an offer we couldn't refuse

.

When we were having the garage rebuilt, they offered to replace our driveway (elderly asphalt, deteriorated into asphalt gravel). With concrete. For $20,000. !!!!!

We declined. Rather tersely.

This week two of our neighbors had their asphalt driveways replaced, and the guy who was doing it offered to do ours, too.

He made an offer that was hard to turn down.

No before. You have to imagine the asphalt gravel, with lush weeds, moss, etc.....

Here's what it looked like Tuesday evening.




Wednesday morning...... Load of gravel has been dumped on the dirt that was under the previous driveway.





Spreading out the gravel.







Wednesday night. Blue lines to indicate where to put new asphalt. They had made a blue-paint suggestion, and we countered with an intention to have nearly all of it about two feet south of the original proposal.





Thursday there was enough rain that they declined to pave.

Friday they paved, but even though I was out twice after the pavement was there, and even though I had the camera with me, I didn't think to take a pic.

Ah well.

It looks pretty much the same here (Saturday) as it looked on Friday!



.

garage

I am not in the mood to be cheerful about things. I'll give you updates on some annoying stuff.

You've all been driven crazy by the suspense of wondering what is going on with our interminable garage re-build, I know.

We are, I hope, approaching the home stretch of our "four week" job which began in November.

Concrete poured.

Note stupid black plastic draped between stakes all around beside and behind garage. I believe the principle behind this is to prevent eroding dirt from running into the drains and ultimately the river. All well and good, BUT -- on our property the plastic was only put UPHILL of the excavation..................... Nothing to stop the dirt from running down hill into the street, drains, river.

So the main function of the black plastic was to trip us. Feh.











Concrete walk poured in front, too. Pre-fab step.

Note continuing theme of gatorade bottles tossed by concrete crew........ Charming.






You may recall that our back stoop was rotten, so we agreed that they should rebuild it. When they poured concrete, they did pour a stoop. It is 6" higher than the walk out to the garage and ... 12" down from the threshold.................

When we said that was utterly unacceptable, the response was to put a prefab step on top of the too-low stoop.

Hmmm. Better on the way in, probably, but on the way out? NOT. I nearly killed myself stepping out, carrying something, turning to lock the door........ Nope, we really need to step out onto a large area, not a step.

We managed to muscle the prefab step off the stoop, put it in front of the stoop, and then we put the wooden temporary stoop that we used all winter on top of the new low concrete stoop. This set of heights is ok. Now we "just" have to make them come back and raise the level of stoop 5 or 6 inches. In concrete.






And of course there are still gutters to put on the garage, and a number of other smaller issues.


I'm sure it's a mark of my laughable naivete, but I have been surprised by the amount of trash everywhere. The old garage had one (1) window, in the door out to the back yard. Yet there is broken glass EVERYWHERE around the garage. Nails. Screws. Hunks of concrete.

So far I'm not aware of the dogs injuring themselves on staples, nails sticking up out of pieces of wood (good old Dr. Scholls and I found that, and he protected me as always), but..................................

Guess how eager I am to ever have anyone touch the house again, EVER..........



Here are a bunch of screws I picked up. I liked they way they looked after a rain, sitting on the fence outside the back door.

let there be light!

Monday marked exactly eight weeks since we had any light out back.

Monday we had switches here, inside the house's back door, but no switchplate.....


















Tuesday, though -- Tuesday, we acheived light!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

















Light over the back door!






















Light beside the new door into the garage! Light that turns on and off from inside the garage AND inside the house!

Hooray!!!!!!!!!!

We also have floodlights on the front and back of the garage, but as they are "dawn to dusk" lights, they won't come on until it gets dark......






















At this point, we are now (after eight weeks!) at least as well off as we were before they tore down the garage.

Many things remain to be finished. I am really tired of being on guard all the time that everything is being done as we asked. I am ready to stand down. Hope I can (not clear that the garage door is the color we ordered.....).

Some of the things that remain to be finished are in my personal queue. Painting the storm door in the back, say, and also the side door into the garage. Sometime ... later ... when it is warm enough to paint.

