Adventures in Homeownership

We got some things done over the weekend.

Hubby fixed Leak #1 in the dishwasher.

Then, after the dishwasher sprung Leak #2, he fixed that one too.

He also busted his tail to paint the baseboards in the living room and reinstall them. Now we just have to paint and reinstall the dining room baseboards, touch up the wall paint in the living room, and caulk all the way around. (This picture shows where the old hardwood used to be. It was thicker than the carpet, so the baseboards actually slanted upwards to get to the proper height. This is the worst area in need of touching up.)

Our old laminate flooring was adopted off the floor of our garage by its new owner! Hubby’s car now fits in the garage again.

I also bought more seeds (pole beans and jalapenos) . I’m growing marigolds, a few nasturtiums (only three out of 12 came up?), alyssum, sweet peas, and now jalapeno peppers inside. The marigolds and nasturtiums are companion plants for the veggie garden. I soaked the sweet peas overnight and I tried to file through the shell a little bit but they don’t look promising…did I do something wrong?

Here are the alyssum coming right up! The other side of the tray are sweet peas….

But only one sweet pea is coming up right now…. (at least I think that’s a sweet pea…) Show us your face man!

The marigolds are doing great ^

And the few nasturtiums are too…

I dug out the non-performing nasturtium seeds from the other side of this tray and now the jalapenos are planted there instead.

I pulled every weed and invading clump of grass I could find in the front garden. Then I spread two bags of new mulch. Two bags is clearly woeful. I think we’ll need about 4 more. The new mulch is really nice – it’s cut much finer than the old stuff. I like it 🙂 And I noticed the old mulch that got mixed into the soil when we planted bulbs last fall is rotting really nicely under the surface. (only in the context of our awful clay soil would I ever use the phrase “rotting nicely”!)

I “pinched’ (ok, snipped) the top sections of my mums which are now 4-6 inches tall (apparently the height when you’re supposed to do that….)

I planted 12 red daylily bulbs. Seven in front, five in back. I even mixed compost into their backfilled soil and sprinkled some more compost on top. I’ve heard plants really like the “compost tea” that trickles down from compost on top the soil. I’ve also heard you should keep compost away from the stems of your plants or it could burn them in the summertime.

Now the rest of my ordered plants need to arrive so I can get those in the ground too.

And now for the bad news. This makes me very grumpy. After major rain last week, we have a new leak in our roof, evidenced by a nice water spot on our vaulted ceiling in the family room. This is in addition to another leak (in the attic over the master bath) that was supposedly fixed last summer but we suspect is probably leaking again.

And this is what the bathroom ceiling damage looked like when we moved in last summer (and the roof was THE first thing we had fixed):

Unfortunately, here’s how it looks now:

I traced the stain last summer so we could see if it started spreading. It definitely got darker, but since the drywall was already damaged, we thought maybe it was getting darker just from the steam from the shower. But now it’s clear the damage is spreading outside the tracing. Hubby will stick his head up in the attic tonight to see if we can verify the leak is still there or not.

The bathroom will be redone at some point in the future, so this stain really didn’t worry us….until it started growing! The stain in the family room worries me more because I don’t know what’s involved with fixing it.

Grrr!