Spring is here!
Yes, signs of Spring are all around:
Our painters started working again today! They typically only work Saturdays, as both father and son have full-time jobs. But this week happens to be Spring Break week for a lot of school districts… and the father, being a math teacher, gets this week off. So, they hope to be painting a good 5 days straight this week, weather permitting.
While they were painting yesterday (Monday), I finally got around to installing the new Garbage Disposal unit that I bought on-sale at Sears a few weeks ago: a Kenmore 60581 model, 3/4 horsepower unit with a 7 year in-home service warranty. I only paid $149 (tax included) on this baby. The warranty was the strongest seller, as I really don’t want to be replacing these very often.
That said, I must say, the installation was quick-and-easy. The only tool that I didn’t already have on-hand and had to buy was some plumber’s putty. It took me about an hour and a half to finish, but a good third of that was spent running downstairs and upstairs, checking the circuit breaker, trying to figure out which circuit powered the garbage disposal. (If only somebody would have labelled all the circuits years ago!)
My wife is wanting desperately to paint the bedroom, which is fine, but what with the coming of warmer weather, I’m trying to do a lot of yard-related work. I’ve already cleaned up all the flower beds, mulched the leaves, picked-up downed branches, and re-leveled the bird-baths.
I’ve repaired the garage gutters, but during a slow rain yesterday afternoon, I had a chance to look at the gutters on the house and the garage and make an assessment. It seems to me that wherever two sections of horizontal gutter are joined together, there you’ll see some drip-leaks. I’m wondering if I need to caulk those? And the water flow suggests that the two downspouts on the south side of the house are clogged. So, hopefully, during my next time-off, I’ll fix that.
I also have to remember to remind the painters about the fascia board on the rear of the house / sun porch. That board is apparently missing. Our roofer notified me about that two years ago. I had mentioned it to the painters last year and I know they said they’d include it, but I do need to remind them as they are currently repainting the sun porch.
Now that the front stumps are ground / gone, I’m anxious to go get some compost or mulch from Missouri Organic and get it into the front beds. I’ve also decided to start using limestone as a border for plantings and flower beds. At first, I was worried that doing so would be “overdoing it a bit”, since there’s so much limestone on the house’s exterior. But somehow, I think that’s a better choice than landscaping timbers, modern pavestones, or (ugh!) railroad ties.
So I’ve started asking around for sources of FREE limestone. (We’ve got the rock all over the place naturally in Independence, so why should I pay some rock company for them?)
The road and sidewalk project currently going on in our neighborhood is over half-way finished. The medians are in-place. They’ve planted trees and shrubs in them. My wife says that she spoke with the workers last week and they will be putting sod in soon. The sidewalk is currently at the half-way point of its planned route and is headed our direction fast!
(For more details on this project, see http://www.winnerneighbors.org.)
So, as we had hoped, our road project and our house painting should theoretically finish at about the same time. Painting might actually finish a bit later… not sure…there are some wood architectural embellishments that are missing and the painters said they could recreate them. So, that might make this last a little bit longer.
I wrote a letter to the Independence Examiner newspaper last week (http://www.examiner.net), praising the contractors who are working the street and sidewalk project! They’ve been working hard and on days when, by contract, they did NOT have to. (Contract gives them a break during the winter… December 15th to March 15th.)
I must say, I’ve never seen anybody publicly praise a contractor on a city street project… which is kind of sad. An awful lot of complaining about them goes on in the papers, though. These guys, Musselman & Hall, exceeded our expectations.
(Granted, my personal expectations had been pessimistic, since that’s what I’ve come to expect, based on what I’ve read in the papers and heard people say about street contractors. Yes, I actually expected the project to have delays and proceed slowly… which goes to show you just how long-lasting the effects of negative statements are, compared to good ones. But, honestly, Musselman and Hall have actually given me back a lot of faith, hope, and trust in the good people of the Kansas City area. A job well done can change people’s hearts and minds. Examples and role models do help people overcome their negative thinking! So, when you see a job well-done, praise it publicly !!)
Thanks! Until next time….
-= David Raasch =-
Independence, MO