Someone will have to fix the drywall where the electrician needed to make openings to route wire, etc. The concrete still needs to be dealt with. We need knobs/lock on the side door into the garage.

At this point, though, we have a shelter for the car, we have an accessible and enclosed back yard, we have light in back!, and we even have gravel and a step up to the stoop in front.

Huzzah.

one step forward.......

This is excellent!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



















This ... not so much.


















I didn't notice this, Friday, but first thing yesterday morning................

They ran out of siding on Thursday, and had to get more. Unfortunately, they don't seem to have gotten the same color.


















It's not just that the colors are different; the grayer one is also darker (here they are with the color removed...).

Sigh.

















Do you suppose anyone thought we wouldn't notice? Or that it was ok like this?

This is minor in comparison to not having the yard. I don't care so very much how long it takes for them to fix this, as it doesn't mean I'm right back to walking the dogs every single time they need to go out.

Still.

Sigh..............

woohooo!

Happy day!


















Happy dog, panting because he's been chasing his frisbee for the first time in way too long.





















And ... if the minivan were here, it could be in the garage! The concrete crew put a bunch of gravel (same as the dog is sitting on, above) in front of the garage, and compacted it, and they tell us it should stay put to allow driving into the garage until the weather is warm enough for them to take away the gravel and put down concrete.

I'm told they'll bring the garage door today and install it, and, well, fine, whatever -- I've got my YARD back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

happy, happy, joy, joy

Be still my heart -- look!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

















We not only have a functional fence and gate, we have a back stoop!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, yeah, and the garage has siding. They have done a lovely job -- it looks very very nice. But the fence!!!!! We have a fence!!!!!! And we can step out the back without actually fearing for life and limb.

Here is what we have had for the last two weeks, instead of a back stoop:


















The carpenters are my favorites, for sure!

The concrete crew just arrived, to put gravel down where they would put concrete if it weren't winter...............

If you are going to burn the toast,

the advice from here is: Don't Burn it in the Bathroom.



Yesterday we had more crews (two at once), and more guys working on the garage than we've had at any other point in this (looooooooooong) process.

I was really excited to see all these guys working on *my* house/garage.

Until I realized that what I was getting, besides wires, was siding.

Sigh. I mean, in the long run, we want siding over the tyvek. Sure. And -- it's going to be lovely to have a light on the back of the garage that I can turn on from inside the house. Very true.

But right now, what's going to float my boat is an accessible, enclosed back yard. Shelter for the car, so we don't have to scrape ice off dozens of square feet of glass before we can drive anywhere. A safe way for a person to approach our house from the front.

As we've never seen a list detailing what has to happen in what order (though we have asked, specifically, for same), we don't know if things *have* to happen in the order they are happening, for arcane reasons that would not occur to those uninitiated in the construction trades.

It's frustrating when no one shows up to work on our project, and it's frustrating that when they do, they do stuff that is very low on *my* list of priorities....

Ah well. Reminding myself that I have had neither kidney stones nor an emergency appendectomy in the last two weeks, nor am I homeless (carless, wardrobe-less) because my allergies will not allow me to walk into my house (drive my car, wear my clothes) without suffering. We have power, unlike an awful lot of people who have also experienced this ice storm.

The toast?

Our family room has a wall of windows which look out on ... the garage. I felt funny about eating in front of all these people to whom I was not going to be offering my cranberry pecan toast. So I took the toaster upstairs, and made toast in the bathroom.

I had put one slice back in for a bit more toasting when the electrician called me to find him a broom and dustpan to clean up the mess in the house from putting in switches for all the lights on the outside of the garage.

When I came back up, I was sad to find my lovely bread utterly charred.

And, of course, all the towels in the bathroom, and the carpeting, are now full of the stink of burnt toast.

Sigh.

At least I wasn't in the bedroom, eh?

no garage, day 43

Yesterday marked six (6) weeks since they tore down our garage.

I am totally nostalgic for this, taken in October before they did anything. Ok, the garage was thinking seriously of tipping over, but it hadn't, yet. We had a garage, 7/8 of which was dry inside, and we had a fenced yard. We had a back stoop. The yard was not a sea of mud.

