. This background work is getting tiresome!

Sarah