There was a point around mid-afternoon this past Saturday where I actually thought to myself "Holy crap we've gotten so much stuff done and we still have plenty of the weekend left. This is going to be a crazy accomplished weekend!" About 10 minutes later the sky opened up and we were stuck clearing the floods for the rest of the day, well into the night. But before I get onto that sad story, let's talk about what we did accomplish.
First off, Alex came by early and performed miracles with a rope, a pulley and a bandsaw and managed to get that silly clothes line ladder in our backyard down in about an hour or so. It was most impressive. Here's what the clothes line ladder looked like from the roof, complete with strange stuffed cat on the top:
This is what the yard looks like now without it—you can still see the pieces piled on the left which Alex will be picking up shortly
Then we had a plumber over to install a water line to our backyard. You would think this would be easy, given that our boiler room is just below the foundation wall to the backyard and there is already a large hole where the vents are for them to go through. However, getting a plumber to perform this easy task has been like pulling teeth. First off, we had a parade of shady plumbers that our ex-contractor Tim brought in who all swore up and down that they could do it, that is was an easy job and they all gave us very reasonable prices. Then, just like Tim, they vanished into thin air, stopped returning calls and were generally flakey. Then we had another plumber out who quoted us something ridiculous like $800. To run a small cooper line about 5 feet? I don't think so.
Finally we realized that people seemed to be affronted by drilling through the foundation of the house to get out to the hole. We told them the wall was just a CMU block wall and should be easy to drill through, but that seemed to be the factor that pushed all the pricing over the edge. So last weekend, armed with our new ½ inch drill, we picked up the right sized masonry bit at Home Depot for $9 and 2 minutes later the hole was in the wall. We then called another plumber and they quoted us a much more reasonable price. On Saturday morning they did the work and now we have water and hose to our backyard—triumph!
One of the reasons why a hose the backyard has been so imperative is that we have an appointment in the very near future to have our current fence removed and shiny new 6 foot, solid and non-see through vinyl fence installed. They fence company needs water to perform this task and we will need it later when we do some landscaping out there, so this is a step in the right direction. Here is our current, extremely crappy 4' chain link fence. On the side pictured we built a 2 foot wall so that run of fence can simply be installed alongside our bad neighbor's property. In the back and on the other side the fence will be removed completely.
On the other side of the fence live the adorable bunnies that our good neighbor has in their backyard. I'm not sure of their names, but I call them Mr. and Mrs. Fluffer-pants. We will miss them when the fence goes up, but those neighbors are moving in the near future and giving the bunnies to some sort of bunny sanctuary, so it works out well for everyone in the end.
Also in the backyard we have had issues in the past with the drain at the bottom of the steps right outside the sunroom door. It had a small semi-circle drain cover that was slight indented into the ground. Every time it would rain, debris would catch in the indent and back up the drain, allowing water to pool and eventually seep under the sunroom door. Not good. We figured the trick was to get a flatter drain cover with increased surface area so we did this:
We had already used this drain cover inside the front door with good results. Before there was an even larger indent that caused many, many people to trip coming in the door. I twisted my ankle on the old one several times. Not sure whose bright idea that was, but it was rectified.
This drain is hooked into the same pipe as the drain right outside the door and they are our biggest problem areas. The drain outside the door has a HUGE indent around it so it traps tons of debris and always backs up. If it backs up far enough, water backs up to the inside drain as well, which is: NO GOOD! We bought the same drain cover only a few inches large since the surface on the drain outside is so uneven. Even with the larger drain cover, we still need to fill in some concrete around the edges to get the drain cover to sit flush.
And that is what we were just about to do when the sky opened up Saturday afternoon. The forecast called for scattered showers, nothing too heavy until later in the day, but it was practically a monsoon. Damn, I wish I got paid to be wrong all the time like the weather people! The front outside drain clogged up almost immediate and backed up inside shortly thereafter. Luckily we were there with our wet vac and lots of towels, so we spent most of the day keeping up with the water, vacuuming up maybe 40 loads in the wet vac, about 4 gallons each. It was grueling but we prevented any water from actually coming inside. There were 3 separate hard rainfall periods and the drains backed up during two of them.
Now we've had dozens of plumbers out here to look at all of our drainage problem areas, and there were a few separate problem areas when we first started. I'm happy to report that the main sewer line is no longer backing up since the last plumber visit, so the basement was bone dry during this last monsoon—yay progress! And the work we did earlier in the day out back prevented most of the water getting into the sunroom—there are still a few small leaks higher up and around the door, but they were manageable. The only remaining problem area are these two front drains that have been snaked out dozens of time to no avail. The work fine with normal rainfall, but if we get a huge amount of rain dumped on us all at once they back up for a while, but then inexplicably at some point they start to drain and drain fast. It's mind boggling. We are currently trying to find a real master plumber, not just a monkey with a snake, to come out and put a camera down this drain to figure out what is blocking it. Fun times.
The good news is that Vincent seems slightly better since his last relapse 2 weeks ago. Two weeks ago I was sure he had cancer again, but he's better getting gradually better since and with no medication or fluids. Here is he enjoying the new modular rug in the guest room from Flor:
And here he is being ultimately cute—sitting on Eric's lap in the new studio space! And if you know Vincent you know he's not really a lap cat, so this is ultra cute:
On deck: Fence Install! More painting! Front Door finished at last! Landscaping! Stay Tuned…
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