Next Project?

My Blogging friend Rene' asked what our next project is. Well Rene’, there are a few. The back door should be replaced. It is wood and is showing a little rot at the bottom and the building has settled a little, making the door a little crooked in the frame. However, it is an odd size so no direct replacements are available. I will have to buy a pre-hung door and then cut into the wall an inch or so to make enough room for it. This may mean a new header as well. The door is secure and I have hidden the faults with trim so it would last a few more years but every time Norma passes it, she complains. This door is seldom used. This job is on the list, low on mine, high on Norma’s.

The laundry room is the only room without a new floor. We were going to tile it but then thought a combination of laminate and tile with tile under the washer and drier and laminate everywhere else would be better. The result of this indecision was that the laundry room got left out when we re-floored the rest of the house. It has the old linoleum that is still in good condition.

Brooks has also been talking about adding a wood porch onto the front of the house. There is a small one there now in front of the door where we have a small glass top bistro table and two chairs. It is nice to have coffee there in the mornings and a larger porch would be very nice. I might even add a porch swing hanging from the eves or at least a couple of rocking chairs  It would be the same width as the existing porch but would extend about 12 feet along the front of the house under the living room window. Brooks estimates $1500 for material and figures he, Linda Lee and I could do it in a weekend. I like this idea, he likes building things and Norma liked to cook for everyone when they are here. The perfect storm.

The next project concerns our nemesis, the deer. The rear of the property is bush going up a very steep incline. The property line is about 200 feet up this bank but that property is useless to us. Deer, eagles, raccoons, mink and blackberries live there. A small stream fills a very old, abandoned concrete cistern that used to provide pressurized water for two or three houses before the city expanded and started providing water. The land is far too steep to easily access. This is now the path of least resistance for the deer who have two well established game trails heading down the bank. We tried the electric fence here a year ago but it all came down in the winter storms. Electric fences loose efficiency if plants are allowed to touch the wire and greenery does very well back there. It kept Norma’s lawn boy busy keeping the fence clear. Now that the new fence blocks off one side of the property it would be a fairly simple project to string strong wire mesh farm fence across the back, a total distance of maybe 140 feet. The plan is to have the lawn boy weed whack a path as close to the heavy bush and trees as possible and Brooks would follow, unrolling farm fence as he goes. This would be stapled to trees with maybe a couple of posts put in as well. The ivy and morning glory would very quickly claim the fence but this is fine, it would hide it from sight while still keeping the deer in their place. This project may be the priority as well as being the least expensive. It is NOT a priority for the deer.

Last on the list (and maybe not on the list at all) is to fix the slightly out of level floor of the house. The house is a combination of three different additions over almost a century (last one about 40 years ago) and is built on two separate ring walls and one slab. One of the ring walls has settled more than the other, throwing things out of level. It is barely noticeable when walking in the house but a marble placed on the floor quickly finds it’s way to one wall or another. Fixing it would mean jacks, spacer boards and shims in the crawl space. This is not a job I relish tackling myself and I have no idea what these repairs cost to have done professionally. I suspect lots and I also expect many drywall cracks would result. One real estate agent we consulted told us to forget about it unless it gets worse and another told us we should get it fixed if we ever sell the house. If we have to get it done eventually anyway, why not sooner rather than later so we also get the benefit of being “on the level”? Like I say, I have no idea of how much this might cost. Brooks says he is willing to try it if I research the methods but I am not sure if this is a good idea for a DIY project. Laying in a 2 1/2 food high dirt floored crawl space while jacking the house up above your head does not sound like the smartest way to spend a weekend.

Norma would like to tackle everything at once but I am the budget director and have to keep the brakes on a little. The recession has diminished the size (or at least the growth) of our “Rainy Day Fund” and I refuse to dip into it until it finishes recovering so that means improvements have to come out of our pension income. This is very possible to do, we just can’t do everything at once. Norma, are you listening?

The porch. The new one will extend under the living room window beside it and go all the way under the inverted “V” of the roofline. It would be about seven feet wide and twenty feet long, about two feet off the ground: