Thursday, August 28th, 2008
As you may know, I have been doing a lot of work outside trying to make things look nice. A lot of sweat has gone into these projects. Things are rolling along smoothly and actually getting somewhere.
I have been visiting the local hardware store every few days to get a yard of mulch. I can fit twelve bags in the car, which is actually about a yard and a third. It’s good enough to do smaller areas. Once you start raking, mulch doesn’t go all that far.
I am up to the front sidewalk area of the house. I weeded the whole area this morning in preparation for the sidewalk lighting I purchased at Home Depot yesterday. There were already three lights out there, but two of them were out. I decided to buy three more lights and a set of bulbs. I got the Malibu “Do-it-yourself” metal lights, because they matched the ones already installed.
These lights are pretty nice. They are about a foot and a half tall, made of metal, use 11 watt bulbs and are really easy to install.
Since there were already some installed, but I like to do things my own way, I decided to take them out, along with all the wire. With the 50′ of outdoor wire I bought yesterday, coupled with the existing wire, I had plenty to add three light to make a total of six.
After I did all the weeding and pulled out the wire and lighting fixtures, I assembled all the new lights. Each one took just a few minutes. I installed the lights and re-ran the wire so it accessed all of them. I changed the time on the outdoor timer and took a look. Miraculously, all of them worked. I am very excited for it to get dark tonight to I can attempt another picture. I am hoping it will come out so I can post it here. Then, you will see the pure beauty of my work.
After I showed Laura what I did, she suggested that we put in some small floodlights that aim at the house from the sidewalk, facing upward. I am sure you have seen them. There are a few houses that have those types of lights in this neighborhood and I get jealous when I see them. There is nothing worse than a naked, dark house at night time. Well, I’m sure there are some things worse than that. But still, it’s all about the lighting.
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Monday, August 11th, 2008
As I was outside today cutting down some more small trees, the chimney repair guys rolled down the driveway. I thought he said they were going to call to set up an appointment, but this was fine with me. The faster I can cross something off my list, the better.
The job was to repair the crack in the chimney crown and ad a cap. I found a nice site that offers reasons why repairing a chimney crown is important. I have a feeling this is one of those repairs that a whole lot of people ignore. I guess they will be forced to fix things once they start falling apart. Heck, I wouldn’t have even known about this if the chimney cleaning guy didn’t tell me. I did my own research to back up what he said.
Chimney crown and cap
The cap they put on the chimney is stainless steel and measures 13″x28″. It has a lifetime warranty. For the price they charged, it better.
There are some benefits to having a chimney cap installed as well. They are:
- the cap helps to prevent downdraft
- it helps to repel rain and snow
- stops animals from nesting in your chimney
- helps to improve draft
- helps the chimney crown to shed water
- stops or helps to stop the fireplace damper from rusting
With all these benefits, I thought getting a cap would be the prudent thing to do. I am a prudent person.
During a walk last week, I noticed that virtually all the new houses around here don’t have chimney caps installed. I guess it’s not that imperative for new construction. I am still wondering why that is. It is probably the duty of the homeowner to get that done after the house is built. It still strikes me as odd though.
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Saturday, March 15th, 2008
It seems that many people aren’t writing in their blogs these days…with me being one of them. As I mentioned in my previous post, it’s just been all sorts of crazy ’round these parts. Honestly, the last thing I have been motivated to do is write. Well, I think my dry spell is over.
One of the reasons I haven’t been writing is because I have been hiding a horrible secret from my mother. See, in the past few months, I have been loudly complaining about the Winter blues. Much like every other Winter of my life, I threaten to move down South. This time, I went as far as to sell the idea to each of my family members…who happen to live down South. You can imagine their overwhelming joy at the thought of having my pretty face much closer to them.
