Adventures in Remuddling

Before the pavers can be laid, a 2″ bed of sand is usually placed and screeded on top of the gravel. With normal pavers, I would have used sand, but we’re using permeable pavers which allow water to pass through the gaps. Course sand is usually recommended for these applications. Course sand is harder to find, so I opted for a mixture of 3/8″ stone and stone dust. I mixed these manually (2 parts of stone, 1 part stone dust). I only used the stone dust to create an easier bed to lay the pavers.

Continue reading “The Driveway, Part 4 - The Pavers” »

One of the last things to do on the driveway is to line the edges with large cobbles. These cobble stones are white granite stones cut to approximately 5″ x 5″x 9″. This size is called “regulation” sized cobbles.

Continue reading “The Driveway, Part 5 - Finishing” »

Lead and other heavy metals are usually not wanted in your drinking water. I’ve had plenty of first hand experience with water quality issues, so I know this topic very well. I won’t go into detail. But it usually goes… “lead=bad”. That said, we bought our house knowing we had a lead service line supplying our domestic water. Granted, the previous owners lived and raised 4 children with that lead water service line, so it’s manageable. The water can be flushed a few minutes before you drink/use it (although this might get you worse results, but I won’t get into the details).

But we had an incentive. The Boston water utility actually gives owners a $1000 credit towards the replacement of the lead service line. So we signed up. A few weeks later, they were ready to go. Which is quite fast for a beaurocratic institution like BWSC. I was figuring a few months.

A team of 3 subcontractors, a BWSC inspector, and a police officer arrived that morning (now there’s an efficient team put together by a local government). The subcontractors brought an excavator, a dump truck, and a pickup/dump truck towing a large air compressor.

Continue reading “Getting the Lead Out” »

A few weeks ago, I sketched out a plan for the entryway and painted two sets of hooks to get ready. Since then, we’ve worked on half of the plan.

Here is our blank wall in the front study room.

Continue reading “All Hooked Up” »

We’ve been pretty behind on our Apartment Therapy stuff, which is exactly what the authors warned against. In our defense, I will say that this is not just one-bedroom-apartment therapy, we have a whole house and a basement and attic, as well as a miniature front and backyard (which desperately needs some landscaping help).

At any rate, we did not do a full scale cleanup of our study. Instead, I had to narrow the focus to building shelves, which we sorely need. Our butler’s pantry has these decent looking brackets, which I copied for our bookshelves.

Continue reading “Week Five - Shelves for the Study” »

This time the linen closet and bathroom were attacked. Nothing exciting to report here.

A while back I alluded to our compost bin. Tig built the bin out of some new strapping, chicken wire. He also used some plywood and old hinges that were in our basement. Here is the finished product.

The top lifts to open, so we can turn the pile. There is also a hinge on the front, so we can harvest the finished compost when it is done. It will probably take a year before we see some good compost. The bags next to the bin are full of leaf and grass clippings that have been decomposing since the fall. One of the neighborhood houses left big piles of leaves and grass over the winter. In the spring, the owners finally go their act together and had the piles bagged. Tig swiped two bags before they disappeared. Earthworms have already made a home in the bags.

The shelves were cut a week ago. Now we finish it.

First a little routing for some bracket hardware.

Continue reading “Shelves for the Study, Part 2″ »

A few weeks ago, we finally mounted our panaromic picture of the Eiffel Tower in the study.

And thanks to digital photography I’ve got a lot more pictures. I’ve put some underneath the clear plastic covering of the back desk.

Continue reading “Personalizing the Office” »

A few weeks ago Serena gathered up all the toxic chemicals and cleaners she could find so we could get rid of them and replace them with more natural products. The previous owners lived in the house for 43 years. And so you can imagine, they accumulated lots of chemical cleaners, paints, acids, gases, and who knows what else. And they kindly left them for us.

A few months ago while rummaging through the basement, I found a large compressed gas cylinder. It’s the same cylinder in some home inspection pictures of the basement (you can see it propping open the door).

Continue reading “Bye-bye Hazardous Waste” »