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slap me silly
Nov 1, 2009
Grimey Drawer

Trillian posted:

my neighbor backing his truck into my house. Twice.
Hey, that's totally no big deal because his insurance will cover it.

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SiGmA_X
May 3, 2004
SiGmA_X

emocrat posted:

I mean, cause it looks good :)

We have, I think, .38 of an acre, its completely landscaped. Sometime in the 90s the prior owners and both our neighbors had all 3 houses professionally landscape architected or whatever. It is a lot of work, and it takes some money, but honestly it looks great and it makes me super happy whenever I look at it.Its done well too, pretty low maintenance given the size, well thought out in term of colors throughout the season, large swaths of groundcover that doesn't get mowed.

Yeah so we def paid for some cash labor on this one. Its our first year here, so, we did a few things we did wrong. We didn't do a good enough job cleaning up leaves in the fall, making that job harder. Then we waited about a month too late to do it, so stuff was already coming up and we couldn't just throw it down without paying attention. Next year should be a bit better. 10 cubic yards of double shredded hardwood is 250 delivered, and if we get the timing right laying it out shoud be a lot less work.
I am a huge fan of good landscaping. Sounds like you have a great yard and you're learning how to manage it!

Leperflesh posted:

Raised beds, man. Just plop some raised beds down anywhere, put good gardening soil in them, and grow your veggies in them. They're way nicer anyway, you don't have to get on your knees on the ground to weed or pull out carrots or whatever, you can move them around if you want, you can run irrigation to them without too much issue using just a long hose or something, you can put wire over your seedlings if you need to keep them safe from critters, and you can leave your multi-layered landscaping foundation stuff alone.
I'd definitely do raised beds. Depending on what you're growing, you may want the root depth from digging the ground out, too...

Bozart
Oct 28, 2006

Give me the finger.

SiGmA_X posted:

I'd definitely do raised beds. Depending on what you're growing, you may want the root depth from digging the ground out, too...

You can raise them even more. There is an episode of This Old House where they build a "wheelchair accessible raised planting bed" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFGE3plxSSE. I'm not sure how practical it is to garden in a wheelchair but there would be plenty of room for roots to grow. Looks good too.

e: In my head the episode is Roger doing community service in lieu of a dui conviction it makes no sense.

Bozart fucked around with this message at 03:16 on May 5, 2016

King Burgundy
Sep 17, 2003

I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

GoGoGadgetChris posted:

Where do you live? I use franchise http://www.maidbrigade.com/ which has locations in every state of the USA. I love them. They do a great job, don't break or steal my poo poo, and don't mind that I have two cats that get in their poo poo while they clean.

Looks like they exist and have decent reviews in my area, but the couple bad reviews are indicative of my experience with the others. Still, I'll give them a go if I'm ever up for trying again.

slap me silly
Nov 1, 2009
Grimey Drawer
I had a reasonably good and worthwhile (though not amazing) experience with these guys: http://jacksonvillebrighthouse.com/ But you'd have to be in Jacksonville or one of their other locations.

Catatron Prime
Aug 23, 2010

IT ME



Toilet Rascal

VendaGoat posted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegheny_mound_ant
These fuckers currently have the run of my backyard.

I am currently waging total war against them and the mice that attempt to infest my lawn mower.

I had a delightful surprise while peeling up some old retaining wall blocks a few days ago. The second I tipped the block over, thousands of huge black ants just started swarming up everywhere. Not knowing anything better to do, I poured a bunch of gasoline over everything and lit it on fire.

Haven't seen an ant since :black101:

What's the least passive aggressive way to get my neighbor to take his trashcans in off the sidewalk? I mean, I guess it's better than their dogs getting into the cans and littering garbage all throughout my adjoining driveway, but it blocks the sidewalk, doesn't have a lid, and smells bad. I mean, these are white trash people who run an illegal daycare out of their house, so I'd rather not start a tit for tat because I know I can only lose. Along the same lines, how do I get random people to stop cutting through my driveway?? Even though you can see through to the other side, it's not a through alley :argh:

Thank god the house next to me is more or less abandoned, I don't know how I could deal with more of these knuckleheads. This is what I get for trying to save a few bucks by moving outside the city

Catatron Prime fucked around with this message at 03:44 on May 5, 2016

slap me silly
Nov 1, 2009
Grimey Drawer

OSU_Matthew posted:

get my neighbor to take his trashcans in off the sidewalk
My local metro codes website has an anonymous report form.

