My Old House

Issues and Events involving our Home in Independence, Missouri
My Old House on Winner Road
9/8/2011

They’re done already ?!?

Filed under: General,Landscaping and Property — Admin @ 12:23 pm

Just phoned my wife to ask how Phillips Paving is doing with our asphalt. She says they were there by 7:30 AM and were finished by 10 AM !! Wow!

She says they’d invoice us, which is cool, because Terry doesn’t feel comfortable writing checks for large amounts (hey, who does ?). They did accept the Angie’s List discount coupon.

And they paved over a little “bump-out” in our driveway that I really wanted done badly. You see, there used to be a partial stone wall lining the left / south side of our driveway. But it bent outwards at one point, “shrinking” the driveway for a couple feet. At least one friend of ours ruined a tire on those rocks, trying to “back straight out” of our driveway.

So, a couple of years ago, I dug up the rocks and did my best to flatten that “bump out” area out. There’s only a bit of gravel under some of it. The rest is compacted clay. I sure hope that’s “good enough”. I’m sure that digging it out and putting in compacted gravel would have probably been a better long-term choice. But we’ll save that for when we eventually have to replace the entire driveway (which, hopefully, won’t be for at least another 10-15 years ?)

Looking forward to seeing the finished product when I get home tonight. I’ll snap some pictures and post them here soon!

Thanks!

-= Dave =-

On choosing an asphalt company

Filed under: General,Landscaping and Property — Admin @ 8:20 am

So far, with this house, when it has come time to search for a contractor for a job, I’ve relied a lot on personal recommendations from friends.

And that’s the first thing I did when looking for an asphalt company. Two neighbors gave me recommendations. I called and left messages with both companies, but nobody ever called me back (this was back in June).

Now, there’s a bakery in Englewood that opened up last fall. They had had some asphalt work done. Basically, they had a very small parking lot poured. Three whole car spaces. They said they’d found a local guy, an “old timer”, who beat some other company’s estimate by a considerable amount. And …

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9/7/2011

The 353 continues: driveway and other fixes

Filed under: General,Landscaping and Property — Admin @ 2:18 pm

Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve had something to post here, but that’s for a good reason: we’ve been gearing-up to get a lot of 353 project work done “all at once” (sort of).

I HAD thought that the “due date” for all of our 353 tax abatement project was this coming December. But then, just a few weeks ago, I sat down and consulted the 353 paperwork and “to-do list”. And, to my surprise, the due date is actually December 2012!

The bad news is that I saw two items on that to-do list that I had completely forgotten about:
1) Adding a permanent drain pipe from the washing machine to the floor drain.
2) “Insulating the attic.”

That …

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