Home Exterior Painting Reveal: Quest for the Perfect Gray

Hello again, friends — I have a lot to fill you in on since my last update two months ago! Although if you choose to just skim through and look at pictures rather than read my long post, I won't blame you.

If you'll recall, I was internally tortured with deciding on the perfect gray for our home exterior. Well, we finally did settle on Benjamin Moore Kendall Charcoal at 75%. (The 75% is an important detail, as you'll find out later...)

Label from my sample container. We had it matched at Sherwin-Williams even though it was a Benjamin Moore color.

Since this was one of the few projects we were not going to DIY, we hired a small local painting company (after getting three different quotes) and got on their schedule for June 11. Well, they called me up on May 20 and said a client had cancelled so they could actually start on our house the next day. Yikes! I felt a little un-prepared but couldn't turn down the chance to have the house done even sooner.

Don't count your veggies before they grow

Okay. I'm trying not to get too excited about this.

Remember when I decided to start a vegetable garden?

I have a bit of a black thumb and admittedly didn't really know what I was doing. Planting seeds seems easy enough, but I figured if there was a way to screw it up, I would.

Well, here's what it looks like now. Be still, my beating heart!

Somehow, I have managed to keep my vegetables alive, even despite the scorching heat we've had! I would say the cucumbers are thriving the most, followed by the zucchini and then the green beans.

I should probably mention that in my initial post, a couple of you gave some helpful recommendations to get some chicken wire or fencing for the vines to grow up instead of out. So they wouldn't get out of control. As you can see, I did not heed that well-meaning advice. My only excuse is pure laziness. At this point I've decided to just let them grow wherever they may.

Not all of the seeds I planted survived, but that's probably a good thing given the limited space here. I'm also seeing some yellow blossoms on the cucumbers... another promising sign, yes?

It looks like they should start producing any time now, but I still haven't seen anything yet... So I'll continue to wait and remain cautiously optimistic about my future veggie crop. Cross your fingers for me!

The seeds have been sown...

If you're a regular reader around here, it's no secret that I have a pretty bad track record with keeping plants alive. Nevertheless, that hasn't quelled my urge to try my hand at growing vegetables. So when the opportunity arose recently, I took it.

Our sidewalk project left us with a rectangular strip of dirt that was just begging to grow something. Remember what it looked like back here before the sidewalk? Let's reminisce...

Yeahhh.... pretty trash-tastic.

So once the sidewalk and resulting landscaping bed were completed, I figured there was no better time to attempt to be a gardener and plant some veggies. But first, I had to clean up the post-sidewalk mess:

Bricks, boards, concrete chunks, more bricks, potted daylilies, snow fence, and more bricks.

So after a couple hours of moving everything out of the way and tilling up the soil, I finally had an area to work with. (I ran out of places to put all the brick, so just had to line it up around my "garden"...maybe I'll actually put a brick border here someday?)

I decided to get zucchini, cucumber, and green beans. Hopefully they are all pretty easy to grow for a novice like me. I have no idea if this is enough space to be planting all these things, but I guess I'll find out. I feel like I've been told that the cucumber plant spreads a lot.... Anyway, after studying the directions on the seed packets, I got out my little hand shovel and got to work.

As it turns out, there are a lot of seeds in these packets, and I didn't end up using them all. Maybe that means I should have a bigger garden than this? I probably put them too close together as it is.

This picture looks pretty much the same as before, but the labeled flags are there as proof that the seeds have been planted.

I think seedlings are supposed to sprout in about a week or two, so now I just have to play the waiting game. And, more importantly, remember to water them. If they all grow, then I'll have some veggies ready to harvest in about 50-60 days. And if not, then I guess I only wasted about $8 on the seeds. 

Do you have any experience growing vegetables? What do I need to know?

Concrete is Really Heavy.

How do I know this? Because I had to shovel it into about 50 buckets and lift them into this window well to fill in our basement hole.

Let's backtrack. We originally had scheduled the concrete truck to deliver on a Saturday, when we would have had five total people to help us move it. But we found out the Friday before that they didn’t have enough deliveries to work on Saturday, so it had to be postponed until the following Monday at 7:30 a.m. Thankfully, my parents were still able to come and help us out, or else there was no way we could have done it. My dad already had a lot of helpful tools (edger, groover, wood float, finish trowel, square shovel, wheelbarrow), so the only thing we had to buy was a magnesium float. Woot!

Since traipsing through the house and down the stairs with buckets of concrete was not exactly desirable, the only other reasonable alternative was taking it down through the aforementioned window well. So we loaded wheelbarrows from the truck, and my mom and I shoveled it into buckets to hand to Luke.

We got concrete with fiberglass mesh in it (which acts as a reinforcer), since that was what was originally used in our basement. It kinda looks like it has a bunch of tiny hairs in it.

Luke got the crappy end of the deal, since he was the one on the ladder who was taking them down through the window. And it’s not that I’m not confident in his brute strength or anything, but I found myself secretly praying that he wouldn’t fall backwards every time I handed him another bucket.

Oh, did I mention that we only had one hour to unload all our concrete before they started charging us $1 per extra minute? No pressure to get it done quickly or anything…..

Meanwhile, my dad was working on smoothing and finishing the concrete until it was flush with the existing slab. I couldn’t see what was going on down there, so I had Luke snap a couple of pictures. Looks like Dad knows what he’s doing!

Once we had finally shoveled our last bucket, our work was not yet done. We still had an 18-foot-long sidewalk to pour. Although Dad had some experience with finishing a sidewalk years ago, we all gave ourselves some good ol’-fashioned YouTube education in advance.

The sidewalk pouring went much quicker since we were able to dump the full wheelbarrows directly into our formwork instead of hassling with buckets. We started doing this while Dad was still working away in the basement.

After we had pretty much filled the formwork, we realized that was probably not the smartest decision, since Dad would now have to step in the concrete to screed it, instead of screeding and filling at the same time. But we managed to make it work. Good thing he had some heavy-duty Muck Boots on. After screeding with a 2x4, he used the wood and magnesium floats and finally the finish trowel. (Sidenote: I had no idea it was spelled "screed" until I looked it up. What a weird word.)

It was already looking good, but it really began looking like an honest-to-goodness sidewalk once they started the edging and grooving to make the control joints (which allow for expansion and contraction due to temperature changes). Luke and Dad had a pretty good system going, but since the sidewalk was so wide, it was quite a reach to get over to the other side. Rather than fashioning some sort of harness to hold onto Luke, it was easiest for me to just grab onto his shirt to keep him from falling in the wet concrete. Oh, the things one must do when DIY-ing….

Classy.

By noon-ish, the sidewalk was just about finished. Not bad for a morning’s work! We did try putting Dudley’s paw prints in it, but I thought they looked kind of sloppy, so we smoothed them back out. Then Luke tried writing "2011" in it, and that didn’t look so good either. Maybe it had already started to harden too much. Anyway, we ended up leaving our sidewalk impression-free. A few hours after pouring it, it was already hard enough that I couldn’t even make a dent in it with my finger.

Once we cleaned up all our tools, we took Mom and Dad out for cheeseburgers at Five Guys Burgers and Fries (their request), and they headed home. Later that day, Luke and I put a plastic “tent” over the sidewalk since there was rain in the forecast. Providing some extra sun protection also helped the concrete from drying out too fast, which apparently can cause premature cracking.

As excited as I was about our basement hole finally being filled, I just wanted to keep looking at our sidewalk. Who knew watching concrete dry could be so exciting? However, it’s probably not as exciting for you, so I will refrain from posting all the photos of drying concrete... after this one, I mean.

Oh, in case you’re interested, we unloaded the truck in about 1 hour and 15 minutes. (In fact, we probably didn’t use all the concrete we ordered.) But the delivery guy said they wouldn’t worry about charging us for the 15 extra minutes. He was really nice!

Concrete Cost Breakdown for Sidewalk & Basement Floor:
Formwork: About $20
Fibermesh Concrete: $132.75 for 1.5 cubic yards
Delivery Charge: $100 plus $8.75 fuel surcharge
Magnesium Float: $15
Labor: paid in cheeseburgers and fries


We’re probably going to take a little break before starting any major construction in the basement, but it’s just exciting to know that our bathroom now has a floor again! Just to clarify: Hole in the wall = good. Hole in the floor = bad.

Anyway, I’m off to go check out our sidewalk again. Thanks again, Mom and Dad!

P.S. Pouring your own sidewalk? Here’s a pretty good tutorial, since mine wasn’t actually very explanatory. If we can do it, you can do it!

Fun with Formwork

Well, my friends, I’m extremely excited to tell you that as I sit here, still dirty from the day’s work, our concrete projects are done. But before I reveal our completed sidewalk, I thought I’d share a very important -- albeit not that interesting -- part of the process. The formwork itself was not too difficult to build; prepping the area was probably the worst part, actually. For those of you who didn’t read my last post, here’s what the side of our house looked like before:

Ugh. Can you say, trashy?

So we moved all the extra bricks out of the way, got rid of a bunch of concrete chunks, and graded the dirt. Naturally, it was extremely windy the day we did this. We already had some straight 2x4’s that we were able to use, but had to go buy a 1x6, stakes, and stringline.

We screwed the 1x6 into the fence (it will remain there permanently unless we ever need to pry it out for some reason) and worked off of that to set the 2x4’s. The sidewalk needed to slope from our brick sidewalk down to the grass in the backyard. Somewhere in the middle of this whole process, I made the remark that the formwork looked pretty high in comparison to the grass, but for some reason, we kept on going.

After staking all the boards down (and hoping we didn’t hit our sprinkler line in the process), we realized that yes, it was ridiculously high and we would have a big step down to the lawn. Unfortunately, it wasn’t something that could just be ignored, so we (Luke) went back and moved the 1x6, unscrewed all the stakes from the 2x4’s, dug out more dirt, and pounded everything back into the ground. My mood at this point in time was not particularly pleasant, so I didn’t even take any pictures.

With that said, here is the completed, correct-height formwork:

It already looks way better back here, don’t you think? Luke convinced me that a 3½-foot wide sidewalk would be a lot nicer than a 3-foot sidewalk, although it would mean more concrete. The whole thing is about 18 feet long, and there are 8"-wide strips at each end. Which means we’ll have a nice little landscaping bed here… I’m thinking a possible vegetable garden is in our future??

But wait...what about the hole in the basement, you ask? Well, you’ll just have to hang tight until my next post, when ALL is revealed (including a crapload of pictures)!



Bring on the Concrete!

Although I've been slacking on writing about REAL projects lately, that doesn't mean we haven't been busy working! I’m sure you’ve all been dying to know what’s happening with our basement hole. (No? Really?) Well, as of this weekend, it will be a hole no more! If all goes as planned, of course…

Here’s a quick refresher of the situation, as well as some new updates on what’s been happening. (I apologize if I'm not very detailed about the process -- it's been a lot of off-and-on work over the past couple months!)

The bathroom drain lines for the shower, sink, and toilet have finally been re-worked from their original – and might I add, nonsensical -- layout to fit our new floor plan configuration. In a nutshell, this involved cutting apart the existing lines with the sawzall, redirecting them to where we wanted, and gluing the new lines together. We were able to save some dough by salvaging some of the old pipe, but we did have to buy a few new fittings too.

OLD LAYOUT

NEW LAYOUT

In case you can't tell what's going on here, the vent stack/sink drain has moved to the back wall, the shower drain moved a few inches inward, and the toilet stub-up moved a couple feet back toward to the cleanout.

Luke, of course, did most of the figuring and measuring during all this, and I pretty much assisted by handing things to him and holding the pipes when they needed to be cut.

The shower drain took some extra figuring as far as how high up to set it to be flush with the new concrete floor, yet taking into consideration an ever-so-slight slope and the fact that there will be thinset and tile on top of it. We used a paper clip chain as a lightweight plumb bob to determine where the drain should be located (horizontally).

Once all the underground drainwork was complete, there was still more prep work to be done. With a ginormous 13" drill bit, Luke spent several exhausting hours drilling holes in the sides of the existing slab in order to reinforce the new floor with rebar (approximately every two feet). We then filled the entire hole with a couple inches of fine sand.

The rebar was attached into the concrete with Sika Anchoring Adhesive. We had some diffiiculties with the bottle and the caulking gun, so hopefully we got enough adhesive into the holes. It seems pretty sturdy...

NOW…. It’s finally ready for a new floor, which we will be pouring this weekend with the help of my dad who’s coming to visit. It’s going to cost about $270 for 1.5 cubic yards, and by DIY-ing, we should end up saving a few hundred dollars.

And hey, while we have a concrete truck accessible to us, why not pour a new sidewalk too?

Here’s a look behind our gate on the side of our house, which has become a dumping ground for extra bricks, concrete chunks from the basement, dirt, and a few potted daylilies that won’t seem to die I haven’t managed to kill. Overall, a pretty craptastic area, but up until now it hasn’t been our top priority since no one ever really sees it.

So last weekend we cleaned it up a bit and built some formwork with some 2x4’s, a 2x6, and stakes. When it’s finished, we’ll have a nice concrete sidewalk connecting our fabulous brick sidewalk with the back yard. Not only will it look a bazillion times better, but it will also be more convenient for pushing the mower, wheelbarrow, etc.

Having never worked with concrete before (except for our fence posts), I have no idea what to expect this weekend and am a little – okay, a lot – nervous. But as long as Luke and my dad know what’s going on, I’ll be more than happy to do whatever they tell me to do. It should be very interesting, to say the least.


Wish us luck! Oh, and any last-minute pointers on pouring sidewalks and/or a finished concrete floor??

Rock On!

Last month, we took several days off of work over Labor Day weekend. One of the projects we finished up was our sidewalk. The other big project was filling our landscaping beds with rock. For the past two and a half years, we've had dirt surrounding our house. Not attractive.

First, we pulled all the weeds, graded the dirt, and laid down the landscape paper. I've heard mixed reviews on the paper... some people say weeds still grow through it. But we had an entire roll someone had given us for free, so we decided to use it. Rolling out the paper was pretty easy. We didn't really research anything about it, so hopefully there's no wrong way to do it. If so, it's too late now!

Deciding on the rock, however, wasn't so easy. We visited several landscaping centers and agonized over what color that would look best next to our house. A couple places let us take home samples to put next to the house. It was still hard to tell with such a little pile, but they any of them probably would have looked fine.

We decided on the brown river rock on the right, because it would contrast the most with our limestone border. It definitely wasn't as cheap as pea gravel, but it wasn't the most expensive option, either. We figured that since we're doing most of our landscaping work ourselves, we're still ultimately saving money. To avoid a delivery fee, we borrowed a trailer and hauled three tons ourselves.

Three tons of rock doesn't really look like much! But it turned out to be about the right amount to cover everything we needed around the house, at about 2"-3" deep.

Needless to say, shoveling this rock off of the trailer and moving it all around the house was back-breaking labor a good workout. And also very dirty and dusty. The rock looked really dull, which was a little disheartening. But after it finally got a good washing by rain, it made a big difference.

We're creating a temporary rock garden here with our huge, leftover limestone rocks. Eventually, I'll plant some stuff around them.

With our two-tiered landscaping surrounding our Japanese Maple (which is in pretty sad shape right now), we decided to fill the top tier with a different (and cheaper) rock to set it apart.

You can still see patches where some of the rock didn't get a very good washing yet.

I've already shown this picture before, but because I'm so proud of our sidewalk, here's the other side of our house with the rock:

Completing this project was a huge relief, and I feel so much better about our house and our curb appeal! We still need to add more plants and install drip irrigation for the landscaping beds, but we might not get to that for awhile. For now, I'm just glad that I don't have to look at dirt when I walk out the door (or, more importantly, when people walk up to our door).