12 posts tagged “home”

Our first go at a summer garden produced mixed results. Our impatients and dusty miller are doing really well, as are our boxes of petunias - but the squirrels have decimated the rest. We've completely given up hope of ever producing usable herbs. And our begonias and New Guinea impatients received pretty rough treatment as well. We're left with only one remaining begonia.

With guests arriving soon, we both felt that our garden was an embarrassment. It looked positively empty. So off we trotted to the nursery to see what we could find to fill it up.

There wasn't much left in terms of annuals, though. So the choice was pretty much made for us: we needed to try our hand at perennials. We scouted around quite a bit to find some flowering plants that would thrive in our partly shaded flower beds. And after much looking we finally found a few that suited our needs. We picked up:

• Bugbane - a taller plant that flowers in the early fall. The tag that came with the plant promised "great fall colour" and that sold us.
• Yellow Waxbells - which we've planted in front of the Bugbane. They won't grow as tall and they flower in August/September with a pretty yellow flower.
• Two varieties of Heuchera - one is called "Tiramisu" (which has a greeny/yellow colour) and one is called "Pinot Gris" (which has more purple to it). Clearly we chose those plants based on food preferences. Just kidding - there was a nice lady at the nursery who recommended them to us for shady areas. They grow only about 1/3 as tall as the others and they also flower between August and October.
  

And of course, the best part is that, being perennials, we'll never have to re-plant. We spoke to the people at the nursery and they told us all our choices were hardy plants and they told us what has to be done before snowfall (very little) - so we're good to go. Along with our existing hydrangeas, we should have a nice recurring garden come the spring... assuming we can keep the squirrels at bay.

To that end, we picked up a bottle of  Critter Ridder - not a poison, just a substance they don't like. Take that, you blasted pests!

Yes, our deck needs to be painted - or at least washed - but at least we have pretty flowers to distract the eye! We went out this weekend and spent our savings on plants.

We've got petunias (purple and white) in the boxes along the railing, impatients (light pink) and New Guinea impatients (lighter pink) on the left side of the garden, begonias (Orange and Yellow) on the right side, Marigolds (orange/red) in a pot, and a few herbs to boot. Add in a hanging basket (not pictured) and the two hydrangeas we planted last year (one is growing really well and one is slow, but coming along) and we're set for a colourful summer sipping mojitos on the deck.

Now we just have to cross our fingers and hope that Ottawa is done with frost for the season.
 

Well, it looks like the foundation issue might be put on hold (sigh of relief). It seems the only major crack is in unit 8 and the owner is looking into having a crew come in to inject polyurethane into the wall. The leak was not constant - just  something that happened in the spring with the melting snow. So hopefully the injection approach will work to hold off major repairs for a year or two until we can build up money in our repair fund.

We agreed to raise our condo fees a bit to start building up a pot, and one of our co-owners is also looking into our insurance policy to see if foundation repairs are covered. Fingers crossed.

In the meantime, I guess that means we won't be excavating the decks this summer. Next up, Mel and I will have to decide on an approach to planting the flower beds. We had hoped to take a course through the city on what best to plant in your own backyard, but that course got canceled due to lack of interest. Too bad. We only had partial success last year. Oh well, we'll have another go at it and we'll post some pics once we do the planting - likely later in May.

Ugh. Last night we came to find out that one of our neighbours in the condo is starting to have some problems with leaks in the foundation. So far it's been limited just to her own unit, but this could mean some serious repair work on our building - possibly this year!

We're meeting on Sunday to discuss the problem, but from what she says, it sounds like we might have to have our entire back yard excavated in order to make the repairs. That would mean tearing out the decks and the new fence that we put in last year, along with all the soil underneath the decks.

Not sure what that will mean for the trees growing there, but if we do go ahead with it, I'm inclined to suggest that it be done in a way that will make the repairs permanent. That will also mean repairing the retaining wall while the opportunity exists, and probably installing PVC decking once the area is filled in again. Thankfully, we should be able to re-use the PVC dividing fences we had installed last summer, but this really is the major repair we've been dreading.

We knew when we bought that this was an eventuality we might have to deal with, but even so, we're still not ready for it. Based on our neighbour's preliminary research, it sounds like the work will be somewhere in the vicinity of about $10,000 per unit ($50K) - not an expense we need when witht he expense of a Malaysia trip already slated this year. But I suppose we can get a home-improvement loan. And I still haven't sold my Nissan yet - so the funds from that sale could go toward the house as well.

We should be fine, in the end, but the initial shock of hearing the price made for a somewhat sleepless night last night.

Yes I could go on and on and on about all the effort involved in mounting the TV and deciding how best to situate the furniture now that we've slain the beast, but truth is I'm lazy. Actually, the truth is I don't remember all that was involved. I've blocked it.

