The big one...kinda

I hate rocks. Its true. Especially when they are buried in the part of the yard that you're working on. Most of the weekend was spent trying to get rid of the rocks in the front of the house. We posted several ads online and had such an enormous response for those wanting free river rocks (we still have lots if your interested...). I helped load 2 trailers and 2 truck full of rocks. The yard is looking better, but...I. Hate. Rocks. Saturday morning was started way too early. My parents left us a list of stuff to find and we decided to hit the garage sales and see what we could find (we saw this car at one of the yard sales, but sadly, it wasn't for sale). The only thing that we found that was on the list is a seed spreader for $8. It seems that I need to develop a sense of urgency when garage/yard sailing with Cait. We finished up with the sales around 1000 (that's 10:00 am for you non-military types) and proceeded to go to Lowes. Time for a trimmer/edger. They had a sale for an electric Black & Decker for only $25. Add 100ft of extension cord, and we're in business. We're still going to keep an eye out for a cheap gas one at yard sales (maybe). And then we were off to the local Home and Garden show. That was a lot of fun. We met local vendors and business, got a free massage, bought some cake and won a gardening gift set. All-in-all a pretty productive morning/afternoon. Then came the rocks. On Saturday we (I) only had trailer to help load. Not a lot of fun. And with that, I'm going to stop complaining about the rocks...for now.

We also put down much in our almost completed flower garden. The red mulch against the colors of the flowers and imagining the color we're (I'm) going to paint the house...It looks wonderful. I can't wait until we fill in the last little bit where we can't figure out what to plant. But there will be red mulch there too

Sunday was spent loading rocks, trying to figure out what to plant (mainly achieved by looking at plants at Lowes), and recovering from Saturday. Sunday was kind of productive. Cait let me sleep in until 0930, which was wonderful. She's a wonderful person. I know that this is pretty short for two days worth of work and missed postings, but it was pretty repetitive. Work, work, work. Not a whole lot to it. Tomorrow I'll post what we've planted and used in our garden so far. That's it for tonight. Time to watch Cait flip through the channels while falling asleep.

-Brent


Here are the plants that came in the gardening gift basket:

Weekend Update with the Delfosses.

All, I'm probably not going to be posting anything tonight (like last night). There will be a new post tomorrow.

Brent

Big days

Sorry that this took so long to get posted. Cait and I have been pretty busy today but, we'll get to that in a little bit. Let's rewind to yesterday. I of course, had to work, but that didn't stop the helpful, handy parents from working on the house (see picture on the left). They managed to tame a wild bush, trim trees, and generally shape up the wild and crazy plants that surrounded the house.  After getting home, but before I was able to even leave my car, my dad and I were off to pick up his truck from a local tire shop. That took a bit of time, but we got back fairly quickly and were able to get back to work. Mostly it was cleaning up the trimmings from the bushes and trees that were pruned. All of the trimmings, yard trash, and random branches are now sitting in or next to our fire pit. Time for a bonfire!!! Don't forget your marshmallows!!!

Now time for today and what a day it was. I know Cait and I are both worn out.

I wasn't feeling to well this morning, and left work a bit early. After some sleep (which helped..along with the medicine), we went shopping. Most of the shopping was spent trying to a) figure out what plants we want and b) looking for one of those plants. Let's tackle the first part of the shopping. Looking for plants. We went around town and down to Yulee looking at plants. Cait finally found some Snapdragons that she fell in love with. I found some Salvias that I like, but Cait didn't (at that time). What we were really looking for were some plants to go in between our windows (if you don't understand, you'll see what I'm talking about in a moment). We also snagged some mulch (see picture). The pink swing is for Savannah and was purchased at Wal-Mart along with the Sky Pencil Holly. That was the plant that we spent most of the day looking for. And it was worth it. This brings us to part two of today's adventure.

