Home Improvements

[THEMEANOGRE]

Mom has been having some work done around the house. It is coming along nicely.
She started with a metal roof. It is pretty much done. Next has been replacing the old wooden privacy fence. That job is about half done. She went with a vinyl privacy fence instead of wood. There are a few other projects yet to be done. I'll let y'all know about them as time goes on.

[Deacon Klaus]

Shame on you for having your poor mom risk her life to put on a metal roof.

What's wrong with you pitching in? Are you a DAV?

[THEMEANOGRE]

Actually, I am a veteran who is disabled. I didn't have the "good" fortune to be a Disbled Veteran. Plus you really ought to go back and reread the first line of the post.
I said she is HAVING the work done, not that she is doing the work. Were I physically capable all this work would've been done within a couple months of us moving in.

[Spartan]

Oops! My bad! Sorry.

Thanks for your service to our country.

[cnjbond]

Oops! My bad! Sorry.

Thanks for your service to our country.
What do you have to be sorry about unless...drum roll please...you and the Deacon are one and the same??!!! :-0

[Rick]

Busted!!!

[cityboy]

What do you have to be sorry about unless...drum roll please...you and the Deacon are one and the same??!!! :-0

Whoa, good catch -- busted!

[Rick]

I think the house looks nice.

[CenTexDave]

Mean: Not trying to be nosy, but why did she go with a metal roof, who is doing it and what's the cost?

[THEMEANOGRE]

I think the house looks nice.

Thanks, Rick.
Dave, she went with metal because it is less effort to maintain. H.I.S./ Screens& Covers is her contractor. Don't get me to lying about costs. I suppose you could ask, she's at the VFW a couple times a week.

[THEMEANOGRE]

Geez, I'm getting as bad as others at updating on ongoing projects.
The fence has been finished for about a week. It looks really good. Although with the color of the fence (white) a sunny day kind of requires sunglasses just to look out the back windows. Mom is using some of the leftover material to erect a couple of blind panels to keep the neighbors from being able to look over the fence. Their backyard sits a little higher than ours. Plus, they'll provide a little bit of a wind break for the back porch. She also had the ramps at the front and back doors replaced. When she first bought this house there were large drops at each door that were too big for my wheelchair to negotiate without help. So, she'd had concrete ramps installed. They started coming apart almost the first time I used them. She went to a local welding shop and got steel ones done. She has plans with her contracter to do some work to improve accessibility for my bathroom. That should start real soon. Then our next big project should be finishing the pond.
A decent sized inground pool came with the house (VA repo). Neither Mother or I swims and we HAD to do something with it. We examined several options. A fish pond was the cheapest. A couple summers ago we had a commercial aquarium guy come from Temple to clean it up and get us started. We were his first pool conversion. We've been working at it in fits and starts. When we've got the way we want we're planning an unveiling party.

[CenTexDave]

Tell me more about this swimming pool conversion to a fish pond please.
I have an inground pool. Kids are grown and gone, nobody has swam in it in 3 years.
Waste of money. I quit trying to keep up with the cleaning of it.

[THEMEANOGRE]

We drained it and used pressure washers to to clean the accumulated dirt out. Then while it was refilling Doug, the aquarium guy from Temple, disconnected the pump/ filter and installed an aerator system. We added aquatic plants and livestock (minnows from a bait shop). The plants turned the water muddy because they weren't properly prepared. There was dirt in the some of the plants when they were installed.

The way to prepare the plants is to dump the pots. Scrub them out, scrub the rocks thoroughly to remove any soil, then rinse the roots of the plants well to remove any soil. Then repot the plants using just rocks. It is probably best to not use limestone based gravel as it will leave your water milky looking.

To feed the fish we use simple goldfish food. Mother and I use two different styles of fish food. I generally use flakes. The smaller fish love these. Mother uses the pellets and the bigger fish really go for these. We feed throughout the spring, summer and early fall. After the overnight air temps start to dip below the upper 60's it is time to suspend feeding for the season because the fish prefer to stay where the water is warmer.

On cleaning, we have a hydraulic vacuum cleaner. Mom was never able to make it work right. But we'll have my health aide give it a try this spring.
Aquatic plants may be obtained at the Main Street Nursery in downtown Copperas Cove. Rosa also has mosquito fish to eat the mosqito eggs that find their way into static water.

And for those wanting pictures of these projects, MEA CULPA, I just never thought to take any. However, when they do the work on my bathroom, I'll take some.

[JoAnn Purser]

Tell me more about this swimming pool conversion to a fish pond please.
I have an inground pool. Kids are grown and gone, nobody has swam in it in 3 years.
Waste of money. I quit trying to keep up with the cleaning of it.

In Austin the Pond Society has an annual tour of ponds at peoples homes that is July each year.

http://www.austinpondsociety.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1


The ponds are from 10 gallons to lakes on sprawling property (some are pools). It is two days of ponds and is a great weekend trip.

The landscaping done by some are great too.

[THEMEANOGRE]

Well, this spate of projects is going a whole lot faster than I thought it would. The contracters started on my bathroom yestrday. They got the old tub out and the new shower pan in. They've been here all morning and have the wall all tiled. They're taking a break to let the mastic set, then they'll grout. Tomorrow they'll fix the flange on the toilet and do the floor tile. I just finished getting myself a room for tomorrow night. I've taken a few pictures that I'll put up here when they're done.

[THEMEANOGRE]

Wow, they're done. I think it looks pretty good. Here's some pix. See if you like their work.

[cnjbond]

Where's the beef...I mean the pics?

[THEMEANOGRE]

Sorry Chuck, I tried to load them, but it didn't work the first time. Thanx 2Rick, I have the procedures to follow so I'm going to try again. Here goes!

The first pic is before.

[THEMEANOGRE]

These are shots taken during Phase 1 of remodelling my bathroom.

[THEMEANOGRE]

And finally, an after shot of Phase 1.

[THEMEANOGRE]

And here, I'll try to get all of Phase 2 into one post.
#1: Before
#2: During
#3: After
#4: The completed job.

[cnjbond]

It looks good Mo, how is it working out for you?

[THEMEANOGRE]

Won't know until tomorrow. The installers said to give it that long to set.

[Texas Immigrant]

Well? Have you taken a shower yet??:-s

[THEMEANOGRE]

Actually, I have taken several. It works great. It's not quite the way I had envisioned it but it still works.
Now, we need the weather to get and stay decent enough to work on the pond.

[Texas Immigrant]

It looks great! Good luck with the pond.

[THEMEANOGRE]

You will come to help us unveil it, right?

[Rick]

The bathroom looks great!

[EtherealFlame]

You are tickling my envy bone with those floors! I live in a rental that has sheet vinyl and I constantly tell myself if they take me up on my offer to buy this house from them that is the first thing that is going!

[CenTexDave]

Yeah, but those tile floors can be cold to the feet on these winter mornings! Wakes you up quick, though.

[Rick]

When we built ours, we chose tile in every room of our house except the bedrooms. So glad we did. Had we not been on a farm, we would have had wood flooring in the living room. But they advised against it because of rocks in shoes scratching it up. It proved to be good advice.

Plus, when sparks fly out of the fireplace, no worries about carpet like the old house.

[THEMEANOGRE]

Unless you're bare foot and toasting your tootsies by the fire.
BTW, both of those examples are compelling reasons for using the chainmail curtains with which many fireplaces are equipped.

[THEMEANOGRE]

I've noticed an advantage to a metal roof.
When it is icy and snowy, a metal roof seems to be the first one to shed the blanket. Looking at some of the neighbors roofs, the accumulated snow is slowly melting away, while ours the snow seems to lose its grip on the metal and slide down into the guttering until that gets full. Then any leftover slides over the outer lip and drops onto the ground.

[Rick]

Think there's a danger of the weight of the snow harming the gutters?

I like that the snow takes a while to melt off the roof, that indicates that the insulation is working...lol