I've blocked memories about all the holes we punched in the walls. About how difficult it was to decide something simple like how high up the wall to mount it. About how we weren't sure whether the wall studs were far enough apart to mount the bracket safely. About how crooked it was when we first mounted it. And about how my knuckles got all scraped up in the process of hiding cables.

Now that it's mounted, and we've had a chance to enjoy the hi-def picture, all is forgiven. I'm not even mad at Best Buy anymore. All is right with the world.

Here's a short video tour of our new living room!

Ever since we moved into our place, we've been a bit bummed. You see, our living room just isn't quite big enough. We like to entertain - we like to have lots of guests - but it tends to get a bit cramped. Oh Sure, we've managed to make some room by removing unneeded furniture - a black love seat got the boot to the upstairs guest room - but that just left us with insufficient seats for guests at our more lavish parties.

No, it was clear from the get go that we needed to take more extreme measures. I'm not talking about renovation here. We simply needed to slay the beast - our big old rear-projection TV. The beast easily took up 1/4 of the livable space in that part of the house, blocking the door to the deck and generally making the house look cramped.

We conceived of a way to make it work though - a flat panel TV, mounted above the fireplace, would take up no living space at all. Moreover, it would let us move the rest of the entertainment equipment to the otherwise unusable space beside the fireplace, and away from the deck door. And now, nearly 2 years after the move, we finally have the means to make that switch.

After much hemming and hawing, we landed on a 46" Sharp Aquos LCD . Now all that remained was to buy it. We decided to watch the Best Buy fliers and it wasn't long before we found a deal we could live with. Unfortunately that deal was on a Sony and it was from Future Shop. Well, we thought we'd see what Best Buy had to say about that and so, late Friday evening, we ducked into Best Buy and hammered out a deal with the sales manager. He promised us the Sharp bundled with a Sony Playstation3 (which features a blu-ray player). They gave us a few days to think it over and we went home to crunch the numbers again. We decided that we would go back on Sunday to make the purchase. That was our first mistake. Actually, that was our second mistake - our first was leaving delivery arrangements until Sunday.

Our First Mistake - Sunday, before heading over to best buy, we decided to go rent a cargo van from U-haul. These things are huge. And you can't see out the back. I'm not a big fan of big vehicles anyway, but I have to say this was not a pleasant experience for me. And yet I was elected to drive the thing - which had no snow tires, BTW. In our climate, you'd think that would be a no-brainer! Still, I took my time and we managed okay, but I was never so happy to get back into our little Honda after we got the TV home.

So, back to Best Buy. What a process! We got parked in the crowded parking lot (an ordeal in itself) and wandered into the store only to find that we had gone at the worst possible time: a Sunday just weeks before Christmas. Apparently that's TV-buying time. Overall it took us 2 hours before we got out of that store again.

• Step 1 - find a salesperson. The store was wall to wall with shoppers and trying to get a salesperson's attention was like trying to get my grandmother to listen to something not directly related to her. But we were in luck. The sales manager was nearby and he got us a salesperson like that . Unfortunately that salesperson was an idiot. I can't tell you how many mistakes he made - I stopped counting, but I know he certainly didn't know how to use the Best Buy computer system. Thankfully Junkii was there to catch his many flubs. And of course, all along, he never stopped insisting that we should buy the extended warranty, despite our repeated protestations.
• Step 2 - arrange a Best Buy reward card. Once we had everything organized - made sure stock was available, got a few video games picked out - the next step was to get a best buy rewards card. I mean hell, we might as well get everything we can from such a major purchase, right? That process ate up another 20 minutes - mostly just waiting in line and signing forms, but it was still tried our patience.
• Step 3 - back to the salesperson. Great, we got our card, now let us pay. The salesperson, again making sure we were certain we didn't want the warranty, then punched in our credit card info (or at least he did eventually, after a few failed attempts) and we finally got everything on the cart and headed for the door.
• Step 4 - wait while they take your package apart and put it back together. We had to wait another 20 minutes while the slow slow slow fellow at the door cut open our TV box, showed us a small portion of the TV to "prove" there was no physical damage, and then made us sign a form to that effect before slowly packaging everything up again and letting us leave. Step 4 was probably the most frustrating part of the day, made worse by the fact that he required our help to lift and move the packaging around. Shouldn't that be a staff person's job?!
  

Here's the thing about service. Not only was the guy at the door unhelpful, very slow, and very grumpy; basically he made us feel like Best Buy was saying "that's it - we wash our hands of you. Once you step out that door, you're on your own, sucker!" And you know, not that we should complain - we didn't buy the extended warranty after all - but there seems to be a general acceptance in our society that a store is just there to take your money. There's no pride in the products they sell - just concern over their liability. We're both disheartened that society continues to move in this direction.

