What home improvement work did you do today?

Seven more yards of fine dark bark. This is on top of previous 5 yards of dark bark and 3 yards of garden soil. My thyme hill is behind the bark pile.

 

A ton of crawling in the atic space and at least 10 times up the roof and I accomplished this yesterday.
Just finished tapping into a line for a box in the attic (and adding a light on a switch up there with outlet as well) for the StarLink transformer, so glad I did it, it made the hardware in the house nice and clean. I had to fab up a 20" extension out of 1" conduit for the receiver, because snow...
The standard wall mount had it only 4" off the surface of the roof. No bueno


Starting to forget what day it is since I retired (sort of joking) so I just got this for the shop/command center.


EDIT: I should say, the Barndo was built with 12' walls and then lidded out in 5/8 fire rated, the entire ceiling. Then they build the living space in that, so the "Attic" space the transformer is in isn't exposed to the elements like in a regular attic. So I have no worries about temp fluctuations etc...

 

I didsimilar to keep track of the day.

 

No real pics....but we upgraded a ceiling fan in the living room to a bigger one to match the room size. Moved that one to our office that used to be a formal dining room(transitioning that now with an office desk being built). Moved that light fixture to our dining area. Took the old fixture down to give away. All went well with no shock (except me being shocked it all worked right the first time for each). I'm most excited about the ceiling fan moving more air. I think having a bigger drop rod and larger fan diameter is pushing more air more efficiently

 

Ridge vent for the attic over the garage that has no vents for some reason. Already added one on the other side of this hip for over the bedroom.

removed ridge caps (saved them) and cut 1-3/4” opening into the roof ridge. It was already mostly there, just had to widen it a little.



Covered the nail heads and holes with roofing cement (not pictured). Then relatively centered the ridge vent strips and nailed them down.



then trimmed the saved ridge caps to size and nailed them down onto the ridge vent strips. Applied roofing cement to ends to help with wind resistance, and to the 4 exposed nail heads on the cap.

 

A little Burn-In today (pellet stove). This thing pumps out some heat! Useful for us Snow Monkeys up here in the frozen tundra.

 

Here are a few photos of the garden areas that were “barked”. I went thru 6+ yards the last two days. The hill out back took some time to get the material down there. My trusty old electric riding mower and 10 cu ft cart helped a lot.

 

I had similar loss of time after the layoff last March. Even after starting the business to blow time and make some cash, I still get lost sometimes.

 

Holy shit that's nice looking. Nice peppering of plantings too, gonna have to show this to my wife. Nice work.
Uh, I swear I remember build photos of that terraced/step area. Not a regular in this thread, and sometimes if I can just remember where my truck keys are... I'm doing good

 

House looks new as does the landscaping. I think in 5 years he's going to have quite the landscape as things mature.

 

Looks frigging beautiful man, the pictures are awesome & probably doesn't do all of it's justice I bet it looks better in person.
Nice job man!

 

Nice job and beautiful property!

 

Thanks for the comments, we have been here for 3.5 years. We did most of the plantings and selections. Actually moved or deleted what the builder put in wrt plants/trees. My wife does the plant selections, with a few from myself. We are pretty much done with new plantings/moving things around (for this year haha). Dogwoods are will be in bloom in a week or two, I’ll post a couple photos of them.

 

We have a room at the back of the house that stays hotter than we like. We were looking at one of the 8000 BTU U-shaped Midea window AC units. That room has a 10 inch central AC return. Will the window unit affect the central AC due to that return? I can move the return across the hall to a smaller room that does not have one.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Midea-8...0-sq-ft-Energy-Star-2024-MAW08U1QWT/327511952

 

Long complicated answer - maybe
Short real life answer - no.
the bigger question is the return going to affect the hot bedroom with the 8000 BTU window unit.

 

Had to fix this stupid homeowners piss poor attempt at carpentry at MY house today. Gosh people are dumb.
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Well I am proud that it didn't take more than 5 minutes to put 2 and 2 together when I found the breaker tripping this morning.



Also proud that I Pulled the box, wire, outlet, and cover plate and replaced all of it with stock from my shed in half the Time it took me to rehang the shelf in the broom closet.

 

Chuckled at this. I can't count the # of times it worked right the 1st time and I'm sitting there like "....it cannot be this easy. SOMETHING'S gonna go wrong." LOL

 

I've been watching and testing all those fixtures still waiting on a spark or them not to work

 

No pictures yet, but just ordered 13 tons of gravel for delivery tomorrow. Landscapers will be adding a thin coat to the front and backyard. We have a few places where the gravel was getting bare.

