This post is mostly so I can relax without ranting at people. As such, it is a rant

First Section of housework needed: Projects that are yardwork/non building related

1. Leveling the yard. This is an ongoing thing. We just moved in and there was a recent flood here. As you can guess, the resulting yard wasn’t level, and my uncle (who previously owned the house) didnt’ do much to clean it up. Last year, we cleaned up one of the gardens and such, and this year, my mother decided to level it, and the backyard. We also just bought the wheelbarrow today.
   1. Subjob 1: The backyard. The yard is quite.. not flat. (part due to the dogs my uncle had, part due to terrain, part due to the giant tree.) and my mom wants to level it to cover the roots. Estimated bags of topping soil? At what I can lift without strain (bear in mind, witha  wheelbarrow, the 2 cu ft bags aren’t quite as bad, but..) the back yard is 8′ by 12′, or 96 sq. feet. I’m going to say an average density of 8″ or .75′, which makes it only about 72′ cu ft. Which is (at current prices) only $216. Since we just bought the wheelbarrow, I don’t have much complaints except spending several weekends doing this isn’t that fun, but probably won’t be all bad since this job is a summer job, and I won’t have school constraints.
   2. Subjob 2: Front Garden This makes it to the list of to-do twice, as it’s a job we do.. in about 12 hours. The soil’s bought and my job is simply to dump it where my mother says. Shouldn’t be hard, right? Well, I fully expect my mother to change her mind and be picky, but since the front garden’s small (it also shows up in the completed tasks), it should only take an hour. Hopefully.
   3. However, there are other areas that are due for them.. mostly a side yard, the one mentioned in rose garden, needs to be leveled, although this may just require a lot of labor (it’s mostly clay in that area) and no soil. Not sure yet.
2. Planting trees - This job will just be a 1 hour thing, and around $70 for the trees. 3 Fruit (2 Apple trees, I /do/ live in Washington, after all) and 4 others. This may mean raking, eventually though, and that is a slight pain considering we have a /giant/ willow tree in the backyard. But..The main reason is to a) border the yard, especially near the train tracks, and to stop people from parking on our side yard that borders the yard.
3. Flower gardens. This job is the actual annoying one, as it actually does need 1.1 to go on (and unlike video game levels, 1.1 is the hardest job). It has a few prereqs: See if we have enough bricks to line the inner fence (!!!), then raise it to the leveled area (using slightly more expensive potting soil) and plant flowers… and to do that, we need to move the shale rocks away, and remove the inner fence supports ( see fence) and… yeah.’
4. Fence - When my uncle put it up, he didn’t properly cement it in, and his method of supporting it was putting logs at an angle and nailing them in. While this /is/ a strong support method, my mother doesn’t see the point of them, since it looks ugly. Our fence is now a bit weaker, and no one is quite sure how we’re going to fix it. I suggested vertical supports,but we aren’t quite sure.. (also needs probably restaining)
5. Compost Heap/Area between garage and cellar. It’s currently a compost heap, but there are signs my dad may want to level it and do something else. It’s a small area with some junk in it, but very little can be done about it.
6. BEES! - We have them all over. A bit better now that we’ve gotten rid of most of the split beer and a few hives, but still enough to keep us on our toes. This is an occasionally reoccurring job because we need to check every once in a while - my dad is quite allergic to them. (No, not hornets, thankfully)
7. Gravel and Grass - My uncle was a bit lazy again, and just put gravel down instead of grass in many places. We need to scoop the upper 3inches (for most of it, instead of dumping it somewhere, I got my parents to agree to raking it under the house to attempt and level it as well, and then we plan to get grass strips that are preseeded.. this will be great fun for a weekend. Thankfully, it’s only a 3 or so hour job, since the idea to cover up the concrete was abanonded when my mother was told (repeatedly) that was city property. Also killed the planting of hedges idea .
8. Sidewalk and Gate - A proper latch for the main gate is needed, and my parents are planning on using the bricks to make a proper sidewalk from the landing of the deck to.. nowhere, really. Involves digging and heavy bricks, is sure to be great fun.
9. Turning outside Water faucets - It freezes, guaranteed here, so the water is turned off over winter. The amusing thing is that since my parents don’t remember where it is, they didn’t know how to turn it on today. Since we’re fighting with my uncle over something silly, he isnt’ going to help us. It turns out our water turning valve thing is too short (only 13′.) At least, I suspect that’s the major problem. It’s something minor, but we probably won’t buy a new on til next week, which means more manual watering of the roses and whatever else we plant tomorrow (well, today, it’s already 12:55 here)

That was just the first segment. We’ve already completed moving all the rocks out of the dogs grave, and then moving them to five different spots, and then having to bury some so it looks nice.. swallowed up two weekends totally. And placing the trash can, although my parents are planning to move that, even though they cannot set up it’s nice cement placing again without buying more dirt… *sigh*..

So now let’s move on to outside building repairs. We have a shed, a garage, a cellar and a greenhouse.

Second Section of housework needed: Outside building related work

1. Cleanup. - The “highest” priority chore, it’s on delay because the garage contains junk that needs to be organized or cleaned up. Most of this is probably a weekend chore, since boxes need to be sorted, and stuff put up cleanly. We also need some other things, like a longer water turning wrench.. or whatever it’s called, as I said above. We need to move enough stuff to warrant a large truck of some kind though (a mattress plus two rooms full of tile, carpet and cardboard.)
2. Organizing the Garage - A lower priority chore. It’s amusing in that we have little space to pack things in, also, we do not know how to dispose the flouride tubes overhead and all that, which puts this on the back burner. (Also, the circuit breaker in the garage /could use a cover/)
3. Greenhouse (Fixing the roof and windows) - It’s missing a roof segment and several windows are broken. We have the roof segment, but not the replacement windows, in addition, we need a ladder to fix the roof segment. This means that we’re going to be spending a lot of time here. In addition, the doors are off in that they don’t close or stay open totally, meaning we may need to reseat them. Ongoing project here, and slightly costly.
4. Cellar - The issues here are the roof (not sealed), the door (an absolute pain to open and needing a lock) and the fact it needs to be cleaned. Probably the deep storage part too, as there are serious noises about using it for a storage area, with a box already out there. And rats like boxes. The freeze in there could use a good cleanup and inventorying so we know what’s out there also. This is likely to happen next month, and I’ll probably write about that later.
5. Doors! - During Winter, we had an absolute time getting the garage doors to open or close, to the point where we ended parking the cars outside. We have a trench for one of the doors, but not the other, and I’ll probably end up digging one. In addition, the garage door to the yard doesnt’ close properly, and it, like many others appears not to be sealed right. This is tied in with 1, because as we clean the garage up, fixing the door will be easier.
6. BBEEEEESSS! - The open roof to the cellar..
7. Wood, the woodpile - By this time, we will probably have a) removed the stacks of bricks under the deck and used them for.. lining, most likely. But that still leaves some wood that needs to be cut and the chord or so in the front yard. No clue /when/ this will be started, but it needs to be before August!
8. Deck - The deck was neither stained nor waterproofed. This has to be done soon, and .. will be fun, I imagine. Lots of it.. At least we’re looking at buying a spray gun and compressor to make it not a forever job.

Now Part III… to follow later, I need to do other things.

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