Well its been weeks since my last blog. The damage estimates are in, all of the wet and mouldy stuff has been removed and the wet wood dried out and cleaned. The removal by Servepro was a slow process and cost a thousand dollars. They were neat, efficient and very good at what they do. I have no complaints with their response and their diligence in removing any harmful mold and sanitizing everything.
Estimates to repair the drywall, replace the carpeting, repaint, and repair the roof are in. Cost is well over $4,000. The insurance company said the roof was improperly designed so they will not pay to repair it, the furniture that was damaged is not covered either because the leak was not caused by wind damage to the roof. Oh well, the insurance company did give me a settlement that will allow me to repair the damage to the dry wall, repaint and recarpet less the 1,000 deductible.
I made a decision to buy the materials at Home Depot and replace the drywall, insulation and moldings myself. I will pay a tradesman to mud and texture the wall, but I will paint it. Fortunately I know how to do this work, and the drywall is all done as of yesterday and the guy will come Monday to mud and texture the drywall. Boy I was tired after all that work! I will have to get some paint mixed and will have to buy a couple of gallons since there are two different colored walls in the bedroom to repaint, and one in the garage. That is the easy part.
There should be enough money hopefully to pay a professional to fix and repair the roof so it does not leak again. I had a good estimate from Haas Maintenance and remodeling so just have to get on their repair schedule. So that is the saga of the big leak.
This is my journey from day to day, some mundane and some fun. That is how life is and what we make of it. Hopefully you will have a beautiful sunrise day and enjoy it to the fullest.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Can anything else go wrong?
I know owning a home gives one satisfaction. Owning a home is also or can be having your own personal money pit. Two years ago it was the deck that needed replacing. Tearing it all out, getting down to just the support beams and rebuilding it completely inclusing adding a patio cover over our bedroom to block the sun. The old deck was a maintenance monster with redwood that needed resealing every year because of temperature extremes. The new deck is for the most part maintenance free. I rebuilt the deck with treated support joists on 16" centers and used two colors of TREX, a wonderful sawdust and plastic bags combination that even has wood grain. It requires no staining, just washing down. I replaced all the wood railing with trex covered treated posts with wrought iron in between. No more painting to worry about, yea! One difficult job that looks very nice was screwing all of the decking from underneath with special hardware so no screws show anywhere. Just masterials cost for the replacement deck was over $11,800, but I saved thousands of dollars on labor by doing it myself. I was fortunate to get some help from my son-in-law when he could, and also from my brother for the final touches.
Last year it was the central heating and air that went out right toward the end of summer. We struggled through a few warm months but fortunately have ceiling fans that kept the air moving and only few days of triple digit heat. Replacing the HVAC was a big job, and required a third of the ducting to also be replaced because it was leaking and the duct material was breaking down. We managed to get it done by Thanksgiving, and that cost us another $4,600.00. We now have a more efficient unit that has actually lowered our heating and cooling bills. Some definite good came from that fix!
Well this year it is a water leak from our roof. Cindy and Amber were gone last week to visit her Mom and Dad in Pico Rivera. Amber wasn't too sure when she would get to see her grand parents again because she and Eric are bound for Germany when his training is done in July and he has a few weeks off to ship their household goods over to Manheim.
While they were in southern California we had a big rainstorm for several days and it dumped an inch and a half of rain. Unbeknownst to me, the roof was leaking due to a faulty design in one of the valleys between the house and garage. Amber's bedroom toook the brunt of the water down a wall behind a bookcase computer desk combo. The carpet got soaked, and the furniture wicked up the water in the legs. The wall in the garage also suffered similar damage but of course there was no carpet to get wet there, and the leak was hidden by a cabinet on that wall that is floor to ceiling. Amber discovered the damage after she got home. She said, "Uh Dad, come to my room, we have a major problem." Major problem was an understatement!
The evidence was her weights that were stacked on a piece of carboard were rusty and the carpet was soaked along with the furniture's legs. The following morning I emptied all the books from the book shelves, pulled all the furniture out and saw the mold on the floor and wall. I cleaned all the furniture with bleach to kill any mold on the wooden support legs. I let it dry in the sun on the deck. I pulled the carpet back and it was like a huge wet sponge as was all of the padding. I cut an eight foot by 6 1/2 foot piece of carpet out in order to get all the wet stuff outside. The wood floor under the carpet was soaked as were the baseboards and tack strips. I washed the ceiling, walls and floor with bleach once the carpet was out and set a fan in there to help dry things out. I filed a claim with my insurance because the damage is covered, although I have a thousand dollar deductable. Gee terrible timing, I just raised it last year from $500 to 1000 to save money on premiums! Ha, I didn't save anything, it cost me a bunch more.
I took phtos of all the damage with my digital camera. Then I emailed the photos to my insurance person and they called me back and sent an adjuster out to survey the damage. He recommended Servpro, a special mold and water damge company to come out and remove all of the affected wet drywall and insulation and mold. I asked him to get them rolling and they started yesterday. I still have not seen a damage estimate for the cost of removal of everything but they are very thorough and very efficient. They do an excellent job of keeping one informed of each step and thorughly clean up everything and remove all of the nasty affected materials. They finished taking out the ceiling drywall and a wall in the garage today, as well as removing the 4X8' storage cabinet after I unloaded all the stuff in it. The heat fans and dehumidifier are running round the clock to dry the walls 2X4's and flooring.
I am hoping to get a contractor in soon to get the walls replaced, the roof repaired, and the room repainted and recarpeted. I know it will cost me $1,000 for the deductiable but won't know for a few days what the total cost for the project will be. Owning a home is nice, especially when nothing goes wrong. When it begins to get older and expensive repairs occur it becomes a bit of a money pit! Thank good ness my garden doesn't break down, just the dang sprinklers!
Last year it was the central heating and air that went out right toward the end of summer. We struggled through a few warm months but fortunately have ceiling fans that kept the air moving and only few days of triple digit heat. Replacing the HVAC was a big job, and required a third of the ducting to also be replaced because it was leaking and the duct material was breaking down. We managed to get it done by Thanksgiving, and that cost us another $4,600.00. We now have a more efficient unit that has actually lowered our heating and cooling bills. Some definite good came from that fix!
Well this year it is a water leak from our roof. Cindy and Amber were gone last week to visit her Mom and Dad in Pico Rivera. Amber wasn't too sure when she would get to see her grand parents again because she and Eric are bound for Germany when his training is done in July and he has a few weeks off to ship their household goods over to Manheim.
While they were in southern California we had a big rainstorm for several days and it dumped an inch and a half of rain. Unbeknownst to me, the roof was leaking due to a faulty design in one of the valleys between the house and garage. Amber's bedroom toook the brunt of the water down a wall behind a bookcase computer desk combo. The carpet got soaked, and the furniture wicked up the water in the legs. The wall in the garage also suffered similar damage but of course there was no carpet to get wet there, and the leak was hidden by a cabinet on that wall that is floor to ceiling. Amber discovered the damage after she got home. She said, "Uh Dad, come to my room, we have a major problem." Major problem was an understatement!
The evidence was her weights that were stacked on a piece of carboard were rusty and the carpet was soaked along with the furniture's legs. The following morning I emptied all the books from the book shelves, pulled all the furniture out and saw the mold on the floor and wall. I cleaned all the furniture with bleach to kill any mold on the wooden support legs. I let it dry in the sun on the deck. I pulled the carpet back and it was like a huge wet sponge as was all of the padding. I cut an eight foot by 6 1/2 foot piece of carpet out in order to get all the wet stuff outside. The wood floor under the carpet was soaked as were the baseboards and tack strips. I washed the ceiling, walls and floor with bleach once the carpet was out and set a fan in there to help dry things out. I filed a claim with my insurance because the damage is covered, although I have a thousand dollar deductable. Gee terrible timing, I just raised it last year from $500 to 1000 to save money on premiums! Ha, I didn't save anything, it cost me a bunch more.
