| Home and Garden Page Fall 2002 |
| HOME REPAIR & IMPROVEMENT This Old House Sears - Craftsman rules! Home Depot - our home away from home |
| November As we started to use of heater this fall, we noticed that the furnace vent in the basement was spitting out soot. We called and had our oil company service the furnace and they recommended we have the chimney swept. E & E Chimney Sweeps, in Fairless Hills, was recommended to us. The guy that came out was very informative and helpful. He had to clean out a lot of wet soot, which was packed into the base of the chimney. He also installed a cap on the top of the chimney, to keep water, birds, etc. out of it. We had been worried that we would need to have the chimney relined, since as far as we know it is original to the house (which is 40+ years old), but he said that would probably be a few years away yet. Our neighbors weren't so lucky. Their lining was cracked and in order to meet local code, they had to replace both the lining and their furnace. September We have just started our prep work for the beginning of fall and winter. Earlier this month we stained our deck in a cedar tone. We used Behr Deck Plus Wood-Toned Waterproofing Wood Finish. It went on quick and easy, with minimal clean-up. It was great to see the rain bead up when it rained a few days later. We have had great luck with Behr - our interior walls are all painted with Behr products. As we are getting caught up on our bills, and we were able to roll the loan for our windows and siding into the refinance of our mortgage, we are trying to decide which project to start first. We still have a lot of things we would like to do with the house. Below is a listing of some of them. * Add a bathroom to the basement (We only have 1 full bath right now.) * Redo the kitchen floors with ceramice tile (The current linoleum floor squeeks like crazy, because it was installed incorrectly.) * Paint the kitchen (It is the only other room in the house besides the bathroom, which we have not painted.) * Remodel the current bathroom (which has several problems, most of which are cosmetic) * Segment off the basement with drywall to create an office and close in Mike's workshop area |
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| November The leaves have really started to come down. I suspect I will be spending a lot of time raking them up this year. Even the trees out front, which we pruned back hard this past spring, grew back a lot of its leaves this summer. I will have to try and take some pictures of the trees in the back yards. The one maple is a brilliant red and the other is a gorgeous orange. In October, we amended the soil in the beds that I emptied in September, which seems to have solved our fungus problem. I pulled up all of my dahlias, as I wasn't sure if they would survive the winter. I placed all of the perennials I had in containers into the beds, so that they can get their roots established before winter hits. They all seemed to have survived the move and hopefully they will be back at full strength in the spring. Mike sprinkled around some more grass seed, as we still have a few bare patches around where we removed trees. September We had a really windy day a few weeks ago, which toppled several of my taller plants, including three of my cactus dahlias - which were partially uprooted. I will have to remember to stake them next year, as they just get too big for their own good. It won't be long before I have to dig them up for the winter. I keep promising myself that I will properly store and label them this year. (I placed my tubers from last year in our shed and they became the bedroom for a cute little family of mice.) I have also, much to Mike's dismay, begun planning for next year. I have been looking through my catalogs and books determined to look only at perennials. I have decided that I just am not as motivated of a gardener as I probably should be. Next year I am going for a much more easy to maintain garden, with more perennials and drought tolerant plants. I was hoping to have a lot of planters filled this year, but our drought made that fairly difficult, as I am not a diligent waterer. August I had to pull out my snapdragons, as they had become infected with some sort of fungus. I sprayed fungicide all over the bed, but it doesn't seem to want to die. If nothing else, hopefully winter will kill it off. |
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