Rehabber’s Rehab

Our friends Kim and Terry brought up concerns about having friends run wild throwing hammers into walls hitting electrical lines, water pipes, etc.  Kim and Terry know our friends and their concerns are warranted.  However, the bashing will not be so haphazard and the most reckless of offenders (Drew) are well known and will be monitored closely.  Below is my tentative schedule for the wrecking party and inaugural weekend.  Besides being safe, we want to provide enough “activities” that are safe, enjoyable and allow people to either just hangout or dive-in completely.  Everyone should dress appropriately regardless of your participation level.

PRE-PARTY PLANS:

1.  Documentation- This is important to any project for several reasons.  It is great to see the impact of a project when you can view before and after images of the home.  The changes are dramatic and allows friends and family to share in your project.  Also documentation allows you to compare the difference that various improvements make and how much valuable those improvements when compared with the cost of the project.  We missed out on documenting thoroughly the Rice street project, so we are going to make sure and get lots of pictures from the beginning to end and get a couple of walk through videos. (more…)

I am going to continue my personal vendetta against pine bushes and begin gardening by ripping up the bush in front of the house immediately.  Although I admit, on occasion pine bushes can be done well, in general they are horrible.  Horrible.  People just seem to plant them and and then let them be, until they get scraggly, have no form, dead branches hanging every where.  Just because you plant a pine bush doesn’t mean you never have to take care of it!! Low maintenance is not no maintenance.

After the pine bush is gone, I think that we are going to kill all the grass over the winter and turn the entire front yard into a planting bed.  The yard itself is only about 20 x 7, so half of it is take up by the current planting bed anyway, and I don’t see any point in lugging the lawn mower up front to mow two strips of grass. (more…)