Last of the debris

There was a small pile of debris under the carport that was left over from when the other debris was hauled away but this stuff didn't fit in the dumpster. The pile was a few sheets of paneling from the basement and the old kitchen sub-floor. Since the plywood and paneling was too big, I had to cut it up before I could put it out with the garbage - and the result of that work is what you see here.

This photo also shows the carpet of flowers etc in the front yard - these would have been growing under the huge junipers or cedar or whatever it was that was growing by the lamp post and totally obscured everything.

The flowers on the ground to the right of the lamp post are pots that Freda put together.

Most of the peonies are almost ready to burst their blossoms and look like this.

Some peonies have bloomed and look and smell gorgeous!

And in other news... I have called for the final electrical inspection on Monday.

No more tarp

Today, I decided to spend the day finishing off several fix ups around the house.

One of them was to remove the tarp off the chimney. This involved dragging the ladder out of the basement so I could take the tarp off. I took the camera up with me so I could document what the chimeny looked like, just in case I found something that needed a touch up.

But everything looks pretty good!

This is a photo from the other side of the chimney.

Here you can see the ladder sitting by the front step.

This also shows another thing that I did - that was fix the shutoff valve so I could turn on the hose. This required the following steps:

• move about 2 dozen boxes so I could access the main water shut off valve by the water meter
• shut off the water
• dismantle the shut off valve
• reassemble the valve
• turn on the water and test for leaks

So, it all went well except for the (you guessed it) disassemble the valve. I took off the handle, but then I couldn't budge the large nut that held on the body of the valve. Then I realized that there was a little nut over the valve stem, which is where the water was leaking from, so I took the nut off and went to Home Depot to see if I could get an O-ring or gasket or something. They didn't have anything that would fit because of the age of the valve (52 years old), however one guy at Home Depot suggested rolling some teflon tape and wrap that around the valve stem. So I did that and it worked well to stop the leak.

RIP little squirrel

We have a dead squirrel in the back yard. Not sure when it happened...... I just saw it when I let the dogs out and they both ran over to this furry lump on the grass.

I was afraid it was the bunny that we have seen around here, but I think it is the squirrel with the shortened tail. :((

From photo taken on May 8th:


Click here if you want to see the dead squirrel.

Crabapple blossoms!

These photos were taken on May 20th,2011.

Close-up of the beautiful blossoms on our neighbour's crabapple tree.

This is the complete tree. The pretty pink flowers look a little washed out against the brightness of the sky.

My neighbour tells me that when the neighbourhood was developed, the developers planted the same type of tree in front of every house, so it would have looked really gorgous going down this street with all the trees in bloom at the same time. But this neighbourhood is 50 years old and not all the crabapple trees have survived. Lucky for us, the houses at the end of the street near our house all have the crabs still (except for ours).

The petals cover the ground with a pink snow.

And even get on your shoes...

Lights finished, but whoops!

Tawny likes sleeping on her bed between these two chairs. We have since rearranged the furniture a bit, but we kept this bed in this same general area and she really likes it for some reason. What a good girl!

I finally got around to putting up the pendant lights. The problem was that I needed to run a 3-conductor wire between the two boxes which entailed drilling a hole in a supporting beam between them. The drill bit went astray and made the hole in the ceiling.

This is a closeup. I will have to do a bit of drywall patching and then repaint. :(

Rain rain go away

We've had so much rain lately that - when it stops and dries up - we barely have time to mow the lawn before it starts raining again. This photo shows the base of the maple tree in our yard, with a number of ferns at the base of it.

At the lower right of the photo, you can see part of the troublesome retaining wall that is collapsing and posing a danger.

This shows a larger view of the area.

This photo shows where the very large shrubs were that we cut down last fall. I say shrubs even though they were more like trees because they were supposed to be shrubs but the previous owners didn't keep them trimmed so they became overgrown.

Both darkness and rain make the worms come out - it was both dark and rainy when I spotted this big worm when I let the dogs out to do their business just before bed. I figure it was well over 5 inches long.

An odd squirrell

Well, the chimney mason said he would be back on Friday to take the tarp down, but he never showed up. I guess I have to get the ladder out and take the tarp off myself...

Saw this funny looking black squirrel in the back year - Freda has seen him around several times before. He's missing about 3/4 of his fluffy tail -- wonder what his story is??

Chimney repair

When we bought this house, we knew the chimney needed some work. The inspector said the chimney needed repointing and so that's what I got some quotes for. I had inspected the bricks when I was up on the roof to recaulk the flashing, so I was pretty sure that it just needed to be repointed. I had wanted to put a metal cap over the chimney too, to keep the water off the concrete. The first quote was $1600 for the repointing plus $400 for the chimney cap (plus tax, of course!), which I thought was very high since I thought it might be 4-6 hrs of work.

The guy who came for a second quote said the chimney needed to be taken down and rebuilt. I wasn't here when that guy came but I just didn't believe that because none of the bricks were loose. His quote was $2800 plus tax.

I didn't like either of those quotes, so I called another guy who came and quoted $450, including tax, for the repointing, including some areas in the carport.

Guess who I hired to do the work? Pretty obviously it was guy #3.

I took this photo after the mason had ground out the mortar with his diamond tipped blade. This cleans out the old, deteriorated mortar and creates a deep crevice so the new mortar has a good surface area to bond with.

This is the other side of the chimney. The metal chimney cap indicates the location of the flue from the old oil furnace. That is no longer in use so I just wanted him to remove it and seal up the hole.

There was a layer of mortar on top of the chimney concrete cap pieces that was all cracked and somewhat loose. The mason was going to remove that and apply a new layer of concrete. If needed, we can get a metal cap later.


This is the area under the car port and you can see how the brick is all wet, which I presume is because the chimney was full of cracks so water could penetrate it. Fortunately it didn't seem to come into the house. There were some large holes in some of the mortar here, so the mason was going to repoint those too.


In this photo, the mason has filled the gaps with the new mortar. He had to let it set up for a while so then he could tool it, to shape the mortar between the bricks.


This photo was taken after the mortar was jammed into the spaces between the bricks, but before it was tooled -- in other words, when the mortar was setting up.

It was raining quite heavily later, so I couldn't take any more photos. Because of the rain, the mason wrapped a tarp around the chimney to protect the mortar from getting washed away. He said he will be back on Friday to remove the tarp. I will take some photos then.

Too cold!

It has been so cold lately that the tulips don't even want to open! And to think that they had been finished for several weeks already at this time last year.

More weekend accomplishments

When we had the granite countertops put in, the installer didn't have any of the sealer to seal the countertops. It took a few weeks for him to get it in and since we weren't home when he was going to come by, he put some in a bottle and labelled it, "Sealer - DONT DRINK". Freda applied the sealer to the counter and it looks (and feels) really nice now.

Another thing we did was install this storage cabinet above the toilet. It looks pretty good and frees up some floor space in the bedroom :).