Homeowner Thread

Got an absolutely eye-watering quote to rebuild our deck.  The other option is to just patch the really rotten areas and leave the rest of the deck as-is, presumably patching and patching and patching over the next few years until it's all new.  (Shockingly, the pilings/supports all appear to be in really good shape, so this is all just rebuilding the actual deck part of it.)  Unfortunately, there's a lot of rot, so the quote for just doing that bit is also eye-watering.  I would really rather rebuild the whole thing in one go, so it's all done and all the components can age evenly, but I'm thinking at this point it makes the most financial sense to burn the house down in an "accident" and claim the insurance money.

(We also got a quote to cut open the window that the foundation-planting vine is growing in under, remove the vines, and patch up the window with better flashing and sealant, but, barring any surprises once inside the wall (which, HAHAHAHAHAHA! yeah), that price isn't too bad.)

And I bet the quote was for Trex, pressure treated wood will need more maintenance, but it will be half the cost.

You probably know this, but be sure to get an itemized quote. Make them break out materials vs labor and how long it will take with how big of a crew. That will help a lot if you get a second quote, which I would also highly recommend. 

While working on my front steps I pulled off the connecting board and discovered the not unexpected but unwelcome news that the side of my house that faces across the schoolyard into the bitter cold north wind has no house wrap and no exterior insulation. Again not surprising given the age of the house but I'd hoped the reno on the wall when they'd done the siding sometime in the 10 years before I bought the house they'd at least done the wrap.

I just got a quote to do it + new siding and oof, almost 10k.

100% a job I could do myself I think but a ton of work and I just got the new windows put in last year.

I got a revised quote on the deck replacement, and doing it with pressure-treated lumber instead of synthetic knocked $10K off the tab.  So we're good to go now with that.  

Meanwhile, the septic replacement from last year continues to be worked on, as we've finally got a landscape guy fixing all the sunken parts of the yard where the dirt settled over the new system*.  We had a rustic path of bluestones going from the driveway to the deck in the backyard, and it's been really treacherous since about ten minutes after the septic install was finished, because the pipes and electronics from the system run across the path underneath it.  So the path has been, since last April, interrupted midway through by a sinkhole/trench sort of thing.  Which was exacerbated this summer by some burrowing animal further excavating around it.  We were expecting just having the dirt leveled (and the landscaper had a pet project he wanted of reworking our drainpipe outlets so that our backyard runoff would go somewhere other than under the driveway, which is its own crumbling problem) and the path stones put back in place, but the landscaper is an overachiever and he turned the path into a whole fancy, formal, very level affair.  It's a bit more structured than I would have asked for, but I appreciate that it's now A) safe to walk along it at night without much light, and B) much easier to roll the grill along when we want to bring that out to barbecue, so I'm not complaining.  The drainage complex he installed, running underground pipes from a bunch of our existing drainpipes, seems pretty nifty too, but it never rains here anymore, so we'll never know how it works. 

We also had him install a nice planter area at the base of the deck, which now has some lovely boxwoods that will probably be ruined by the upcoming deck construction, but far be it from us to realize that we need to rebuild the deck before we realize we need to landscape around it.


*The septic installer promised us that part of the price of the job included them coming back after the yard's had time to settle, to level it off further.  It's been 18 months.  I don't think they're coming back to level it.

I thought I was so smart. I was going to use the self cleaning function on my oven and figured I could throw in some grimy cookie sheets and griddles. The ones with the nonstick coating did not fare so well. The ones without a non-stick coating were fine but it didn't really make them any cleaner looking.

Success! I have accomplished my 2024 homeowner goal of putting new bathtubs upstairs. The hall/guest bath got a new tub which it sorely needed, just in time for in-law guests and the baby. The master bath got a new standing shower to replace the old tub. I'm very happy with all of it except for a needless shelf I put in the standing shower.

The installer subcontractors were great. I may give them a call to ask what it would take to make a functional vent for my kitchen stove.

Speaking of decks I managed to snag some 'surplus' composite decking at about 2/3 of regular price and did the top landing of my new front steps in it. It looks/feels great and I'm happy I won't have to really maintain the stuff for the next decade (It's north facing across a schoolyard and gets blasted by the winter winds)

Now for the steps though which ugh....

Preliminary work is starting for our siding, with the units right before us in full swing. I would expect the bulk of work to happen Monday unless they’re really motivated. But I’m a little annoyed and irrationally bummed, because we’re not getting the color I thought we would.

The old siding colors were sandstone, light grey, cream and light blue. The doors and decorative shutters were in contrasting colors on each set. The new siding colors are sandstone, a slightly darker light grey, dark gray and dark blue. I really like the dark blue and our old/current color is light blue. But the contractors fucked up the order somewhere along the way and now the units next to us are getting the dark blue. Which means ours will probably be dark grey. I wanted the blue! Not fair! (Also the doors are slightly mismatched now.)

There's been a septic-replacement domino effect in our backyard over the last 2+ years.  The timeline was that we started negotiations for the septic tank replacement in Fall of '22, waited and waited and waited on that to start in April '23, then had the big tree cut down right after that was done, then waited waited waited on the grass to grow back in (drought) and to get some landscaping done in the newly barren backyard, the landscaping finally happened in waves over Summer and Fall of '23, but we weren't able to get the ground leveled from where it settled dangerously unevenly over the septic stuff, so we spent Winter '23-'24 negotiating with the landscaper about getting that fixed while trying not to break any ankles every time we went out there, then waited waited waited until Fall '24 to finally have that addressed.  And for some reason with the backyard in a constant state of Not Being Finished, we started using the deck a lot more frequently and became acutely aware of how spongy it was getting, so we finally set about addressing that...

And WHEW!  Finally, 26 months after this all started, I think it's (for the most part) all finished.  They still have to seal the deck, but whatever, that'll happen after it's cured for a bit -- ::careless handwave into an uncertain future::.  And we need to get enough rain to be able to get the grass to grow over the part of the yard that had to be re-leveled.  BUT!  My backyard is done!  No more looking out and seeing the big jobs we can't wait to be past!  And no more workpeople in and out and storing piles of workstuff all over the yard and using the driveway so we have to park at the curb.  It's just us being able to settle in and enjoy the new version of our yard!  I'm so excited!!

That is SUCH a bummer that you ended up with the boring color on your siding, Pedantic Editor Type.  Especially because the blue sounds much funner.  Like, it's one thing to be choosing between greige, beige, and tan, and end up with your least favorite of the three.  But to be downgraded from bold dark pacific blue to light gray?  That's a huge step down.