Keeping Busy

C and I have been keeping busy these past couple weeks since we last posted. Namely, C has started school and the work load is keeping her plenty occupied. She's been meeting with her professors and getting a lot of really good feedback on her project. It's taken a couple of cool twists in her approach . But she can tell you more about that herself.

Good thing we packed the Paint-By-Numbers set.

We've also been shoring up little odds and ends around the house. One of the things we did was put up a gate at the side of the house to keep the puppies in once we get them . C layed out the plan and used some planks of wood the previous owners left behind.

"Hmmm...What would Bob Villa do?"

Don't screw it into the deck, Einstein.

No missing fingers or toes... yet.

No puppies shall pass!

After some cutting and couple coats of paint, we threw on a set of hinges and... voila! Instant charming gate.


The other, much bigger, task was to tear out the brick planter along the front side of the house. The city of Regina was built on clay which slowly but surely shifts putting tremendous amounts of pressure on all of its basement walls. If left unmitigated, the walls will eventually bulge inward and then collapse. To combat this, everyone is advised to keep any bushes or plants away from the walls of the house because their roots pull water in toward the foundation, adding even more pressure to the basement walls.

Not good. We'll have to operate.

One could tell just by looking at it that our planter was deflecting in toward the house and a slight trough was developing running from the middle of the lawn straight to the cracking planter.

Here C is showing the bricks who's boss.

C and I figured we'd tear down the weak brick wall and just grade the dirt behind it to drain any rain water away from the house. Easy. We'll be done in a couple hours. Of course, nothing is as easy as it seems. Not only were there not one layer of bricks, there ended up being three layers, and they were held together with some very sturdy, stubborn concrete. What we thought would take a couple hours ended up taking a few days.

Fore! ...as in we've been at this for fore @#$% hours.

It turned out to be a real pain in the ass. But it was good mindless work and we got to spend a few hours outside under the summer sun.

Not bad for a day's worth of work.

While I whacked away at the wall with the blunt end of an ax (we thought we'd save some money by not getting a good sledge hammer... stupid), C chiseled away the concrete off of the bricks. At one point she asked, "Isn't this what they make prisoners do?"

Needs more cowbell.

Finally, after cramming all of the busted up bricks in the shed in the backyard and raking the dirt to grade away from the house, we were done. We thought we actually heard the basement wall sigh in relief, "Aahhhhhhhhh."

We're figuring on finishing off the dirt with some decorative rocks or something but that will be a job for next spring. We also figure we may have to tear up the lawn and regrade that away from the house, but again, that'll be a project for next year. For now, we think we've mitigated the problem at least for the winter.

Enough work, let's go get us a kitten!