Refinish the Backyard Porch

The weather has been warm and dry, so it seems like a good idea to refinish the back deck. The deck is made of ipe, and has turned silver almost everywhere.

First, we move everything off the back deck. Everything except the gas grill. It took 3 or 4 guys to get it up on the deck, and it would be very difficult to get it down. But since it is on wheels, I can just move it around to work around it.

Next, I pressure wash the whole deck. This takes a day or two. I have a small consumer level power washer, and that seems to work well enough. It then takes 3 or 4 days for the deck to dry completely.









We use Australian Timber Oil by Cabot to finish the deck. I rub it on with a lambs wool applicator since that is what the can recommends. The deck has a lot of splinters, suggesting that maybe I should have sanded it after the power wash.
It took 2 full gallons to cover the deck.








I still have the corner under the gas grill to coat. I have a small quart can to use for that area.

Extracting the rock

Now that we have dug out all the dirt, we need to get the rock out. We start with all the exposed rock.




We start breaking the rock up into smaller pieces.



And once it is broken up into manageable pieces -- 80 to 200 pounds -- we can pull it out, leaving behind a lot of smaller pieces.




What to do with the larger pieces? We haul them around to the front of the house and put them on the curb. We started with two rocks from before the heart surgery.





and now we have a much larger crowd. We should be able to get rid of these by posting them on Craig's List as "Landscape Rocks". But we may wait until we get even more out of the back.

Completion of Excavation in the South Pit

October 2010

I've finished excavating the rectangular area between the fence and the raised garden. By that, I mean that all the dirt has been removed. This exposes the
underlying rock structure.




Notice that from the other angle there is clearly a round hole in the rock.



Let's look at that up close. This hole was put in for an ornamental cherry or peach tree that was part of the original landscaping. The tree died a couple years ago, so it lasted about 20 years. One problem might have been that it just did not have any place to grow to other than it's hole.

There are actually two holes -- there is another one closer to the fence that I put in a couple years ago for an olive tree. It didn't last thru the first winter.




The next step will be to remove this exposed later of rock. There are some probable seams between the rocks, but even so, the rocks themselves are much too large to be lifted out. I'll have to use the jackhammer to break them up into more manageable pieces of no more than a couple hundred pounds each.

Once the rock is removed, I will be able to put back the dirt, upgraded with as much organic material as I can get -- leaves and grass clippings. Then when we want to plant another tree, there should be a lot of space for it to expand into.

Digging in the South Pit

October 2010


I'm back to work digging. I was out for awhile with heart surgery, but they say I can go back to digging now. When I left off in June, the corner of the back yard looked like this:




So getting back to work, I enlarged the area that had been excavated to a rectangle.



We had a problem that the dog fell into the pit and couldn't find her way out, so I build a short PVC fence to keep her out.



The next few days were just expanding the excavated area.






This morning (Friday, 8 Oct), was more of the same -- expanding the area that we have dug down to rock.



Of course, we need a place to put all the dirt being dug out. We get about two or three wheelbarrows of dirt for every one of rock.




The pile of dirt just gets bigger, day by day.

Mortgage paid off

We made our last mortgage payment.

When the house was built in 1986, we took out a 30-year mortage to finance it.

• 15 July 1986 -- 30-year mortgage for $200,000 at 8.5% interest
• 15 April 1994 -- 30-year mortgage for $159,200 at 5.99% interest
• 11 December 2000 -- 15-year mortgage for $140,000 at 7.25% interest
• 14 October 2002 -- 15-year mortgage for $125,800 at 5.75% interest

We were aggressive in paying extra principal when possible.  Even so, it took 24 years and $227,651 in interest to pay off the original $200,000 mortgage.

End of work for awhile

Sprinkler system repair

We have been having a minor water leakage problem in the back yard. The initial problem was there was a damp spot in the back yard right at the fence. I tried to read the meter at the street, and then read it again 3 hours later with no one home but me. No change in the meter. So I wasn't sure it was ours.

But when I started to dig there, I found a sprinkler head. So I took the head out and capped it off. That stopped the leak. Or at least it did at that spot. Now there was a new wet spot out in the yard. Again, this was another head and I capped it off. I want to excavate and rebuild this section of the back yard anyway.

This worked for several weeks, then a new wet spot showed up about where the zone control valve should be. I have never replaced a control value, and it turns out I need to have open heart surgery, so I called Jonathon Griesheimer, who had previously replaced the main sprinkler control value for me. His phone is 512-836-6539. I didn't have the time to figure out what the problem was before I went in for surgery.

But while I was in the hospital, he came out, figured out the problem and put in a new valve. There was an indirect comment, thru my girlfriend's daughter that the valve is too far underground. Which would be expected, since we have been raising the level of part of the back yard in this area. This then took 3 hours of labor to dig everything up and replace the leaking parts. $260.

So that solves that problem, and I'll just have to wait for another 6 weeks or so before I can consider going back to work.

Replacing a toilet in the guest bathroom

We've had a suspicion that the toilet in the guest bathroom leaks, at a low level. But it also has a tendency to get clogged, and it's a 25 year old model, so the current ones should use much less water. And that bathroom is next up on interior remodelling, so rather than repair it, we will just replace it. 

The unit we have in the back bathroom seems to be working fairly well. It's an American Standard Champion 4 model. We can get this from Home Depot, but only in white. Linda says she wants "Linen" which is an off-white, and that needs to be special-ordered. I order it on 22 May 2010. $500.93 for the Toilet -- Right Height, Elongated Bowl, plus the matching toilet seat. It finally comes in on 8 June, but then we have Lauren's high school graduation, so I don't get to installing it until 13 June. 

Everything goes very well at first. Removing the old toilet is as expected. Removing a bunch of bolts. Turn the water off at the wall. Take the pieces outside, with as little water leakage as possible. Clean out the old wax ring that was under the old toilet. 

Turn off the water supply to the house, and replace the cut-off valve at the wall with a new one. I have trouble putting the new wax ring in place. The box with the wax ring says to press it on the up-side down toilet and then "set it in place". But when I flip the toilet over, the wax ring falls off. And positioning the new toilet bowl over the bolts is difficult, since you can't see the bolts when they are under the toilet bowl. 

 Finally get it set in place, and bolted down. Then attach the tank, and a new water supply line. Everything goes together just right -- no leaks. 

Then flush the toilet the first time, and it leaks under the bowl -- flowing gently out along the floor. 

So I take everything apart. The water supply line. The tank. Remove the bowl. The wax ring had shifted and half covered the hole into the floor. Remove it. Back to Home Depot to get another wax ring. Reinstall just the bowl. Test it this time by pouring water into the bowl with a bucket. Still leaks. Take it apart. The ring is pretty much in the right place. But normally when I've put in toilets, after installing the wax ring and putting the bowl on top, it's squishy as the bowl compress the wax ring into place, sandwiching it between the floor and the bowl, spreading out slightly and sealing everything. I had not noticed that this time. So it would seem that this unit is a bit further from the floor than a normal toilet bowl. 

Back to Home Depot again. In addition to the normal wax ring, they have an "extra thick" one. Costs an extra dollar, but it's about twice as deep. Put that in place around the hole in the floor. Position the bowl on a couple of pieces of wood to hold it up until the bolts show through the bolt holes, then pull the wood out and lower the toilet bowl. Feel it squishing the wax ring as I press down on the bowl and tighten the bolts. This time it works; no leaks. Put the rest of it back together. 

Altogether it took about 6 hours, but that included three installations, two removals, and two trips to Home Depot.

Digging in the corner of the yard

Not much to report for this weekend. I was able to dig for a couple of hours on Sunday. I'm starting in a new corner of the yard. The objective is to clean out this section of rocks, and upgrade the soil, so we can move the oak trees from the area by the box over here.




I'm starting in the corner and working my way out. I'm still a foot or so away from the actual fence line, so that it holds the fence in place while I dig. Once I get it in the condition I want, I'll pour an edge wall with rocks on top next to the fence, to keep things from digging in or out under the fence.

So far it looks like a classical dig. Lots of smallish rocks -- smaller than a watermelon -- and a couple of really big ones. I've pulled them out of the hole, but I still need to move them out of the way. I'm not sure yet how much dirt is under the big rocks; I'll work more on it next weekend, with any luck.

Changing the Stovetop

Ever since the house was built, it's had a Thermador electric stove top. It's showing its age. One light doesn't work any more, and the pans under the burners are in bad shape. I've replaced them at least twice, but still they get baked-on spills. And Linda believes that a gas stove is better, so we are going to switch it out for a gas model.



Consumer Reports lists the Sears Kenmore Elite 3249 as its top ranked 36-inch gas cooktop, and after looking at several places, we choose it. We were unable to find one in stock, that we could actually look at, so we went over to Sears to order one. As it happens, just the day before, someone had returned a new one, and so they had an open box of that exact model, in Stainless Steel, on display for half-off. So we took it.

As you might expect, things are not perfect, as it was missing the installation instructions. With some work, I found a PDF file of the installation instructions on-line and printed them out. I started the installation early on Saturday and finished up about 8 pm, so it took all day, and three trips to Home Depot.

The first problem was to remove the old cooktop and make the hole in the counter larger. The depth is okay, but we are replacing a 30 inch cooktop with a 36 inch cooktop, so I needed to make the hole wider.



Once that was done, I dropped the cooktop in place. This looks like it is almost done, but most of the work is still ahead.

The obvious work is attaching the gas line to the cooktop. The builder had put the gas line in, but just capped it off. I had to remove the cap and put a cut-off valve on. Then I could run the line from the cut-off valve to the cooktop itself. That was actually fairly easy. You have to be careful to seal all the connections, and then test afterwards with soapy water to look for any leaks (which will make bubbles).

The really difficult part was providing it electrical power. The electrical cooktop had a 220 volt direct connection. This same circuit runs the wall oven next door to the cooktop. It would be possible to use half the 220 to get the 110 that the gas cooktop needs, but not safe. Since the oven runs on the 220 circuit, I had to just cap it off and seal it away.

There are some 110 circuits that run around the counters to provide power for kitchen appliances, so I tapped off one of them and ran a wire down under the cabinet and put in a new outlet. That was the most difficult part -- running the extra wire down in the exterior wall behind the cooktop. But it didn't have to be pretty; it just had to be right.




So with these tasks complete, we now have a new gas stove top.



The next project in the kitchen should be new counter tops. Granite, I assume.

Another spot to dig -- the South Pit

I dug back to the fence line along the right side of the electrical box, getting all of the stump and it's roots out. Going all the way down to bed-rock, I found the trench that runs along the fence (from the corner of the Bamboo Grove that holds the electrical, telephone and cable wiring.

Then I filled it back in, at least partially.




This has accomplished the basic goal for this section at this time -- removing the stump, clearing out the rocks, and making the soil better by increasing its organic content. I've mixed a lot of last Fall's leaves into this dirt as it was shovelled out, and then shovelled back in.

It appears that we will want to move the remaining trees. These are Shin Oaks -- a small native oak for Central Texas. It likes full sun, has low water requirements and likes the limestone based soil. So it's a nice tree, and we don't want to lose it, but it's sort of in an inconvenient place. My idea is to move it over to the corner of the yard.



So that will be the next area to dig. We will dig this area up, to get down to bedrock, clean out the rocks and improve the soil, then move the Shin Oaks over to that area and see if we can get them to live there. That will allow me to continue the excavations by the electrical box.



This area is where the compost pile was -- we've moved it now to back by the Bamboo Grove. Also we have had a couple of trees planted in this area, so the soil is somewhat disturbed and uneven; after the trees were put in or out, the soil settled. So part of the goal is to even up this part of the yard. We will need to be careful, since it will settle after we are done.