OSU_Matthew posted:

illegal daycare
CPS. Dunno if you can really make an anonymous call or not

OSU_Matthew posted:

random people to stop cutting through my driveway
You're hosed. Put down caltrops.

Bozart
Oct 28, 2006

Give me the finger.
Just scatter his trash all through your driveway and blame it on the children???

PS thank you for making the thread slap me silly!

minivanmegafun
Jul 27, 2004

I found a good general contractor over the winter! he got in a motorcycle wreck and isn't working now that it's warm out while he's on the mend

slap me silly
Nov 1, 2009
Grimey Drawer
Ahaha. My first housepainter had a major stroke right after he painted the west wall. So much for getting the north and south walls done!

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

We had a lovely 12' x 4' x 6"... raised patio? I don't even know what to call it, it was just some wooden platform at the edge of the backyard next to a hose spigot, so I guess the idea if you bring poo poo to this wood platform in order to wash it off. Naturally the entire thing was rotting and all of the screws were rusted out, so I took a saw to it, and guess what I found underneath?

Another raised patio, but slightly smaller and much older. I guess when this older one started looking like poo poo someone decided to just build another platform around the old one.

I've since removed all of that poo poo and about a quarter-inch beneath the soil I hit these thick tree roots from a huge nearby tree, which I guess is probably why the raised platform was put here in the first place. I'm debating chopping/digging out the roots and throwing down raised garden beds here.

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

I've also sunk about $100 into building this really nice-looking suspended garden bed (as in it's a raised garden bed that I put a bottom + legs on) that I'm putting on a concrete portion of my back yard. It looks super great, I mean it's totally not an effective way to spend gardening money but I can at least point to it and say "hey I built this cool looking thing and look at all of those nice plants inside of it". But I'm worried about water leaking through and staining the concrete, so I'm thinking of throwing away even more money on building something that diverts water that drips out of the bottom of this suspended garden bed.

Elephanthead
Sep 11, 2008


Toilet Rascal
Only goons would spend so much effort to not bend over.

No Butt Stuff
Jun 10, 2004

My HOA has a no detached buildings rule. They haven't approved a shed ever, despite people asking to put them up at almost every meeting.

So it looks like I'm going to build an attached shed on the side of the garage with access from the outside that I can put my mower and tools in, since that won't cost an arm and a god-damned leg like a third garage stall.

Now I've just got to figure out what I'm going to call it when I submit the request for approval.

Elephanthead
Sep 11, 2008


Toilet Rascal

No Butt Stuff posted:


Now I've just got to figure out what I'm going to call it when I submit the request for approval.

Pergola from Latin pergula ‘projecting roof,’

SiGmA_X
May 3, 2004
SiGmA_X

QuarkJets posted:

I've also sunk about $100 into building this really nice-looking suspended garden bed (as in it's a raised garden bed that I put a bottom + legs on) that I'm putting on a concrete portion of my back yard. It looks super great, I mean it's totally not an effective way to spend gardening money but I can at least point to it and say "hey I built this cool looking thing and look at all of those nice plants inside of it". But I'm worried about water leaking through and staining the concrete, so I'm thinking of throwing away even more money on building something that diverts water that drips out of the bottom of this suspended garden bed.
You aren't going to line it with plastic? Line it with plastic. Otherwise the dirt will rot your lovely wood anyway.

VendaGoat
Nov 1, 2005

No Butt Stuff posted:

Now I've just got to figure out what I'm going to call it when I submit the request for approval.

A very large dog house?

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

SiGmA_X posted:

You aren't going to line it with plastic? Line it with plastic. Otherwise the dirt will rot your lovely wood anyway.

I lined it with garden cloth, which is basically just porous plastic; that should keep dirt in but let water out. But it's not going to perfectly separate those things

Completely sealing with plastic seems like it'd cause other issues

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

No Butt Stuff posted:

My HOA has a no detached buildings rule. They haven't approved a shed ever, despite people asking to put them up at almost every meeting.

So it looks like I'm going to build an attached shed on the side of the garage with access from the outside that I can put my mower and tools in, since that won't cost an arm and a god-damned leg like a third garage stall.

Now I've just got to figure out what I'm going to call it when I submit the request for approval.

Call it a kill room and if anyone voices a complaint pull out a tiny red book and scribble something in it

SiGmA_X
May 3, 2004
SiGmA_X

QuarkJets posted:

Call it a kill room and if anyone voices a complaint pull out a tiny red book and scribble something in it
Yes. This is the best answer.

QuarkJets posted:

I lined it with garden cloth, which is basically just porous plastic; that should keep dirt in but let water out. But it's not going to perfectly separate those things

Completely sealing with plastic seems like it'd cause other issues
Maybe it's a climate thing. Google makes me think it is. I see many reports of plastic lined beds rotting! My folks used stained cedar and no lining without an issue, a friend used plastic sheeting in the mid west. Neither were on a porch, that's just silly ;)

Now you need a big rear end drip tray. I'd get a TIG, large metal brake, and some alum and have at it!

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

QuarkJets posted:

I lined it with garden cloth, which is basically just porous plastic; that should keep dirt in but let water out. But it's not going to perfectly separate those things

Completely sealing with plastic seems like it'd cause other issues

Make sure your raised bed is made of something that won't leach anything into the soil you're growing food in. For example, most pressure-treated wood is not suitable for growing food. So is most paint, a lot of different wood stains, etc. If you're just growing flowers then w/e of course.

Drainage of some kind is useful, though. The best approach for a food-growing planter is probably to line it with nonpermeable food-safe plastic, but then add a few evenly-spaced drain holes, and deal with whatever comes out of those holes specifically.

Zhentar
Sep 28, 2003

Brilliant Master Genius

Leperflesh posted:

Make sure your raised bed is made of something that won't leach anything into the soil you're growing food in. For example, most pressure-treated wood is not suitable for growing food. So is most paint, a lot of different wood stains, etc. If you're just growing flowers then w/e of course.

If you're not going out of your way to find direct burial rated arsenic treated wood, pressure treated wood is fine. The modern ACQ and Copper Azole treatments aren't a health hazard at moderate consumption levels. They aren't that good for the plants themselves if they're exposed, but 'rot-resistant' woods like Cedar are just naturally impregnated with biocidal compounds so they aren't any better in that aspect (it's not really a problem for either, since not much of it leaches).

VendaGoat
Nov 1, 2005
Planted my tomatoes today. :3:

minivanmegafun
Jul 27, 2004

My injured contractor contacted me today to say he has a rototiller I can borrow at any time to start on my garden :3:

minivanmegafun
Jul 27, 2004

Now if only he could get better and start working on my sun porch before the leaky roof completely destroys it. I think I might start removing the 1970s-era paneling from the interior this weekend.

Zhentar
Sep 28, 2003

Brilliant Master Genius

VendaGoat posted:

Planted my tomatoes today. :3:

Planted my strawberries! I just hope I can keep the deer from eating them all this year.

Catatron Prime
Aug 23, 2010

IT ME



Toilet Rascal

VendaGoat posted:

Planted my tomatoes today. :3:

:hfive:

That's great! What all varieties did you plant? Any plans for other edibles?

I'm still working on building a raised bed garden, my girlfriend and I are planning on getting some starter plants from the farmers market next Saturday. Still looking around at different composting solutions to implement.

100 HOGS AGREE
Oct 13, 2007
Grimey Drawer
I've been sick for a week so I never got around to getting the mower my dad gave me started. Yard's looking pretty rough.

I think I'll keep putting it off until I see that both my neighbors have mowed first. Play some lawn chicken.

VendaGoat
Nov 1, 2005

OSU_Matthew posted:

:hfive:

That's great! What all varieties did you plant? Any plans for other edibles?

I'm still working on building a raised bed garden, my girlfriend and I are planning on getting some starter plants from the farmers market next Saturday. Still looking around at different composting solutions to implement.

Just sticking with tomatoes, as the little garden I have is just that. Little.

So, six Super Sweet 100's went into the ground. Which will yeild enough tomatoes to make me sick of them and a bunch to give away.

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

Leperflesh posted:

Make sure your raised bed is made of something that won't leach anything into the soil you're growing food in. For example, most pressure-treated wood is not suitable for growing food. So is most paint, a lot of different wood stains, etc. If you're just growing flowers then w/e of course.

Drainage of some kind is useful, though. The best approach for a food-growing planter is probably to line it with nonpermeable food-safe plastic, but then add a few evenly-spaced drain holes, and deal with whatever comes out of those holes specifically.

So I actually did a lot of research on this back when I was planning this project and these were my findings on treated lumber:

1) Older pressure-treated wood was a concern, since one of the components was arsenic (CCA), but modern pressure-treated wood that you pick up at the hardware store is either going to be borate-treated (which is harmless to humans) or copper-treated (which is also basically harmless; there are some illnesses related to having too much copper in your system but those are irrelevant to the small quantities that we're talking about).

2) Of the modern varieties, leaching into the soil occurs but in extremely small quantities. Plant roots then only absorb an extremely small amount of that extremely small amount. Even if you're not convinced that copper is harmless to humans, the quantity found in the plants growing in copper-treated beds is no greater than what is found in plants grown elsewhere.

3) Lots of bloggers still say not to use pressure-treated wood because of "toxins" leaching into the food but these claims aren't really not based on any science at all. Back in the CCA days there was substantial evidence for these claims, but the EPA was pressured into substantially restricting CCA production and now hardware stores basically don't carry it. But if you want to be sure, the type of pressure treatment is always printed right on the wood, so if you see CCA then you shouldn't use it.

The real problem with treated wood is that you have to wait around for it to dry out if you want to give it a nice finish. This can take a couple of weeks and I didn't want to sit around and wait for that. What I wound up going with was A) untreated wood that I B) stained a nice color and C) sealed with polyurethane. I researched sealants pretty well in addition to treated lumber, and polyurethane doesn't "leach" at all, it's basically just a layer of hard plastic once it dries and is well-known for being food-safe. I also threw down a layer of garden cloth and a layer of rocks on top of that, further reducing the chance of any "leaching" of anything (garden cloth itself is food-safe so long as you're not buying one of the kinds advertised to come with a layer of weed killer)

Sound_man
Aug 25, 2004
Rocking to the 80s
Any thoughts on hiring an interior designer? I could use some help with the master bed and bath rooms and my entry way. I can handle painting and assembly of furniture but I have no idea how to pick out colors, fabrics and wall treatments. Whats the ball park price range for something like that?

Axiem
Oct 19, 2005

I want to leave my mind blank, but I'm terrified of what will happen if I do
There are lots of guides floating around giving schedules for doing things around the house ("Check your smoke detectors every three months", "In October, make sure to pick up a bag of salt for when it snows", and so on). How do people keep up with these schedules, and remember when to do things? They just seem so easy to forget.

VendaGoat
Nov 1, 2005

Axiem posted:

There are lots of guides floating around giving schedules for doing things around the house ("Check your smoke detectors every three months", "In October, make sure to pick up a bag of salt for when it snows", and so on). How do people keep up with these schedules, and remember when to do things? They just seem so easy to forget.

Only because this isn't GBS do you get a effort response.

Sometimes you do forget. It's all part of the whimsy of life and home ownership.

Sometimes you plan everything out, set a budget, stick to it 100% and then your water heater blows out its guts and your furnace along with it. Suddenly you're staring down a $5000 bill for who the gently caress knows what? At the end of the day though, it's yours. No land lords. No shared wall neighbors. No dick heads or jerks telling you how or what you should do with your life. You take responsibility for your piece and you do as you will. And if you decide to say gently caress you to the powers that be, they'll come for you, in due time. As I have seen with friends, acquaintances and such, over the years.

In the grand scheme of things though. A missed opportunity to save on a bag of salt or mulch, putting off mowing your lawn because of rain or something else is the trivialities of life.

You have a roof over your head. It's your roof and you get to live the way you wish to. That's what becomes important.

Zanthia
Dec 2, 2014

Axiem posted:

There are lots of guides floating around giving schedules for doing things around the house ("Check your smoke detectors every three months", "In October, make sure to pick up a bag of salt for when it snows", and so on). How do people keep up with these schedules, and remember when to do things? They just seem so easy to forget.

How do people keep up with these schedules? They don't. Almost no one has time to do everything on those lists. They're written by moon people.

For the most part, you're going to have "spring cleanup" tasks and "prepare for winter" tasks. Spring cleanup is basically whatever you need to do to make sure rain won't ruin your house and bugs won't move in anywhere you care about. Winter prep is making sure snow won't ruin your stuff or kill you, and also that food/shelter-seeking critters won't move in anywhere you care about. Along the way, you'll have things like "replace smoke detector batteries" and "switch the furnace filter" but those will probably fall in with seasonal maintenance because that's the only way you'll ever remember to do them before a machine starts yelling at you to PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO IT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

Bonus points if you make it as far as "make sure the house doesn't look like poo poo" tasks. I did have a Google calendar for yardwork, so you could go that route if you want to make sure you're following a fairly set schedule.

Hughlander
May 11, 2005

Axiem posted:

There are lots of guides floating around giving schedules for doing things around the house ("Check your smoke detectors every three months", "In October, make sure to pick up a bag of salt for when it snows", and so on). How do people keep up with these schedules, and remember when to do things? They just seem so easy to forget.

Google calendar for the past 8 years. Oh it's the first of the month, change the filter in the fridge.

adorai
Nov 2, 2002

10/27/04 Never forget
Grimey Drawer
My wife keeps nagging me to replace our river rock with mulch and I always tell her no. She almost wore me down. Thanks to this thread for reinvigorating me.

minivanmegafun
Jul 27, 2004

oh my god gently caress bamboo and gently caress the previous owner for planting that poo poo it never loving dies no matter how many times we try to dig it all up

mastershakeman
Oct 28, 2008

by vyelkin
How do I figure out if my weird maybe 3 season, maybe 4 season room is insulated in the walls or ceiling without tearing them open?

Also where can I get window screens made? Pella brand for some of them and they want to charge $80 per replacement screen which seems high. Plus I need to redo the supports of these bay windows since they're sagging and making the windows not open/close properly. It's going to be cheaper to just run the air conditioner.

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

mastershakeman posted:

How do I figure out if my weird maybe 3 season, maybe 4 season room is insulated in the walls or ceiling without tearing them open?

Also where can I get window screens made? Pella brand for some of them and they want to charge $80 per replacement screen which seems high. Plus I need to redo the supports of these bay windows since they're sagging and making the windows not open/close properly. It's going to be cheaper to just run the air conditioner.

For walls, can't you just poke a small hole somewhere inconspicuous and then patch it up? If you find insulation then it's a good bet that the entire wall is insulated. You could hypothetically use an IR camera but that's really only going to work for interior walls, where it doesn't really matter (well, maybe it matters for walls facing a garage, then that might work)

For the ceiling, do you have an attic or any sort of space above the rooms you care about that you can reach? That's probably the safest bet.

Custom screens cost an arm and a leg no matter where I've looked, relatively few places do them and they know that they can charge a decent amount. I'm hoping someone else comes along and corrects me with some awesome discount custom screen place, but right now that price doesn't sound crazy, based on my experience

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Bozart
Oct 28, 2006

Give me the finger.

minivanmegafun posted:

oh my god gently caress bamboo and gently caress the previous owner for planting that poo poo it never loving dies no matter how many times we try to dig it all up

Cover it with black plastic sheets for a couple weeks, everything dies.

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