I took phtos of all the damage with my digital camera. Then I emailed the photos to my insurance person and they called me back and sent an adjuster out to survey the damage. He recommended Servpro, a special mold and water damge company to come out and remove all of the affected wet drywall and insulation and mold. I asked him to get them rolling and they started yesterday. I still have not seen a damage estimate for the cost of removal of everything but they are very thorough and very efficient. They do an excellent job of keeping one informed of each step and thorughly clean up everything and remove all of the nasty affected materials. They finished taking out the ceiling drywall and a wall in the garage today, as well as removing the 4X8' storage cabinet after I unloaded all the stuff in it. The heat fans and dehumidifier are running round the clock to dry the walls 2X4's and flooring.
I am hoping to get a contractor in soon to get the walls replaced, the roof repaired, and the room repainted and recarpeted. I know it will cost me $1,000 for the deductiable but won't know for a few days what the total cost for the project will be. Owning a home is nice, especially when nothing goes wrong. When it begins to get older and expensive repairs occur it becomes a bit of a money pit! Thank good ness my garden doesn't break down, just the dang sprinklers!
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Mother's Day Garden Tour
Wow, who would know that we are going to be receiving rain showers today? The sun is shining, there are beautiful clouds in the sky and it is wonderfully cool and breezy. The birds are chirping happily, and the garden is like a lush park. Even the Koi in the pond seem to be enjoying the day flashing their bright colors as they swim around, and around in our little pond Perhaps they are looking for the exit sign to a bigger pond. 
Well it has been weeks since I wrote a blog, and several weeks since the garden tour. I don't know when I have felt more exhausted preparing for something. Because I am anal in my desire to have everything neat and tidy, and look beautiful, and have everything neatly pruned, trimmed, weeded, and to have fresh blooms, I just about wore myself out.
I had to go down to Robinson's Sand and Gravel and get a load of decomposed granite so I could top up all my paths and make them look fresh and neat. That is the heavier stuff and rather than have Michael help with that I asked him to neat up the flower beds. Unfortunately I have the remains of thousands of daffodils that bloomed a few months ago messing up my flower beds and it is still too early to cut off the greenery since that is what replenishes the bulbs for next years bloom. Mike did some trimming, and rearranging and made it all look a lot neater.
The actual tour on Mother's Day started at 10:00 Am in the morning, and I was surprised to see folks here right on the starting dot. Fortunately Placer County Master Gardeners were here staffing the garden to answer questions for people about our plants trees or flowers. I had spent a number of hours the night before tagging all the roses and a lot of less common plants to make it easier. Yes, that was me with the flashlight in the rose garden at 10:30 PM!
The tour was a rocking success. Although it rained a little off and on, droves of people continued to come through the garden. Some carried cameras in addition to their umbrellas and were busy taking pictures of various areas that interested them. At days end when the tour shut down at 4:00 PM, 437 people had come through the garden.
I was amazed at the number but very pleased that it was a success and there were so many nice comments about the garden. You can look at my photos and see for yourself.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Almost there!
The garden tour is this Sunday and I am satisfied that I will be ready. My brother Michael drove up from Fresno to help work with me on some of the major make overs. He spent two days cutting, dead heading, cleaning up rose bushes, and helping me replace all the bark I was pulling out from around the roses. They really look great. We also added decomposed granite to all the pathways and also redid all of the flagstone patio by the garden shed. Flowers are blooming in a number of places and the roses are starting their first bloom of the season. It should be really pretty.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Gardener's Gathering
Well today Cindy and I are off to the Master Gardeners gathering at the Blue Goose Fruit Sheds in Loomis. Since we are on the tour next month, they compted two tickets for us. It should be an interesting day. I'll let you know later. Have a good one.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Gee what was I thinking?
When the Placer County Master Gardeners showed up at my home and asked if I would like to put our garden on the tour, I willingly said yes. A week later I looked at the garden and saw all the mess from the afterbloom of thousands of daffodils, I wondered what I could do to make it look better and make sure I had color in the garden. The daffodil leaves cannot be cut off until they turn yellow, because they require the sun and nutrients to replenish the bulb for next season.
Since that time I have been working feverishly to clean up ever inch of our property to make sure it looks well cared for, neat and pretty. Weeds seem to know this and I whenever I clear a flowerbed and move on to another area, during the night they send up new shoots to make me think I didn't weed the bed. I know some of it is due to the frequent rain showers that are helping the weed seeds in the soil to germinate, but wow, there must be centuries of accumulation! Either that or the neigbors trolls are spreading new seeds in the dark of night.
I have been systematically cleaning out leaves, weeds, dead branches, old growth in all the flower beds and rearranging and planting new flower varieties that should be in bloom in May. Unfortunately, whenever I distrurb the soil, new weeds sprout because I gave their seeds the right conditions to germinate. I should mulch the beds when I finish, and that would slow down the weeds and also capture the moisture for my new plantings.
One of the biggest jobs was finishing a 130 foot drainage line from the front of the house to the back, inorder to divert all the water that pours into our property from the street. This project took a week, but it did work well when everything was put back and the pipe was in. A good torrential rain was a good test for it. Another huge job was digging out the stumps of an 18 year old Oleander and a Lelandia Cypress that I had to cut down. Relandscaping and cleaning everything up took several days. The new look is a lot more pleasing, but I was sore for several days after.
I still have to finish taking all the bark out of the rose garden and reusing it in other parts of the garden, and then putting out new redwood mulch that is finer and more appropriate to dress it all back up. Fortunately I stopped the spread of Blackspot, and hopefully I can keep the aphids at bay until they begin to bloom in a few weeks. Lets hope the weather holds and I can stay on track to assure that the garden is pristine for Mother's Day. Oh well, so much for the break, time to get back to work!
Since that time I have been working feverishly to clean up ever inch of our property to make sure it looks well cared for, neat and pretty. Weeds seem to know this and I whenever I clear a flowerbed and move on to another area, during the night they send up new shoots to make me think I didn't weed the bed. I know some of it is due to the frequent rain showers that are helping the weed seeds in the soil to germinate, but wow, there must be centuries of accumulation! Either that or the neigbors trolls are spreading new seeds in the dark of night.
I have been systematically cleaning out leaves, weeds, dead branches, old growth in all the flower beds and rearranging and planting new flower varieties that should be in bloom in May. Unfortunately, whenever I distrurb the soil, new weeds sprout because I gave their seeds the right conditions to germinate. I should mulch the beds when I finish, and that would slow down the weeds and also capture the moisture for my new plantings.
One of the biggest jobs was finishing a 130 foot drainage line from the front of the house to the back, inorder to divert all the water that pours into our property from the street. This project took a week, but it did work well when everything was put back and the pipe was in. A good torrential rain was a good test for it. Another huge job was digging out the stumps of an 18 year old Oleander and a Lelandia Cypress that I had to cut down. Relandscaping and cleaning everything up took several days. The new look is a lot more pleasing, but I was sore for several days after.
I still have to finish taking all the bark out of the rose garden and reusing it in other parts of the garden, and then putting out new redwood mulch that is finer and more appropriate to dress it all back up. Fortunately I stopped the spread of Blackspot, and hopefully I can keep the aphids at bay until they begin to bloom in a few weeks. Lets hope the weather holds and I can stay on track to assure that the garden is pristine for Mother's Day. Oh well, so much for the break, time to get back to work!
Monday, April 12, 2010
When is a Painting Finished?
Sometimes I struggle with when to stop adding to my paintings. It is a question of when is enough detail or color enough? I have learned so much about the values of colors and how important it is to have differences and graduations between the darks and the lights in a painting. But I still struggle at times with areas in a painting to make them look believeably real. I am a realist in my style of painting, and so am a stickler for detail and accuracy. My mentor however, does not waste a lot of time on detail, he paints beautifully and lets the viewer fill in the details he has not bothered to paint.
