Deck Job
We just finished stripping, sanding and refinishing somewhere between 800-1000 square feet of deck. (We have a wonderful deck, it’s like an outside room in summer.)
I confess, I had three hardworking guys on that task who will be very sore tomorrow, so my job ended up being more coordination and less back muscle. I spent part of the day pruning and tying up tomatoes and roses and weeding garden beds.
I actually have lots of help from our teens on yard upkeep – they mow, weed, and do bigger projects for extra money. When they leave home it’s going to hit us hard.
I think our empty nest home needs to be a condo, one much closer to Bryan’s office. I’d like plenty of room, a garage, a housekeeping service and a nice deck or patio. We can have a ‘garden’ of 4 or 5 containers of flowers and tomatoes, a comfy patio table and a grill, and hopefully a bonus great view.
I’m not quite sure how this will work with dog ownership, but other folks do it. I would prefer to spend my weekends relaxing, rather than working on the DIY and home/yard upkeep projects.
July 20th, 2008
I’ve mentioned that our yard has been…ahem…neglected. We have the edges done the way we want it, but there’s about 4000 lbs. of gravel and sand just sitting there waiting for me to finish the little back patio/pod and slate walkways. And since those aren’t done yet, the entire center of the yard awaits design and plantings. (We don’t want grass, but we’ve got it anyway).
Last weekend we were barbecuing and decided we’re going to hire someone at the end of the summer to do all of the heavy lifting.
July 20th, 2008
Nathan, for some reason I’d always envisioned you living in a browstone or townhouse with a little patio garden out back – rather than a detached house with yard. I guess it’s just the stereotypes of New York/Brooklyn/Manhattan.
I’d be glad to rent out some teenage boys, except the commute is a bit long.
July 20th, 2008
Funny Jeri, i had the same idea about Nathan…..
July 20th, 2008
Well, actually, you were mostly right. We are in a brownstone and our house abuts the two on either side. We have the basement, garden level and parlor floors and we rent the top two floors as apartments.
Our back yard is exactly as wide as the house (22′) and is just under 50′ deep. Immediately off the back of the house is a concrete patio as wide as the house and about 15 feet deep. The rest of the yard is currently a mess…1/2 built slate pod in the back corner…pile of dirt removed from pod area for the sand and gravel to go in…rose bushes with run-amok thyroids. There’s a holly bush, a fig tree, a crepe myrtle transplanted from a cutting from my childhood home, various ferns from all over the country and a little Japanese Red Maple that isn’t doing so well.
Unfortunately, there’s no design at all and the center is just a mess of weeds. There’s also this thing that we clinically call “bad plant”, a plant that grows again from the smallest piece of amputated root you might miss. We’ve been trying to completely kill that for going on 15 years. It always comes back.