Just got home from a weekend at my parents and we walked into a hot, damp house. 78 degrees and nothing but hot air coming out of the vents. Time to see what this American Home warranty is all about.
ripped out these ugly shrubs next to our door, planted 5 dwarf gardnias, covered with pinestraw. Got some good organic decomposing matter for the gardnias. It was a bitch, took half a day including the Lowes trip. Sweated my ass off. I got dirt all over the walkway and drive way so the clean up job was pretty substantial as well. I have the blower attachment to the weedeater on the Troybilt so I use the hell out of that thing.
Where is it shifting? Vertically or horizontally, I can't tell from the picture? It also looks like you have some mold or mildew growth, so you might want to brush with a diluted bleach solution as that will help prevent the mold and mildew growth from return as quickly. It is just a result of lack of sun. If you are missing sand then you should either resand with a coarse concrete sand or polymeric sand. Weeds grow from the joints, so polymeric sand will prevent the weeds from growing back. It also prevents insects from carrying off the sand. Beyond that is doesn't do much and it like 10x the price. You can also stain your pavers with it if installed improperly. If I was in your shoes, I would use the poly sand though if you are getting a lot of weeds as that is annoying.
I pressure washed my deck and patio on Saturday. Combined for like 600-800 SF. Took ~3 hours. Wife wants to pressure wash the driveway and front walk. Job getting outsourced if we do it. Neither is that bad and nobody cares about a driveway really anyway, so just going to put it off. Spent about 2 hours pruning front shrubs including a giant holly on Sunday. Sucks. Not so much the pruning, but bagging all the trimmings.
That wouldn't be too bad if you get the attachment to clean concrete - can probably rent one from one of those rental place for a day for pretty cheap. (or buy just the heads, I'm not sure how well they work)
shifting from new construction to resale. GF is panicking and now wants to spend like 1/2 of what we can comfortably afford.
went through a similar deal. I eventually just made the decision on what we were going to spend, accepting she would be mad regardless. It’s one of those situations where it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
I got a 1500 PSI greenworks pressure washer. I have used it twice in 5 years, so it isn't like I do a lot of pressure washing. They make a dinky looking attachment. Might try it because it is $28, but if I had a commercial washer a big rotating attachment would be the ticket.
its not that easy on my end because we are dual income. But yeah, there are somethings that I am trying to let her work out of her system before putting my foot down and giving it a hard no.
Can you even remotely get what you want at that price? No need to overspend to overspend, but if you go look at some of the spots on the lower-end of the budget that might change the perspective. You walk up and the house is like:
Why are you buying a house with your gf? Are you both on the mortgage? Get something you can afford so if it goes south you won’t be stuck with a house you can’t afford.
Get what I want? nah. Get what she thinks she wants, yup. It just requires us to move 20 minutes south where we can get a lot of house for less money in Homestead drastically limiting my options when it comes to changing jobs and making my commute to my current job 90min+ every day.
Gf soon to be fiance. we have been together 8 years. marriage is just a matter of formality at this point
I would put my foot down. Spend more in gas than mortgage savings. Plus you want to be back to help with dinner, so you will have to eat out more resulting in more money. You will not have time to work in the yard, so you will have to outsource. Cheaper to just get what you want in my opinion.
i completely agree. and I definitely have a point where I am going to put my foot down, but it hasn't gotten serious enough yet where I need to make a stand. Letting her go through this phase and seeing if she works her way out of it.
The last exterior part of the house that remains unchanged from the old owners is our yard. Going to pull out the bushes and hostas and put in new shit. Thinking 4 boxwood shrubs and new hostas in front of that. Flowers in front of the hostas When clearing out all the old mulch and laying on new liner, should I spray the ground with roundup or anything? Explain mulching to me like I’m five. It seems pretty straight forward but I don’t want to screw this up.
Sounds like she will come around eventually. Best to let it play out. Everytime we have bought we basically had to be in a certain area, so it limited options and it worked out for both of us.
dang that looks a hell of a lot better, i don't know how tricky it would be based on my stone basement also don't know if that's in the budget as of now though. what do you think that would run?
Skip the landscape fabric. Waste of time and money. If you concerned about weeds just put a premergent down and spray post emergents or hand pick them.
Planning to build a roof over my deck and kind of stuck on what to do with the ceiling. Thinking about just getting tongue and groove unfinished pine and then staining it. Was trying to do this whole project for under $1500 so not trying to blow it out with the ceiling. Any other ideas I should be looking at?
we’re semi-dual income, but after grinding away at the disconnect between wants and cost she gave me the “do whatever you want.” If you’re gonna get to that point eventually, might as well do it sooner than later.
Biggest tip is trying to look at as many pictures of the particular stain you choose as possible to accurately gauge the color of the stain. Its a fast project. Hardest part is clearing off the concrete you want to stain (moving furniture, cleaning the surface, etc.). Make sure to use your base after the acid stain step to "lock in" your color. Don't forget to gloss it up with a sealer once you are done. Pretty straight forward project but its a little stressful because you don't know exactly how the color will turn out. Good luck.
Thank you! Ours is actually indoors, it's an old patio that was closed off. I ripped up the carpet and scraped the shit out of the glue/foam and got that all up. Looks like my biggest issue is going to be cleaning all the residual glue off. Other than that once I start the application I should be in decent shape as I won't have to worry about weather. We went with a lighter color and the gloss/wax sealer is in hand as well. Ceiling drywall went up this weekend, going to bang out the walls this week.
I scraped out all the moss, I will get some sand and fill in between the cracks, power washed it again, when I say shifting it’s more the joints in some places have opened up Thanks
Its weird for me to see homes that dont have a covered entryway because virtually all houses in Oregon have one. Good looking new home, front door just looks naked.
yeah dude fill that shit with the poly sand and be done with it. Trying to level the base for minor issues is not worthwhile imo. If you had pavers that were sinking or water that is pooling I would say go for it.
Loss of sand is likely the result of pressure washing and you will blast your sand out again if you sand then pressure wash. Pressure wash then sand. I would polysand though screw dealing with weeds as year. Moss will grow on anything though. Lateral movement is typically the result of loss of edge restraint and subsequent shifting towards the perimeter. You have to push the pavers back together and shore up the edge to fix lateral movement. From the pics you can’t tell and it can be a chore, so I would probably just leave as is unless it is bad in one area.
Some of the houses in the neighborhood have added porches but for the most part the cape cods in our area just don’t have porches
Don’t fuck with landscape fabric. Mulch is a natural weed barrier and if you pull the weeds and shit out before laying mulch it will keep most of them down. Then you just pull the ones that poke through on occasion. If you use weed barrier it will keep the mulch from decomposing into the soil robbing the dirt of nutrients. Eventually the mulch will decompose and become dirt and then you will have weeds on top of the weed barrier