I am totally nostalgic for all that. Well, ok, most of it.























What we have now is this, taken from about 10 feet to the right of where the prev was taken.



















We have a garage, which is not falling down, and which does not leak. It is not good for anything, because there is a mud pit in front of it, rather than pavement. Well, ok, not *totally* useless -- the garbage cans are in there. Thrilling, no? No. The garbage cans used to live on the other side of the fence, and were perfectly happy there. We didn't need to build a new garage for their benefit.

You will note the utter absence of any enclosure. You can't see it here, but there is a partial rectancle of cement blocks, open side up, where there used to be a stoop. Pretty much everything the tarp is covering is mud pit.

We can't step out the back door, and certainly can't let the dogs out. The lack of stoop is not ok for them. And even if it were, there is no enclosure. And even if there were, the "yard" is a mud pit.

Up until a week ago Tuesday, the fence you see above was still there, as was all of the pavement on this side of the fence. We had a back stoop. We had an enclosed back yard. We could let the dogs out.

A week ago Tuesday they removed the fence, stoop, and a bunch of pavement, in preparation for pouring concrete in front of and beside the garage. Then it rained (the rain was predicted, of course, not a giant surprise or anything). Now they are saying it's too cold to pour concrete. Why on earth didn't they just leave well enough alone, then??????????

Argh. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As anyone who knows me will tell you, patience and forebearance are not my strong suits.

I am trying to be more glass-is-half-full-ish. I surely am clear that, in the scope of things, these are very minor annoyances. I know someone who has had a kidney stone AND an emergency appendectomy since New Year's eve. !!! I know someone who is having an allergy crisis that has caused her to be unable to be in her house, her car, her clothes..... For weeks!!!!!

I am working at reminding myself that things could be much, Much, MUCH worse.

I am trying not to become crankier by the day............................

Garage. Images, (almost) no commentary.

When I went out to the garage to get yesterday's illustration of "sister," I also saw these vignettes.

Our house, in the puddle(s) contained by the tarp. The red thing is the building permit(s).

















I'm not fond of the messes left behind by humans, and I'm not interested in preserving images of same.

However, I do love orange and blue.....
















A comment on our current situation. Broken concrete, trash strewn around. The broken ball refers, of course, to the dogs not being able to go out in their own yard.

(Not that *they* mind getting walked all the time!)



















I have been feeling sort of dead-to-photography lately. Yesterday I caught on fire and began to *see* again.

So interesting, how something can be there, waiting to be seen..... This dead tennis ball shows up in the "Are you implying that back stoops *migrate*?" pic from Friday, but I never saw it in that pic until I had worked over this pic......


The moral of the story is: Just Keep Plugging Away..........

garage, with drape (day 37)

When we got home day before yesterday, it was clear that the concrete crew had gotten started on dealing with the area where new concrete will be poured in front of and around the side of the garage, and also in front where the step in front of the stoop had subsided.

Yesterday it rained. Rained, and rained, and rained. The only thing we can tell is different from Wednesday night is that the tarp has been spread. (It may be different under the tarp, but..............)

This view is standing on the driveway looking toward the back of the property.

















If you look immediately to your right, you'll see where the back stoop used to be (circled). The right upper edge of this pic is the back of the house......

















Still standing in the same place, but looking left -- we can see that stoop is not gone, it migrated.
















This tastefully draped and artful shot shows why we needed a new stoop.....





















I know you've been dying to see what is different in front.

Here's what it looked like on December 15..............





















And here's the current outlook.

The larger view.................





















Looking pretty much straight down....... That's a good two feet down, from my toes to the mud.....























You'll recall that we have no enclosed yard at present, and so are walking the dogs every time (EVERY SINGLE (@#(#$^% TIME) they need to go out. I hate when yet ANOTHER weekend goes by with no fenced yard..........................

I should be saying "Garage, day xx"........... Let's see. Wednesday was five (5) weeks. So today, I believe, is day 37. We keep being told how much we are going to love this garage. I think the only response to that is "When? *WHEN* will I love it? So far we are still worse off than before..................."

