New York Renovator

Old houses often have water problems. Mine sure does. Last year, the kids and I worked all summer on building a huge drywell area, to lead rainwater runoff from the roof away from the foundation of the house. You can read more about it here and here and here.

It has helped our water situation, somewhat, although we so still get backup water from the sump well. I think the reason for that is the undergorund water table is very high around here, and there is only so much we can do to deal with that. Nonetheless, I’ve been mulling over more of my options. I cannot really prevent the water from coming up and into my property, but I can divert it. So we are going to build French drains around the perimeter of the house, one side at a time. (we are doing the digging ourselves, with shovels).

Perhaps the best article I’ve read on building a French drain, and understanding water flow, is here at Ask the Builder. I’m not quite sure where to have the drainage area, because there is the chance of exacerbating the water problems if I don’t extend the French drain system far enough away from the house; I’ll just be creating a pond from all that runoff!

So… I’m doing more research and thinking. I may have to tear up a section of the asphalt driveway to do this. The driveway is very old, and was installed much too close to the house anyway (it’s only two feet away from the house walls!) I have some tough decisions to make. But I think this will be our autumn project before school begins for the kids. And we have to go camping sometime soon before then, too!

I have a narrow plot of land on one side of the house– it’s only about 20 feet wide, and it is the only thing between the house and the parking lot next door. So I’ve been developing this area for the past few years. I call it my Secret Garden because I have planted tall flowering shrubs that will eventually grow up and over the arbor I set there, making a hallway from the front yard to the back yard; it will look like a tunnel of flowering foliage. Right now, everything is still rather low, but it’s made great progress.

Because it is a narrow area, and because the children love to run around the house and chase each other in circles, I’ve been building a concrete walkway through this little garden. Last year I blogged about how the children gave me a Quikrete concrete form and some bags of concrete for my birthday. My husband and I installed about 5′ of the walkway. The children and I finished the walkway course up to the arbor. (We intend to extend the garden, and the walkway, beyond the arbor, in the future). It was the first time that the kids got to work with concrete, and they did a terrific job! I’m also very impressed with the ease and durability of the Quikrete walkway form. Although the walkway has shifted a little from last winter’s frost heave, the walkway remains in place and is still in perfect condition. I think we will continue using the Quikrete form method elsewhere in the yard. I love it!

We bought the regular concrete mix, but I added a third of a bag of mortar mix to the concrete mix, to make the mix more sticky.

The most laborious part of the entire project is making sure your concrete is thoroughly mixed well– no dry spots. We made sure the concrete has the consistency of mud pies. When you chop the wet mix with your hoe, it should leave “hills” that do not blop from too much moisture, or look too crusty and dry.

You set the walkway form on the ground and fill it up. It is best to chop the concrete into the sides and edges of each unit, to make sure there are no gaps or air bubbles.

We smooth it out with a trowel.

And carefully lift up the form.

Here we are, making progress. we used 5 bags of 80 pound concrete mix, with one full bag of mortar mix between them. This got us about 12 feet of walkway.

The crowning moment is signing your handiwork. And we pressed a few flowers into the concrete, too.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, we will lay some large field stones from the property along the pathway, to give the walkway added stability. Then I will sprinkle sand mix between the walkway cracks and wet the mix. This will fill the areas between the “stones” and stabilize them. This part of the yard will be completely done! Woooo!

Well, LOL, that’s what THIS girl wants! Construction equipment! Wahooo! I do just about everything by hand around here… when we needed a trench dug for our drywell, the kids dug it themselves– all 25 feet long and 4 feet deep. That was a project, I tell ya. And when we had to fell one of our diseased trees, we had to get a ladder and hack at the thing, branch by branch, until we could bring it down. I hired a guy for one of our really tall Maple trees– but believe it or not, he did it all by hand with no heavy equipment, either. It took him days to do. There is nothing like the smell of diesel fuel and the sound of roaring construction equipment, let me tell you!

There’s a great place for you folks out in the west coast to rent and buy some very nice equipment: AlAsher.com. I did some surfing around there and noticed they had some very, very nice used digger derricks. I love the front loader dump trucks, too. Buying such a thing might be a bit too much for our home use– although Al Asher & Sons do rentals– but if you are in the construction business, you can save a ton of money (get it? a “ton”? hahahaha!) at Al Asher & Sons. Al Asher & Sons has over 250 used equipment models, including utility aerial bucket trucks, digger derricks, boom trucks, crew trucks, and more.