After visiting the 2 nurseries, we decided that we were going to go with the Sky Pencil Holly for the bushes. And that was a pain in the butt. Everywhere we thought had the Holly, didn't. And the place we didn't want to get the Holly from turned out to be the best deal (of course). We got them home, planted and were trying to figure out what to do with the Snapdragons. Originally they were supposed to be for Cait's garden, but we felt that they looked better in the front of the house. We set them out and felt that some thing was missing. So, back to Wal-Mart. There I picked up two more of the Holly and 6 of the Salvia. Once the Salvia were laid out, Cait fell in love with them. Now, time to get everything planted. Aside from the bugs, everything went really well and the plants got in the ground pretty quickly. . All in all is was a long, but very rewarding day. We're really excited about getting the mulch down in the bed and get the rocks out of the front of the house. No worries there, we have someone coming tomorrow to pick them up. Once the rocks are out, we are going to need to figure out what we want to put on the other side of the house. But that can until we come to that bridge. Below is Cait's hands after all of the hard work was done and the end result. 

And here is the result of all of today's hard work. I know that it is hard to see some of the plants, but I assure you that it is very pretty. Well, that's it for now. Tomorrow we're going to some garage sales and the local home and patio show. Hopefully we'll find some good deals. Everyone have a good night.

Follow me, don't follow me I've got my spine, I've got my orange crush.

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Why I need a truck.

Yesterday was filled with more outdoor work. Of course. My parents and Cait were able to remove 1 of the 9 bushes infront of our house while I was at work. For those that don't know, the picture to the left is one of the 9 bushes. Looks kind of small, but the roots are just massive. During this time, my parents found that one of our neighbors was having their roof replace. The contractor was invited over to give us a free estimate. For him to remove and  dispose of the old roof, install a ridge vent, and repair any damage, he quoted us a price of about $7000. Now, for some that may seem like a lot of money and it is. But compare to what Home Deopt was offering, it is a steal. Home Depot's $15,000 price tag includes laying new 20 year shingles over the old existing ones. They're a no-go. But we're getting the written estimae from the roofer today, so keep your fingers crossed.

So, after I got home, my dad and I decided that a 4WD Chevy 2500 w/ a Turbo Diesel engine should be able to rip the rest of the shrubs right out of the ground. And for the most part, it did. After much of this:

And this:

We were able to achieve this:

All of the shrubs are gone!!! I think that aside from the large holes in the ground, the front of the house is looking better. And all it took was a truck. And of course the wonderfuly elbow grease. There seems to be plenty of that to go around. 

While all of that was gong on, my mom and Cait were working on planting the new plants that were purchased. The picture on the left is the end result (for now). There is still some more work that we want to do with this area, but it is already looking so much better. Cait was able to list the shrubs that we pulled out on Freecycle and we recieved numerous offers for people to come pick them up. Hopefully they follow through on that. I'm not to keen on keeping those bushes in the first place, and the storage location is not the greatest. They have taken ove a portion of our side yard. But as long as they're gone by tomorrow i'll be happy. That was really the extend of the work that was done yesterday. Oh, my dad did clean out our gutters and down spouts and hopefully was able to fix the problem spot above the entrance to our patio. But we won't know how well that worked until it rains.  The rest is pictures of the work that we did.

The front of the house:

Savannah's stamp of approval:

And last but not least, a picture Cait took.

Pretty!

More work done around the house yesterday. Cait and my parents did quite a lot of yard work. The rocks that were removed from the front of the house are now surrounding the A/C unit.

This will help with drainage from the air handler. They also moved some of the plants that weren't working in the front of the house to the side.

And Cait has been clearing out a flower bed that was full of weeds and something that was attached to the tree.

After I got home, it was time for my dad and I to tackle the faucet. Below is the new faucet that we bought.

The process was longer than it should have been. I was able to disconnect the water lines, and old spray nozzel with no problems. Then came the plastic nuts that held the old faucet in place. I would like to mention that I have attempted to remove them a few times before. With no luck. I had tried melting the plastic. Didn't work. Hammer. Nope. This time I tried the basin wrench. All that managed to do was snap off the rest of the flimsy plastic tabs. Thankfully my dad was able to remove them using a hammer and a screwdriver. It was nice to see the old crappy faucet taken off. There was a little bit of cleanup needed for all of the gunk left behind.

