This was the third weekend of pulling all sorts of vegetation where it shouldn’t be growing.  Yesterday, I concluded that we still have a fence in place on half the creek bank – though it isn’t looking very sturdy.  The gatepost is shot for sure.  I’ve made my way down both property lines to close in on the area where the creek bank eroded.  From this point in, I need to tread carefully – the dirt under the tarp is pretty soft and the rooting systems of the blackberry vine shoots are getting progressively thicker.  I’m digging each one out carefully as I reach them, but I’m leaving ankle-sprain size holes in their wake.

Ultimately, I’m going to reach the edge of the “cliff” where there is a 6 foot drop straight into the creek.  Could be in another foot, could be in 3.  Won’t know until I know, though I’m hoping I don’t find out the hard way.

This is what it looks like:

See that pile? Dirt may or may not exist under it.

View from afar

In the meantime, BACKYARD!  Weird winter weather has stopped me from getting outside to do any major weeding before this month.  I’m normally pulling stuff in early February while the ground is still pretty wet, so this is major crunch time to get massive amounts of blackberry brambles pulled up before the clay soil hardens.

When we grudgingly visited the backyard for 2 minutes last year, we laid plastic tarps down to kill whatever grass was left (and discovered we lost several feet of land to creek erosion.  But, I digress.) Naturally, plastic is no match for a blackberry bramble – those puppies went under, over and occasionally through it.  Interestingly, those vines weren’t all that hard to pull up.  It behaved as a single netted unit – pull one, the whole backyard shimmies.  Since it tries to root every few feet, those roots stayed above ground – so wispy, so fragile, so very, very fun to mock as I tore them to bits.

Why mock?  Why not?  This stuff is ALIVE and not in a cute “roses are living things” kind of way.  More like that thing from Tremors.  Or big rotty looking mushrooms.  Really anything that grows – a lot – when you aren’t looking and then BAM!  Chokes you in your sleep.  So yes, mocked, stomped, killed big dead.

The random points of detail for today…let’s see… Oh!  Goatskin gloves.  I was able to grab all but the thickest vines and nary a thorn went through.  Score for me!

The olive tree is a mess – the acacia growing over the fence from the creek keeps pushing it over, so the branches just won’t fill out properly.  We’re cutting it back nearly to the trunk and hoping for the best.

The deck stairs are well past their half-life.  I tried pulling weeds near one of the cement posts and the whole thing started moving.  Left the weed for now. Sigh.

The hedge trimmer handle is busted.  Blade still works.  It is probably better that I have to be more careful – 4 or 5 years ago I went all light-saber crazy with a hedge trimmer and I light-sabered the electrical cord.  I really am luckier than I have any right to be…

So I’ll leave you with some pics.  Nothing terribly interesting and no shots of the erosion yet – I think this project won’t start to get interesting until we can actually stand in the creek and take pics from there.  Well that, and when we bring the genius that is Mark B over and ply him with food and drink until he helps us reconstruct the creek bank.

A little bit of progress

The sad and listing Olive Tree

Not sure where solid land ends anymore...

His response?  “Oh, I’ve got an electric planer in the truck.  I could go get it right now and shave it down right quick.  I thought about it when I put it up.”

Ummmm….. no.  Though that would have been helpful TWO WEEKS AGO before we did every other damn thing to put the room back together.

The old phone jack was attached to the baseboard on the wall that was removed, so the wires remained but the jack was dismantled.  It had a pretty hoopty piggyback setup where a full other phone line was loosely spliced into it for no discernable reason other than to extend the reach of the jack.  All unnecessary stuff which adds nothing to the room and more things to dust.

The incoming line was a CAT-5.  What is that?  Mr. Google tells me it is the fancier line that the phone company uses to handle the needs of data flowing across phone lines instead of just voices like in olden days.  Mr. Google also told me that the pretty blue ones go to the old red and green ones and the pretty orange ones go to the old yellow and black.  Yes, there is an order.  But why write it down when others have done so quite eloquently?   At some point when I have two nickels to rub together, I’ll buy him a beer.  You should too if you feel so moved.