A while back, I began a real estate search in certain cities and towns in Northern Virginia. I was extremely excited and wanted to live on a warm lake in the worst way. I found some good stuff, but after giving it some hard thought, discovered that those areas weren’t for me. As a side note, if you don’t know me, I am famous for changing my mind soon after a forceful decision has been made. It’s part of my charm. I had to break the news to my mother that we weren’t moving down South before I wrote this post. The silver lining of the whole thing is that we will have a nice place up North for her and my father to visit for the Summer.
I am not sure if I ever mentioned that I have been looking for that “perfect town” since I was in college. I think I may have solved the problem. For the longest time, I have been looking at these tiny towns in the middle of nowhere. The problem is, while they sunk some money into their main streets, they were virtually broke because there was no real revenue, besides tourism. I can’t live on tourism alone. Last year, I wanted to live in Woodstock, NY because I thought it was a neat little town. Well, after visiting a few times, the novelty wore off and there was nothing to do. I need some reality in a town. I need indoor tennis and golf courses. I need neighbors who give a damn and who don’t put up Wal-Mart decorations on their lawns during the Christmas season.
The other day, I had an epiphany. I thought to myself, “Jay, perhaps you have been looking in the wrong places. Perhaps you need the money of a city, but the peace and quiet of a suburb.” Ah, a suburb.
Last week, I started searching realtor.com for some properties around the Hartford, CT area. There are some very nice places around that city. There are some not-so-nice places too, but those are easily avoidable. I zeroed in on two towns…one very nice and busy, the other very nice and not busy. I like to live on the outskirts, but have the real world close by. I found a real estate agent and had her email me some listings for the area. Laura and I picked out three houses that we liked and took a trip on Thursday. The trip has two purposes, one was to see if we liked the area and the other was to see if we liked the houses. This, of course, was after I went to the bank to get pre-approved for another mortgage.
When we arrived, we immediately liked the area. We met the realtor and had her drive us around all day. We took tours of both towns and visited all three houses. The first two were very nice, but just ok. The third one was really nice. I think Laura and I just kept looking at each other thinking that we would get lost in the place. It was really big. It was also on four and a half acres of land.
Needless to say, we liked the third house. It is a very nice Connecticut colonial on a really nice cul de sac. The neighboring houses are all right up my alley. They are new and very, very clean. I did some research and it seems that most of these people live in this town and work in Hartford.
We have been going back and forth with the realtor and the homeowner and may put an offer on the house this weekend. If that doesn’t work out, we will keep looking at existing homes or build a brand new one. There are many options to build new in the area. Since these homes are on a totally different level from what we are currently living in, we have to do this slowly and carefully.
The bad part is that I brought my camera on Thursday, but totally forgot to take any pictures. We may go back out there on Monday, so I will be sure to take some photos.
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Sunday, November 11th, 2007
We were going to go for a hike this afternoon, but I feared the ground would be swampy when we got to our destination. I wanted to hike down to a pond a few acres away. I think we’ll get to that another day, but for today, we stuck with our usual walk down the road.
I have to say, for all those people who put off hiking in the summer because it’s too hot, today was the day for you. Weather.com tells me it’s 44 degrees outside…perfect for walking or hiking. No sweating and no freezing. Just perfect.
In an unusual move, I thought I would bring the camera along. It’s nice and sunny, so I knew the photos would come out nicely. Wanna see a few?
This is a piece of property down the road that both Laura and I are very jealous of. I am not sure how many acres it is, but they have a pond, a grassy area, a main house and another house out back. They also have a table and chairs set up near the back of the pond. I would like to drink my morning coffee there.
Moving further along, there is a river that flows pretty much along the entire road. When Rob came up to visit a while ago, we looked for salamanders under the rocks in this river.
This is Laura’s favorite house on this road. It’s an old white farm-ish type house. It’s hard to see back there, but what I was trying to get a picture of was the nice driveway and Pacasandra planted off to the right.
I just had to grab this one on our way back. The sun was hitting it and the leaves were bright yellow. Also, this is a great stone house to look at.
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