 

close nough I figure (maybe not, but i like the song and it was only 3 off.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1980WfKC0o

 

Next to where I park my work truck are some big bushes, and every time it rains, or previously rained, I have to walk by them and I get soaked. This morning was the last straw, so this afternoon when I got home, I got out the hedge trimmer and chainsaw and rage-trimmed them. Eventually I want to rip them all out and just replace them with a small strip of fence.

 

New to us place, fixing a landscaping fail.
For some reason they stacked up the topsoil over the rat guard trim against the building.
During a heavy rain we would have some water creeping into the garage.
About 125' run of tile (perf/socked under the drip line) to the back yard where the grade drops off will fix this.
Just got the sod and some dirt removed yesterday. Decent rain last night and it remained dry even with no tile.

 

That looks like a termite's wet dream. Hopefully that's PT lumber I'm seeing there? Even if PT, water will rot that shit out.

 

Yeah, it's ground contact PT lumber thankfully. UH, I don't think and inspector would let anything else fly, but who knows up here/small town/county.
It was absolutely a termites wet dream, I saw a few spots with tiny ants, not bad. But we bought some insect magic dust to take care of that.
Just got back from picking up the 100' of 4" perf/socked and 50' of solid 4", and a pop up termination for the end.
Still a little too wet from last nights rain to go digging and making a muddy ass mess.
*First long trip for her since the move/over heating rear brakes/and re-adjustment. 60 miles of freeway, and cool as a cucumber.
Everything else was perfect, she needed some drive time like that bad. I love my truck

Oh sorry, this is home improvement stuff.

 

(2) months
(160) 33 lb concrete blocks
(800) lbs of leveling sand
(8) tubes of Loctite Construction Adhesive
(9) yards of high quality garden soil
(12) 10' T-Posts
(12) Cattle Panels Cut to size
(200) feet of PVC pipe
Various PVC fittings

Countless hours of digging trenches for irrigation and leveling/rock removal

All done by myself after work and on the weekends.
There is still some fine tuning and trimming needed on the fencing, but it's functional for now.

Happy wife.

I'm tired and ready for some me time.

 

HOLY SMOKES Dude!
Wow, looks great and the bounties will be 10 fold for sure.

 

95% completed the 125ft drain line in the last two days (it started to rain just as I was packing up for the day). It's raining steady now so timing was perfect.

The dig. Line levels and a lot of measuring.

Some Dilwaukee action. Minimal roots and blessed with mostly easy dig sandy construction/site fill


Stapled the geotextile to the band board. Tied off the sock so it doesn't slip back


3/4" to 1" stone arrived at 7:30 this morning, approx 1.5 yards.



I think I am going to widen this another 4" to 20" wide, the drip line is a little closer to the edge than I like (16" of stone/12" overhang)


Completing the final 50-60ft to the woodline. It got deep and I'm glad I made the trenching shovel, angle grinder+shovel=trench shovel





We'll see how this termination/drain setup works out. Didn't have any big rocks on hand.


Water it in and get some of the settling done.


Pleased with the outcome. A couple days of good exercise for me, and it didn't get tore up by equipment.
$190 tile/fittings/fabric
$200 for the stone delivered
I would guess I saved $1000-1500 by doing it myself?
(Camo structure is what I call the "chicken hanger")

 

Been a busy month so far...

Repainted my room a really pretty color that I love, hung new blinds, new curtain rods and of course new curtains and quilt.



There is (or should I say was) a rhododendron in my front garden that I have disliked since I bought the house almost 9 years ago, and a few days ago I finally had the energy to get rid of it!! After spending like 30 minutes cutting individual thick roots, and the thing not even loosening or budging (found out later that it was because it weighed like 100 lbs ), I got fed up and decided to hook a tow rope to my ATV trailer hitch and tie the other end around the plant. Couple pushes of the throttle and it was ripped clear out of the ground without issue! I was totally kicking myself for not doing it that way sooner! It doesn't look that big in the picture, but believe me I had to use the ATV to drag it down into the woods and I couldn't even move it it was so freaking heavy.



Redid the front gardens with some bark mulch and some new shrubs, as the old ones were on their last years of life. At least most of the other shrubs were easy to get out. Made great use of the truck bed, which is why I keep it, even if I only use it a few times a year it's still worth it!!





I am admitently a dork, and I could not stop laughing at this flag when I saw it at Lowes..... Now, it's in the yard!

 

Stained oak or is that black walnut?
Either way it looks nice and rich.