Al Asher & Sons has been in the business since 1914! They pride themselves on giving the best customer satisfaction– and they do deliver, and sell parts and accessories to the equipment they sell. They are also California OSHA boom certified. Check out their website, or give the guys a call at (800) 896-2480. I don’t know if they are planning on expanding the business out east, but if they did, they’d have my business.

High oil prices are affecting roofing materials. Unfortunately, when a house needs a roof, a house needs a roof. Be prepared to pay through the nose. A news story from Syracuse quoted a roofing contractor as saying that roof prices have gone up fifteen times in the past two years. What was once an expensive $43 a square foot for basic asphalt shingles is now about $60! Ouch! I’m glad we got our new roof installed when we moved here, but that was eleven years ago. Depending on the environment (heat, ice, the absence or presence of trees), the average lifespan of a new asphalt roof is 20 years.

By the way, you should never install two roofs– you know, a new roof on top of an old one. When we moved here, one roofing contractor said we could do that to save money; he said there was only one roof layer on and adding another on top might be a good idea. It would also be cheaper, because there is nothing to tear off and dispose of (which is very expensive to do). But we decided to swallow the price of a more expensive tear-off.(And we hired a different roofer who wouldn’t try to sell us something we didn’t want to do). BOY was THAT a great decision! Because there was not one, not two, but already THREE layers of roofing on the roof of the house. And the wood beneath it was moldy and cracked. We have to pay extra to replace the bad boards. But I don’t care. If we had just slapped on another layer, I doubt the rafters would have held the weight. And the old roofing was leaky and rotted. I shake my head at the folks who owned the house before us, because they were the Methodist Church, and this house was their parsonage. They took such crappy care of this place that I am amazed they’d even lift their heads to greet their pastor. How can anyone let a young family live in such deplorable conditions? This house was a disaster!

Well, anyway… slapping a new roof on top of an old one is inadvisable and you’re asking for trouble. If you are nubile enough, you can always strap on some cabling and rip the old stuff off yourself, saving money. Gee, the old days of musing over expensive frivolities like espresso machines is over, I think. We’re being squeezed over the basic necessities, now!

The thought of spring projects makes me weary right now. There are just multitudes of piddly little things to do. Here’s one of them. It’s our clothesline, which bore the brunt of the heavy snow and the snowplow over the winter. Ugh. We’ll have to drill a new hole through the asphalt, again. Because our property used to be a parsonage connected to a church, we have a huge parking lot behind the house. It gets blazing hot in the summer. We concocted a long clothesline over the asphalt. On sunny days, our clothes dry in less than an hour– they literally bake on the blacktop! But drilling the holes through the asphalt to allow for the post was exhausting. Right now, I just wanna lay on the couch and play with the PS2…

I’ve been thinking more about our plans for creating a rain garden to help with our stormwater management problems. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, see this post here.

Now, the temptation here is to splurge on materials for a new project. Don’t do that! This is supposed to save you money, right? Some things you may need to buy, but don’t run out and get those $2 each paver blocks! Get plain old rocks from your yard, or go to a neighbor or a farmer and ask for his rocks.

Don’t buy pansies and impatiens at the garden center! Plant daisies from seed, get some hostas (if you buy one or two, you can divide them every other year. Eventually your garden will be filled with hostas because they divide so well). Plant what you can from seed (this is a great time to start).

Don’t buy a tree at the garden center and waste $40! Buy bareroot trees from the National Arbor Day Foundation– they have an online store and trees are dirt cheap! (haha). And it has been proven that bareroot trees grow more quickly than those garden center trees, even though the garden center trees are much taller. Bareroot trees adapt easier, grow faster and better, and are much less expensive.

Don’t follow the instructions on the bags of mulch that say you need a mulch layer of 4 to 5 inches! Read my newspaper tip (be sure to aerate the paper) and use less mulch.

The wonderful thing about gardening is that you can do it very inexpensively and it can look like a million dollars. Or, you can spend a million dollars to make it look like a million dollars. Your choice. I prefer the former.