Oh, back to the “thinking” it works.  The corded telephone we have is His.  I assumed when I plugged it in and got a dial tone, all was set.  The next day I was talking to my mom and needed to switch from the cordless phone to that phone and she couldn’t hear me.  I was crushed that my wiring prowess turned out to be not so prowess-ey.   After a few hours I thought to try his phone in two other outlets in the house and I couldn’t be heard there either.  His phone = busted.   Grabbed a new cheapo AT&T trimline phone for those pesky days when cordless phones are useless.  It arrives tomorrow for my final phone prowess test.

Anyway, want to see another “art” photo?  We call this Phone Jack Still-Life. 

It raised a new-ish issue that the unused and turned off toilet in the laundry room downstairs is busted and leaks (clean) water.  These are not related other than the cleanup involved both of us jostling the toilet during mopping and dislodged whatever was barely holding the tank to the bowl.  He’s been threatening to officially cap the toilet for a while now – looks like that is on the list for the weekend.  The valve may be busted as well, which is a bigger job and one I don’t want to contemplate right now.

Back to the bedroom.  In preparation for finishing the bedroom, I had to go to the lumberyard to pick out new trim for windows, baseboards, and ceiling.  We aren’t putting in official crown moulding, but VHU (Very Helpful Uncle) suggested that we use a smaller casing about 3 inches down from the ceiling line and paint it and those 3 inches to match the ceiling to add the illusion of height.  A lovely idea.

The room dimensions are laughably small, but not so small that things that run horizontally along full walls are easy to transport.  My Honda can handle trim up to 10 feet if I put the seat down in the back and have it rest on the dashboard.  Naturally I needed 11.  (Well, 10 1/2, but I needed room for cutting errors.) The ceiling casing – which is a very plain cheapo molded casing – is very lightweight.  We stuck it out through the trunk, back seat, and then out the front passenger window.  I drove along as many side streets as I could.  Let’s just say if anyone was watching what I was doing, they clearly thought I was an idiot as the casing FLEW and bounced all around the front.  No, I didn’t tie it up.  Yes, I can see that I should have.  Oh well.

Next day, I got the baseboards at Home Depot and we (the dudes in the parking lot and I) wedged it against the sideview mirror.  That – coupled with the fact that the baseboards were much heavier – made for a safer driving experience for all.

Where is a Ford F150 when you need one?

No, really.  You don’t want more detail than that.  I’ll just say it could have been a LOT worse.  And has nothing to do with this work being done.  Just coincidental timing and roots growing where they shouldn’t be.

Not flush to the drywall

Yes, we’ve been working hard getting the room put back together. I’ll get to that in another post. The thing that is stuck in my craw is the framing they did around the window. It isn’t flush to the sheetrock – it sticks out.  See?

On the day that I worked on nailing up baseboards and window trim, we’d had a heat wave.  You can imagine how pleasant that makes me to be around generally, much less in a room where I have to keep the windows closed because of the smell of roofing tar. (Oh, I guess I’ll get to THAT in another other post.)

And for ALL that framing that is in the “new” wall? Where ARE the studs? I’ve made a dozen holes in my beautiful baseboards trying to find a piece of wood for a nail to catch. Grrrr…

I’ll let you know later how my handy dandy Japanese pull saw worked as I gently try to saw this piece of window framing flush to the wall so I can move on with completing my window trim. It will be a challenge to be certain I’m not going to damage the wall above it.

I pointed out the torn plastic and my belief that they could have done a better job protecting the gaping exposed parts of the roof.  I received an acknowledgement that perhaps they should have given me their cell number so I could have called them directly on Saturday.  I suppose we called it even, though it really sounds like I lost in that exchange.

We agreed that they’d let the wood dry out and they would return on Wednesday to apply the second coat of stucco and fix the big hunkin drywall hole so I could start priming and painting and – oh, I don’t know – sleeping in my bedroom.

End of day today (Wednesday):  the stucco looks great.  Brand spanking new.  Wanna see?

Rear view - pretty stucco

Check out the roofline - so SHINY!

The less exciting but still well done side view

Remember how I said that the sheetrock was going to be done today.  Yeah, not so much.  They ran out of time.  Tomorrow they arrive in the morning to apply the spray on texture  THEN do my sheetrock.  I hope.

In the meantime, has anyone seen Ceiling Cat?  Tell him I said OHAI!

An Ceiling Cat sayed, im in ur waterz makin a ceiling. But he no yet make a ur. An he maded a hole in teh Ceiling. An Ceiling Cat doed teh skiez with waterz down An waterz up. It happen.