July progress update

July 1st 2013 yet another rainy day, looking out the back of the house

nothing better than a good rain storm to find the low areas in the drveway!

Finishing the foundation and floor joists

Floor joists completed and open deck area floor laid, still have to trim the floor overhang on left

Yes! Porch roof completed! Nice to have a open dry area to work on rainy days.

Plywood wall sheathing also started

July 27 - Plywood wall sheathing completed on front and housewrap installed.

Stripped/scrapped/sanded all paint off window trim & sills on left side of house and oil primed, also did lower right trim & sill that was removed when the outside wall was removed to expand and enclose that right side of porch, ready to install next work day.

work on the front porch continues

Over the past few days I've been chipping away at the front porch, I expanded it a bit from the original and we're enclosing the right half where i'm working now to make a larger dining area. I finished the new foundation wall for the enclosed half of the porch/dining area, its half concrete block and half wood framed. With support posts in place I've started removing the old exterior wall and a row of blocks from the old foundation so I can tie in to the floor joists. I installed enough floor joists to get a 4x8 sheet of subfloor down so that I could start framing some walls for support before i go any further down the line of taking down the old exterior wall and foundation.

Driveway fill delivered

*** (If you are visiting for the first time I suggest you start at the first/oldest post "Introduction" and work towards the newer posts)***

With the driveway/burned down garage area all cleared out (with the exception of the junk wood burn piles of course) it was time to get some fill brought in. Nicer dirt than I expected, easy to spread, $10/ton for screened fill which has rocks up to 1" or so, as compared to topsoil @ $22.+/ton. So you can guess what i'll be doing over the next few days/weeks. On a gardening note, I have 25 strawberry plants in the last raised bed off to the right, ordered online for $5.99, and they are all growing nicely. Also have one heritage red raspberry plant in a pot waiting for a permanent home, a couple pots with cantaloupe seeds growing good which also need a place to plant and grow, and two peach trees that i'm trying to get a spot prepared for at the end of the driveway. Oh and two grape plants i'm getting started in pots, one red and one green seedless picked up from lowes. Hope to have a nice productive fruit garden established for when we start living here.

We have tons and tons of a very nasty weed growing all over the place, something really tall with good size oval leaves, hollow stems and a very nasty invasive root system. The roots go pretty deep, a foot and a half or so, they are orange colored inside and break easy so pulling out big pieces is tough, basically i just have to dig up all the dirt and pull all the roots out of the dirt as i spread it back into place. Fun times! Endless work at this property! Just did a google image search for connecticut invasive weeds and came across the darn thing i'm dealing with, Japanese Knotweed, appears its edible and similar to rhubarb, and people have one hell of a time getting rid of it, just joining the club I guess!

The super annoying Japanese Knotweed, gotta say though, its flowers do smell nice and attracts tons of bees

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some yard before & after photos

Heres some before & after yard photos, all work so far has been done by hand, wish I could afford to rent some heavy machinery, things would get done alot faster! Good work out thats for sure.

Right side of house/driveway area where garage burned down

 Front right corner of property/driveway area

right side of house where garage burned down

Driveway area

Now some photos showing improvements

Dumpster in driveway clearing out burned garage remnants

Gravel delivery, using for driveway, paths and around foundation walls

Finally got down to ground level where the garage was just need to fill this area in now

Front right corner of property/driveway, placed hydrangeas along the road in front of the big forsythia bush and edged with stone

front right corner of property/driveway, stone edging around prepared garden bed, nice improvement over the weeds that once covered this entire area

path that leads from driveway to raised garden beds which are mostly full of potted plants right now, took alot of plants from our old house, refused to leave them all behind, everything made it through the winter in pots just fine, trying to prepare areas to get some more plants in the ground. have strawberries growing in one bed and another bed setup for growing grapes.

view from the back yard, cleaned up alot of brush and weeds that completely covered this area

rasied beds and burn pile in driveway/old garage area

view from the driveway

used soil from digging out for foundation to fill in this raised bed area in the front yard and working on building the stone wall/edging

another view of backyard

and another

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