3 more days of weeds...

and then in 2 more I'll have a newly hydroseeded (back) yard!! I am so excited! I met with my contact person at the EPA yesterday and she told me what needs to happen and when it needs to happen.

My first step is to go through my back yard and write down everything that is there, plant-wise. How many, what types, etc... My uncle, who went to school for forestry, used to be a landscaper and actually knows what kind of plants they are, will be helping me out with that today.

Then tomorrow I get to take my list to Gerten's and figure out just how much it would cost if I wanted to replace everything that is currently there. Gerten's sounds great, I appreciate they aren't making me go to Flip's Discount Plant Shack and Taqueria to price things out.

Once I've done this (by Monday evening) I send it to my EPA lady, we hopefully agree on the amount, she cuts me a check, and then on Tuesday they show up, remove part of my fence, and start taking out the yard, and then replacing it with new soil. This is going to take a couple of days. Then if all goes well, by Thursday the landscaper will come by, hydroseed the soil, and then come back and water it daily for two weeks. And I should have a glorious, green, plain (back) yard!!

Then, hopefully next year, we get to do the whole thing over in the front.

EPA meeting tomorrow!

I got an email from my contact person at the EPA, she is in town and they are ready to roll on the clean up project. We are meeting tomorrow at 1pm. I assume this is when she will let me know exactly what will happen and when, and hopefully she will take the inventory of all the plants in my backyard. I guess this is when I get to negotiate and make sure that they remove all that I want removed. I hope this goes well and that my yard will be dug up in no time! Keep your fingers crossed.

More progress made, dining room completed!

Yay! Thanks to my awesome mom, the dining room has been wallpapered and is looking great. I couldn't be happier with the way it looks. Check it out. It's come a long way from this:




To this:

Weeds galore!

Here are some pictures of my back yard that I mentioned in my last post. This yard is a mess. I'm more of a minimalist when it comes to landscaping, so I'm very excited to get rid of a lot of this stuff.



Here's a close up on the south corner of my yard. There is so much crap growing here I have no idea what is supposed to be there and what is not. There appear to be raspberries, but they aren't edible due to the arsenic in the soil. You can see some of the ferns in the bottom right that I've already managed to kill. I don't have a green thumb, that's for sure!



Here's the north side of the back yard. Those bushes back there are in some sort of depression, the yard goes down about 8 inches out there, where the grass is greener. You can also see the huge stump in the upper middle right. My neighbor said the EPA will negotiate and I should be able to get them to grind it down 12 inches when they removed the top foot of soil. The stump was on her side of the fence as well but they did grind down her side, so I hope they will do the same for me.

EPA Update

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the EPA arsenic clean up project has been delayed, I'm sure that is standard when dealing with a federal government agency. So what was supposed to start in June is now scheduled to start "by August 15th". Who knows when they will get to my property, but I do hope it's soon.

I have basically done nothing with the garden area in the backyard because I know it's going to be ripped out. Part of it is that I don't want to put in too much effort since it's being taken out, and part of it is that I don't want to rip out anything that is actually supposed to be there. I'll be getting a check to replace any plants that are there. Unfortunately I don't know the difference between a weed and a plant for the most part, so my garden just looks like a mess. It's half overgrown and about 1/4 dead, since I've managed to kill about half the ferns. Not that I even want the ferns anyway, but I want to get credit for them from the EPA!! I'll take some pictures today and add them to this post. It's pretty ridiculous.

Green walls finished

I've finally finished painting the 2 walls in the living room green. At first I was a little scared of the color, the first coat was very yellow and streaky, but after I finished a few coats it looked much better.



The next thing I'm working on is the entry way. I've already painted the ceiling, changed the light fixture, and painted the trim. I'll be painting the walls tomorrow but I'll have to wait on the new vinyl floor until after the hardwood in the adjoining room is refinished.

Dining Room Built In

I'll start by saying that I've had some problems with tendinitis in my shoulder, wrist and hand on my right arm, and since I'm right handed and need my hands to work, I've been laying off the house stuff for now because I need to give this time to heal. It's a bummer and it's actually got me a little worried about my livelihood, so I guess it's better to have the house take a bit longer to keep being able to go to work and make a living. So I guess I'll take this time to try and get caught up on posting some of my progress since the last update.

I got the dining room built in painted and added new hardware.





To the right you can also see the little door that opens up to the little telephone cubby.

First I took off the door and the wood frame. Please excuse the mess, this was one of the only horizontal surfaces to place things for a while, so it became kind of a catchall. Since I have only one phone jack, you can see I already had an electrical outlet placed in this area so I can put in a cordless phone.



I stripped the door and frame, primed, painted, added a new knob and put it all back together: