We hadn't planned to do things in this order, but after yesterday's rains, we found that a lot of water was leaking into the basement and we *knew* that the foundation needed to be graded. Luckily, they're tearing up the road for a massive sewer/water project, so I asked one of the workers yesterday if we could take some of the fill that they were just hauling away in dump trucks. (He said we could have all we wanted)
The front of the house was the worst, but before we could even get to the foundation, we had to remove four big arbor vitae and two small, pokey evergreen shrubs. G. did most of that! Then we hauled fill from the road, and leveled some places in the yard as well, and graded it all away from the front of the house and the west side. Tonight we'll pick up some cheap mulch to hide the ugly plain dirt and keep it in place for now, too. Either this fall or next spring, we'll make raised flower beds and get better dirt to put on top of the clay/gravel mix we got from the road construction.
Then G. climbed up on the roof and cleaned out the gutters (we'd realized during the rain yesterday that nothing was coming out of the downspouts). We need to get some parts to attach the downspouts so they stay attached, and will get some less-obvious pipe to carry the water away from the foundation, too.
Finally, we took down the hideous blue canopies and washed the outside of the windows.
So here's how it looks:
1 comment:
Wow--you have a lot of work ahead, but you are already amazing!
I had those lovely yellow counters. I painted mine, and they now look much better. (Just an idea--if you are interested in the process, let me know).
I like the blog. I wish I had thought of that for this house.
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