For the new faucet, we decided that we were going to waterproof it with some plumber putty. It works pretty well, except when you need the faucet to remain stationary. Then, not so much. But with a little elbow grease, we secured the shiney new faucet onto the sink. The supply lines were replaced with new ones, and then the big moment came. We turned on the water supply. No leaks. So far, so good. Time to test the faucet itself. we opened both handles and water came pouring out of the bottom of the spout. Definately not where it was supposed to be flowing out of. We took the spout off and found that an O-ring was missing. But, because the faucet we bought was the floor model, there were no instructions and certainly no replacement parts. Time for a trip to the home improvement store. I was hoping that we wouldn't need to go there today. The plumbing guys are starting to get to know us a little to well... We found what we needed (we hoped) and we were off to the house.

Upon our arrival, we quickly set to ensuring that one of the o-ring sizes would fit. After finding the correct one (we hoped), we placed the spout back on and opened both handels. SUCCESS!!! Finally! Below is the fruits of our labor.

That's it for today. More to  come tomorrow.

Things that happen when people help...

Wow. Cait and my parents had a busy day yesterday. During the time I was at work, they managed to get a lot of gardening done. See below.

All of that used to be shrubs and other green things that were growing. They also removed little boarder plants around parts of the house. It is my understanding that took most of the day.

When I got home, my father and I were asked to remove the old dishwasher a day early in the event that we had problems. Well, we got it out with no problems actually.

This is the old non-working dishwaher.

This is the hole that it sat in.

After getting it out, we had a discussion about if we wanted to go get the new dishwasher. It was decided that I would arrange for the old dishwasher to be removed and we headed off to our nearest home improvement store (of course it is the major home improvement store in town). We also bought a new supply line for the new dishwaher since the old one was...well...old. And fairly nasty. We got the new dishwasher home and after some McGyvering, we were able to get all of the connections set and the dishwasher passed the rinse test. All in all, a pretty straight forward instalation.

And there is our shiney new dishwasher!!! Today we will finally tackle the sink!

SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY!!!

BE THERE, BE THERE, BE THERE!!! Er...sorry about that. I got a little excited about posting. Mainly since it's been a while. Time for a much needed update. Since the last time I've posted, I've ben advanced to OS1. The pay is a huge help. We recieved our tax return and were able to pay off a loan and a bill. That was a huge relief. Our TV finally got upgraded. We now are enjoying the comforts of a 47" Vizio w/ HD Programing. I'm not going to go nerd on you and go into all of the details. Moving up to more recent times (i.e. the past week), my parents arrived in town the other day and are staying not to far from us. My dad helped (and by helped, I mean did most of the work) fix the drainage for our kitchen sink. We removed the old, non-working (and horrible smelling) garbage disposal and replaced both sink baskets. We also installed the necessary drainage for the new dishwasher that my parents bought for Cait and I (it was a late Christmas gift). That is getting delivered on Wednesday. Below is a picture of the old disposal (the picture isn't of the best quality).

And here are the shiney new baskets.

Next up, replacing the faucet.

That's it for today. More tomorrow (hopefully with pictures)

Updates!

I hope everyone had a good Christmas and a happy New Year! We've had some things going on out here in Georgia. For starters, I'm number 1 on the OS1 advancement list. That means that I could make OS1 as soon as Feb 1!. We're really excited about that. Cait's family came up for Christmas. It was nice to spend that time with family. Savannah got the most gifts (of course), and she was more excited to play with the boxes and paper that everything came in.  Of course, the house is a disaster now, but we're slowly getting it cleaned up.  We're all looking forward to what this new year will bring. Here's wish you and yours a blessed 2010!

Gitchee Gitchee Goo

So, I've had this song from the following video stuck in my head for some time now.