Weekend Project

We put up more stone in our kitchen. This is just a small little detail that we hope will help increase the value of the house when we do end up selling … 10 years from now. We put slate stones around the stove vent. It’s not a lot, but we feel it’s a nice touch to complement the kitchen and the backsplash.

Third time is a charm

The grubs got me good. The front lawn was looking terrible. I suspected it was grubs a long time ago and even bought some grub-ex, but failed to put it down earlier in the year.

But now is the time of year to prep for next year, so I figured I would rake out the dead stuff and fill in the patches. Well, I raked out more than just a few patches. My front lawn looks like a bald guy with a bad hair transplant. There are just tufts of grass left and a lot of bare spots. Ugh.

It was a ton of work. My arms and back are killing me. I raked off easily 3/4 of the lawn. Even stuff that looked green was coming up because the grubs got enough of the roots. Oh well.  I need a bit more dirt to fill in the sinking trench one more time anyway.

I threw down some of the grub-ex stuff and then watered it to spread it.  Hopefully it’ll kill off the grubs even though now is not the ideal time to put that stuff down. I’ll have to do it again in the late spring, although there aren’t much roots left for them to eat anyway.

Next weekend I hope to overseed and throw some straw down to protect it.

Maybe next year I’ll finally have a nice front lawn.

I’m still putting the blame on Cathi and Emily for the 30 bales of hay. I think grubs were living in that hay.

Oh by the way

We got our AC fixed this morning. $260.

It was just a capacitor that blew. The guy told me it happens a lot to AC units during heat waves.  Probably should have called him in sooner, but a month without AC during one of the hottest summers on record is good for you, right? Builds character.

Didn’t need it today of course. No humidity. 79 tops. But we’re ready for the next wave.

Of course….

And now it looks like our AC compressor died.

I only hear a buzzing noise coming from it – a pretty good indicator that the motor is shot.

I guess being home 5 days in a row and having the AC on during a hot week was too much.

How to fix the problem

Step 1: Dig a hole

Step 2: Cut the pipes

Step 3: Connect the pipes

Step 4: Fill it all back in

Sewer Work: Bad for lawns

These guys are killing me.

At least this will get our village off our back. The letters they send always sound so much more serious and grave than they should.

Here’s what’s going on. After we got our sewer line done at the front of the house the inspector saw the drain in our basement stairwell. That’s banned by the EPA and as they find them, they tell homeowners to remove them. There used to be funds to help assist homeowners financially, but in this recession, programs like that disappear.

The reason these drains are bad is because rain water is collected and put into the sewers, which drain to the treatment plant. So it’s costing the plant millions of extra dollars to clean rainwater.

Now, what they’re going to do is put in a drain basin with a sump pump in the stairwell and disconnect it from the sewer line.

The grease pit actually isn’t a banned issue, but ours is deteriorating. Plus the fact that it was closely tied to the exterior drain, it was just better and safer to cave it in and disconnect it altogether.

So now there’s a heavy duty sump pump and new drain system in place in the stairwell.  And the grease pit is filled in.  And the main line is disconnected from exterior line.

But there is still 1 more problem.

Our sewer guy was quite shocked. The kitchen and laundry drain stack is 20 feet inside our house. And the grease pit is 15 feet outside. He was 99% sure that no one would go that distance since it was probably all dug by hand at the time it was built.

He was wrong.

As they were cleaning up, I asked him if he was 100% sure this was fixed and he had second thoughts and dropped his sewer camera down the stack to see where it went. Sure enough, it went out to the grease pit. But in a very convoluted way. They never saw the pipe when they dug up the stairwell or looked in the grease pit. But for whatever crazy reason, there is a pipe that goes out to the back of the house.

Not only that, the pipe was damaged, leaking water and kitchen and laundry waste into the ground. Thus the reason our basement always smelled, especially in the laundry room.

So they’re back today. Digging a hole in our basement floor. If you look at the picture above, they’re going to just cut the pipes and connect them together around the area of that laundry drain (kinda like that red line).

More pictures to follow.