Anyway, all that was left was to load the van, drive home, return the van to U-haul and head home to play with our new baby. Which we did. That was the weekend before last. This weekend, we got into the whole process of mounting the thing and selling the beast. That's a whole other post.

The parents left today for points South and, while we'll miss them, their early departure does have a side benefit. It means we get our Christmas shopping done before the malls turn into the all-out brawls they always become by December 15th. We avoid the madness!

Not that we have a lot of shopping to begin with - there's Mom & George, My Sister's Kids in Texas, and my Nana here in Ottawa - but by heading south before Hallowe'en, my folks start a chain reaction of gifting. First, to save postage, we get them to carry their own gifts South with them, so Mom & George are the first to get done. But then, before they leave, Mom needs to buy Nana her gift, and this year we joined forces, so we got Nana's at the same time. And finally, while Arizona might be the final destination, the road leads right through Dallas, and the Lexus is as good as any courier - and a heckuva lot cheaper. So we buy for the boys and ship it down with the folks.

And that is how Christmas shopping is done. To be fair, we still have Dad & Louise in New Brunswick to buy for, but otherwise we're done.

By the same token, the snowbirds need to finish their shopping before they mosey, and that means we have our nicely wrapped boxes ready to open come Christmas morn. This year though, our major gift was unwrappable: a load of firewood. And it came already. A big dump truck came and dropped a face cord of firewood in our driveway at noon yesterday, leaving us with the task of stacking it neatly in the garage.

There it will stay, dry and warm until we're ready for a snowy afternoon curled up with a book and a glass of Zin. Not looking forward to the weather, but can't wait for the toasty fire! So drop on by and we'll throw a log on! As you can see, we have plenty.

Oh, and for those who doubted the wood and the car could coexist in the garage...

Just a short video blog about the state of affairs on our back deck. You probably know that we're currently in the process of replacing the dividers between each condo unit, and we've been wall-free (privacy-free) for about a week. You can see right across the entire back yard.

The camera is a little shakey. You you might want to take a Gravol first, but if you don't view it in full screen you should be fine.

We're looking forward to the return of the construction workers, not only because we're anxious to have the job done, but also because this time we got lucky.

After years of hiring tradespeople and even working with construction crews in Ottawa, I'm pretty much convinced that the legendary "sexy construction worker" is a myth. Of course, once in a while, people get lucky and, praise be to Jebus, we got lucky this time. Here are a couple of pictures - surreptitiously taken, of course - just as proof of how lucky we are.

So far, the summer has been fairly productive for getting some major house repair done. With the help of my stepfather, we replaced the rotting, 25-year-old, sliding patio door with a beautiful new swinging garden door. There's even a screen door on it so we can let a breeze in. And we learned how to install a new door! Score.

My dad also came for a visit and helped us fix both the downstairs toilet - which was wobbly - and the one holdover problem remaining from our wiring misadventure. Thanks Dad!

The condo association arranged for the trim on our condo to be painted (by a somewhat sloppy team of college-aged painters) and, with a fencing contractor set to start next week replacing  the dividers between our patios, we're well on our way to being prepared for the coming winter.

The only remaining task to complete before the snow flies is to repair a leak around our skylight. It's a slow leak that only seems to cause problems whet it rains very heavily. But it still needs fixing. The good news is the condo association should cover the cost. The bad news is, I have no clue where to start finding a roofer to come have a look.

I guess my first step will be to ask friends and colleagues if they can recommend someone, but it would be so useful to find a website where people review their experience with tradespeople. I know they have such a thing in the U.S. - Angela's list - but I haven't been able to find one in Canada.

If you know of such a thing, please point me in the right direction. Otherwise, I guess I'll have to chase someone down myself.

The weather has been very uncooperative lately. The weekend was a wash and any possibility of playing tennis or going running has been put on hold until the rains cease.

The weather isn't all bad though. At least it's helping bring our new garden along.

Last Thursday we went to a nursery and muddled our way through the purchase of plants and soil for our back deck. Gardening is new for both of us, so this is definitely a test. We managed to pick a few types of flowers and on Friday, before the rains started, got the hanging boxes mounted and the flowers in the soil - Petunias and Pansies and a few others that we don't know the names of.

All in all, we're happy with the look. We left one bed open for planting some herbs, and we still need to get a few more large pots for the floor - we'd like to get a hibiscus, and I want some begonias - but overall, very satisfied. We're about one week into this great experiment and everything seems to still be alive, and growing from the nice moist soil.

Still, they've had enough rain now. As you can see we have a hose, so we don't need nature to do all the work. And after all, don't plants need sun and warm weather too? I know I do.