Sigh.

garage, with frost

After nearly two weeks with no change, they are working on the garage again. Here we see the soffit being applied.





















We need more concrete work than we knew. There are stoops outside the front and back doors. The step up to the front stoop had subsided over time, and had become such a deep step that it was worrisome. We asked them to fix that.

Then, yesterday, they discovered that the underpinnings of the back stoop are no good. So we'll be replacing the whole works back there.

Not a surprise, during renovation, that some of the existing structure needs repair/replacement. I'm just glad the garage slab was ok; I was afraid it would need replacement!


















Today marks five weeks of no garage. And, as of yesterday, we are back to No Enclosed Back Yard. Sigh.

At least all this too-warm weather is good for something -- it's plenty warm enough to pour concrete, even though it is January.............

This frost on the roof is as much of nature's white stuff as we have seen in weeks..............

garage, yet again

For those of you who are getting tired of the interminable garage (believe me, I am at the very top of THAT list!), here is something completely different.

Listen to the sound of a duck-billed platypus.

Check out this puppyfluffball who just can't quite stay awake. Awwwwww.

Ok, you knew we had to see the garage. At least when there are changes, we have to see them.

Having the cable-tv wire resting on the garage can't be good...............

Wish I knew what they were doing next, and when....................

garage roof, with shingles

Progress is being made.

I'm not sorry to go to work, evading the generator, compressor, pounding, sawing....

DH and I agree -- better to be doing this kind of work on the garage than on the house...............

garage roof

The roof trusses arrived, finally, and they were installed yesterday.

This pic is hot off the presses, taken just moments ago.......

using the back yard

Sunday I mentioned that we can (after more than two weeks) use our back yard.

I would like to introduce you to my new best friend. I would like to, but I don't know his name and I don't have permission to blog him. So here he is, anonymized.

Here is the kind and thoughtful soul who blocked the escape routes around and through the garage so the dogs can't go walkabout.





















Here is the thrilling result of his labors! Dogs! Outside! With no leashes!!!!! Me, inside, taking pics, not outside with dogs!!!!!

Yay!!!!!!!















It's the same corner of the garage in both of these pics.

The gate used to be attached to the garage. Garage went; gate stayed. Gate will be reattached. Later.

In the mean time, temporary barriers block where the gate used to be, the people door into the garage (as opposed to the car door, which is wide open at present), and the space (kitty corner to the corner visible here) between the garage and the fence. Blocked. All, gloriously blocked.

Happy sigh.

garage today

Here is what the garage looked like yesterday morning. DH saw them deliver -- the stuff was on a flat-bed dump truck. It tipped up, the stuff slid south, and then the truck drove away, leaving this in the driveway.

















Here's what it looked like when we got home last night (though this pic was taken this morning).
















We had thought they weren't coming until today, so it was a little surprising to see the garage, rising like a phoenix.....


I don't do noise well, and I'm not good with change. This is all wearing me down, like my dog's toenails. His front structure is so poor that he drags his toes. All these walks have not been good for his front tootsies. One nail on one foot has worn right through to the live part, poor boy. I made him a "shoe" out of denim, so that his toenail no longer meets the pavement....... Perhaps I'll get a pic of that....

Anyway. I'm feeling rubbed raw just like the toenail; what sort of shoe works for that? A shot of whisky? A handful of xanax? Sigh. (It actually didn't occur to me until last night, when I couldn't get our printer to spit out holiday-mail envelopes, that this is a STUPID time to have this work done for more reasons than "it's icky to take the dogs out in cold rain!" This season has more than enough stress without this......)

Here's a pic of the noise. Open the front door (as we must because the back opens to a sea of mud), and here is what you see. One generator and one compressor. You can hear them from a block away. I know, as I was out walking the dogs, and.....



























































I know no one ever said the process of having construction done is fun (well, some pervert somewhere probably enjoys it), but I just want to go sit in a corner and gibber. Someplace else. Where the generator isn't running all the time.