Up In The Air, Part 12

I was going to start with a few reflections about our New York trip. But my fingers are so numb that I have to get this out before they seize up.

It has to do with dirt. 12 yards of black dirt, plus some sand for a base for the brick walkway, and the black dirt appears to be several yards short of what's needed. That came today, and the guy who delivered it helped spread some of it out in the general areas where it is needed. He used a Bobcat or something. We have several days ahead of us involving rakes, shovels, wheelbarows and cussing.

The numb fingers, and the aches in hands, arms, shoulders, neck, back, abdominal muscles, hips, and legs come not from the dirt but from the painting we got done before the dirt showed up.

The front of the house has a new porch, and all the rest of the house has new wood around where the house met the new foundation. Even considering the poor restoration of grade done by the contractor, much of that wood was about a foot or less off the ground. All this new wood needed primer, and all of it needed exterior latex in the house color. We wanted to get all this paint on the house before the dirt showed up, so we wouldn't have to screw around with that issue later.

The net result is that I did two 3/4-laps of our house on my back, trying to paint the underside and the new sill trim. Laying on sand, clay and the odd rock, doing situps to dip the brush, trying to hold a ten-inch-long brush so it could get under an eight-inch-high board, holding my head up with my off hand, pounding in the paint with the brush so the rough-cut cedar would be entirely covered, all done twice in two days (all right, Wendy did one side one day, but I did a lot of both coats of the lower portion of the porch skirting), all of this has stressed muscles and joints that haven't been called upon in decades. Sunday in particular threatened rain, so I kept after the painting as long as I could. Do you know how you sometimes get stupid, dogged in the pursuit of something - in my case, completion of this task - beyond reason or comfort? Rain finally came in the night, after the paint had set up.

The soil we had gotten from the contractor, and what was left of our yard, is clay and sand. Everybody says, "oh, that'll grow a lawn, that'll hold the moisture," but we need some black dirt and some organic material if we hope to restore a garden area. We ended up with many yards less of dirt and yard than we began with; there was no effort to restore original grade, much less to deal with the fact that our house is now a foot and a half higher than it was. The clay and sand kick up in the rain, leaving quite a coating on the lower reaches of our house. The gray block of the new foundation now appears tan, which helps it match the paint (Benjamin Moore's "Waynesboro Taupe"). The mess today reflects the success of my weekend efforts, as the paint appears to be holding up, and justifies the extra ibuprofen. Once we get the black dirt around, and some vegetation established, the amount of dirt kicking up will be reduced by a gazillion per cent. We'll also work with drip rails and, eventually, with gutters and downspouts. The way this project gobbles up money, we should consider gargoyles.

We have much painting to do, including our back entryway, parts of the porch skirting more than 12 inches above the ground, and the porch itself, including way too many railing spindles. Some of this already has primer, but we have a ways to go. We have to put stain on the porch decking and the steps, and decide whether to paint the risers (the vertical part behind the step) in the taupe or stain it to match the treads. Then we have to choose how much, if any, of our trim color to use: pillars only, pillars and handrails, or none at all. We have selected a green stain for the stair treads and the deck, and our trim is a cranberry red, so we could accidentally find ourselves in a Christmas house.

This must all be done before somebody screens off half of our porch. Our contractor has this in his bid, but we don't think we'll ever see him again, so we may have some time to rethink the screen issue. The porch looks fine now without screens, but the dog and the cat enjoy being on the porch during the day when we're gone, and this can't happen without the screened area. Hey, I also enjoy the reduced bug traffic in the screened area, as anyone who recalls my blog of a couple years ago will recall.

Good news: last night's significant rain did not put any moisture into our basement. This was one of the points of the whole exercise: a dry basement. More good news: running two dehumidifiers, we are getting the new-concrete moisture out of the basement. Better yet: the washer is hooked up to its plumbing, and the dryer is vented.

Bad news: although the dryer 220 outlet is still around, the cord to it is almost completely severed. The washer needs about a 20-foot extension cord to reach a working electrical outlet. There's a crack in the exterior of one concrete block, which we can say was the doing of the contractor, even after the original and best concrete guy (not the ass-clowns brought in by the contractor, because the original guy wouldn't come because he wasn't getting paid, who made a hash of pouring the concrete floor and did sloppy work of putting in the last blocks) fixed the interior cracks in his work, which may have been caused by the contractor's early and sloppy backfilling of dirt against the new foundation. And we have several stringers, holding up our dining room (or not, as it appears) that seem to be floating free rather than supporting the house by resting on a beam.

While I was crawling around my house on my back, I noticed a great many areas which seem to me to be waiting for a whole bunch of foam insulation at the least, if not the tender care of a quality contractor who might have done some repair during the construction. Our old house has varying degrees of wood integrity around the lower edges, and it looks like some more help is needed. Then there's the issue of "code." The contractor wielded the word like a magic cape, which was more like a screen behind which he got by with a whole bunch of inferior work. "Code says..." and, you know what? Code says something different, if not opposite. My main questions: did he not know, or did he lie like a rug?

I'm putting the whiskey down now, as I have to go to work early tomorrow, but I have a vague sensation that it's a handy thing that we know some attorneys through church. Shopping list: some George Dickel (#12 Tennessee Sippin' Whisky), some Anisette (unless Hasan manages to bring more Raki than is permitted; ouzo is also good but don't tell that to a Turk), and some Capzaicin rub.