My instructor, Reif Erickson, of Auburn is a master pastelist. He has written four books on the subject of painting and he has been a very successful pastel artist for many years. He is amazing to watch as he uses an photo as our object lesson of the day. He begins his sketch and then begins to apply the darker undertonesof color in various areas of the painting.
It is a treat to watch him start a painting from its early sketch with a darker pastel to its completion. He studies the photo and decides what he will include, and what he will leave out. Sometimes he will take a portion of a landscape photo and turn it into a portrait style of painting. He takes time to sketch the details and scale of the painting. He can complete a 9" X 13" landscape pastel painting in about 30 minutes. He takes a drab photo, with washed out colors and within a short time creates a beautiful painting that has all of the undertones and colors lacking in the photo. What had been and unremarkable photo, becomes a painting that stimulates our eyes because the scene is so alive. He is a master in the use of color. When one stands six feet away, the painting looks so complete and beautiful, however, when one gets close, it is amazing how little detail is really there. Our eyes fill any voids, and blend colors to complete the painting.
I paint detail because I want to be able to show my viewer the beauty of something I see. I want them to experience every nuance and color that I found so interesting. I love to look paintings done by fellow artists who are as obsessed with detail as I am. I enjoy seeing their ability to show the grain of wood on a barn, the detail they have recreated in the bark of a tree, or the sheen of a horses coat from the sunlight. I marvel at their ability to paint life truly as they see it. Looking at their paintings is like looking at a window of life for me. Perhaps that is why I am mired in detail, and not able to just splash color on a canvas and stop when I have a likeness. My goal is to recreate what I have seen so I can share what drove me to replicate it, not have you the viewer, fill in what I didn't paint and try and interpret what I was trying to communicate. I know my art may fascinate and please some who are wired like me. I also know that for those who think in the abstract, it will have no interest at all. That is okay too for there are other artists out there to please them. I on the other hand will continue to paint until it has reached my personal standard.
The attached beach scene of a northern California Beach was one that I fussed over. I wanted to make sure that the surf looked real, so that the viewer could recall the way it breaks and spreads out on the sand and then recedes leaving a streamming of water as it flows back. I hope you enjoy my painting, and it brings back a memory for you.
My instructor, Reif Erickson, of Auburn is a master pastelist. He has written four books on the subject of painting and he has been a very successful pastel artist for many years. He is amazing to watch as he uses an photo as our object lesson of the day. He begins his sketch and then begins to apply the darker undertonesof color in various areas of the painting.
It is a treat to watch him start a painting from its early sketch with a darker pastel to its completion. He studies the photo and decides what he will include, and what he will leave out. Sometimes he will take a portion of a landscape photo and turn it into a portrait style of painting. He takes time to sketch the details and scale of the painting. He can complete a 9" X 13" landscape pastel painting in about 30 minutes. He takes a drab photo, with washed out colors and within a short time creates a beautiful painting that has all of the undertones and colors lacking in the photo. What had been and unremarkable photo, becomes a painting that stimulates our eyes because the scene is so alive. He is a master in the use of color. When one stands six feet away, the painting looks so complete and beautiful, however, when one gets close, it is amazing how little detail is really there. Our eyes fill any voids, and blend colors to complete the painting.
I paint detail because I want to be able to show my viewer the beauty of something I see. I want them to experience every nuance and color that I found so interesting. I love to look paintings done by fellow artists who are as obsessed with detail as I am. I enjoy seeing their ability to show the grain of wood on a barn, the detail they have recreated in the bark of a tree, or the sheen of a horses coat from the sunlight. I marvel at their ability to paint life truly as they see it. Looking at their paintings is like looking at a window of life for me. Perhaps that is why I am mired in detail, and not able to just splash color on a canvas and stop when I have a likeness. My goal is to recreate what I have seen so I can share what drove me to replicate it, not have you the viewer, fill in what I didn't paint and try and interpret what I was trying to communicate. I know my art may fascinate and please some who are wired like me. I also know that for those who think in the abstract, it will have no interest at all. That is okay too for there are other artists out there to please them. I on the other hand will continue to paint until it has reached my personal standard.
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