Posts Tagged ‘contractors’
Modifying Finish
We have not discovered the secret to convincing our favorite gravel guy to come landscape the bottom half of our driveway. Since we have reached the point of not even receiving callbacks from him, I’m assuming we will need to look for another source of landscaping help if we’re not able to do it ourselves.
In the interim, we are taking a crack at applying an improvement to our original thinking about how to finish the edge of the driveway asphalt in the sections where we already tried smoothing the grade with some composted manure.
The limiting factor in this plan is the relatively small supply of our manufactured soil currently available for the task. I wrestled with the decision of using what little material we have in places where none has yet to be applied or using it to improve the areas landscaped last summer.
I went with the latter, for now.
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I have settled into a pattern of creating piles roughly 1 meter wide by 1m deep by 1m high. The small pile on the left in the foreground of the first photo is just getting started and receives new, fresh manure daily. The pile in the foreground on the right is no longer getting any new material added and it is cooking at a perfect composting temperature.
The pile just behind them is in the final stage of composting. Just beyond that one is an area shown in the second photo where I just removed two composted piles to use for the driveway landscaping project. In the background is a large pile that was created over the winter and never got turned in order to fully compost.
I will use that for fill eventually but it needs to be broken apart to dry out because the majority inside is a stinky green mess due to never having been regularly turned to promote the composting process.
My attempt to finish the driveway edge last summer using the remaining exposed gravel left me with a rocky lip that I now want to eliminate. The new plan is to pull down the gravel to form a more even slope and to cover it all with dirt or compost right up to the asphalt.
We will need to plant grass to provide some competition for the weeds that absolutely love an opportunity to sprout in freshly exposed soil.
I had originally envisioned the possibility of having a gravel edge along the asphalt. Now I want to just cover the rock completely. Driveway edge landscaping two-point-oh.
If I find this latest plan works, I will probably order a load of black dirt and do this the rest of the way down the driveway.
I think I could convince our favorite gravel guy to at least deliver a truckload of dirt and dump it down by the road if they don’t have to spread it. Time and labor seem to be their main shortage and that is something I am able to provide.
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Helping Ourselves
We asked for help in finishing the landscaping along the steep edges of our new driveway. I’m taking the lack of response from our excavator to indicate they are either too busy or simply not interested. They must not need our money.
It is a peeve of mine when contractors choose to “ghost” potential customers after initial contact. I generally follow the idiom of squeaky wheels getting the grease but after multiple unsuccessful attempts to communicate our genuine interest in paying for help with our landscaping, we have fallen back on doing what we can with our limited resources.
Up by the shop/garage, I have been feathering the edge with composted manure. Yesterday, we mined a ten-year-old pile of dirt down by our southern border drainage ditch to use at the bottom of the driveway by the road, filling the trailer behind the ATV with hand shovels. We made six trips back and forth and covered a humblingly short length of both sides.
Cyndie suggested we rent a skid steer tractor. She’s not wrong that it would be a more impressive machine for addressing this size of a job. My first hesitation with that plan is that I would be the person to operate it and I’ve never driven one before. The subsequent issues include our lack of truck or trailer to transport the machine, the small amount of available dirt a machine like that could move, and the abuse my novice use would do to the surrounding terrain.
We don’t make a lot of efficient progress with our shovel-fulls at a time, but I have the skills to operate a shovel and can do the work with minimal collateral damage.
The only real challenge beyond not being able to finish the job quickly is coping with my self-conscious embarrassment about the neighbors’ opinions over our using hand tools to tackle work that deserves machines. Working down at the road leaves our methods glaringly obvious to local traffic passing by.
My slow and primitive methods are less obvious up on the other end of the driveway. I’m not certain our efforts will ultimately produce the desired results but Cyndie and I agree what we can do ourselves will be better than nothing. Time will tell.
Having successfully made that small bit of progress near the road yesterday, I’d like to keep going while the weather allows until we use up the rest of the old pile. It’s a good exercise in coping with my apprehension over the impressions my methods give to local observers.
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Freshly Sealed
At long last, the logs of our home have a fresh seal from the elements. Last year there were two primary maintenance projects that were both reaching burdensome levels of urgency against the elements: our deck and the walls of the house. We ended up doing the deck ourselves and hiring out the sealing of our logs.
The contract was accepted last year, but they weren’t able to get to us before winter arrived and so the work was rescheduled to first thing after the weather warmed this spring. That didn’t play out as we expected. It took until mid-July, but now the job is finally done.
Over the weekend, we got the resealed wagon wheels remounted on the front steps to cap off the completion of the weatherization of the house.
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The house looks good as new.
I’m very pleased over the professional opinion of the contractor who told us that our deck project looked well done and didn’t warrant any additional seal coat of its own.
That suits me just fine.
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Weathering Nicely
Now that it’s officially summer, a few days ago I got around to removing the firewood rack from our deck that had been in place all winter. Doing so uncovered deck boards that have been protected from direct sunlight and still show the original coloring of the treated wood.
I am much happier with the weathered look of the exposed boards.
We’ve yet to decide what we will do about finishing the wood. I’m hoping to tap the advice of the professional crew we have contracted to seal the log walls of our house. It would be great if they would actually show up.
It’s a company that we’ve used once before, shortly after we moved here. There was an end piece of a log that was rotting and they replaced it and went around the whole house to caulk any spaces that needed it.
Last year they agreed to do the job of resealing the logs of the entire house but were iffy about whether they could fit it in before days got too cold. When it became obvious they wouldn’t make it before winter, they promised we would be early on the spring schedule this year.
When spring (and a certain pandemic) arrived, we contacted them to confirm they were still able to work. Yes, they said, work would begin as soon as days got warm enough.
When warm days arrived and we hadn’t heard from them, we checked again. Yes, we were next in line after their current job. He teased it might be the next week or the week after, depending on the weather.
A week later, granted after some inclement weather, I decided to start removing all the decorative trim from the outside walls in an almost passive-aggressive attempt to will them to suddenly show up.
We will give them one more week before checking anew to find out how many additional weeks remain before they start on our house, seeing as they were going to do it right away in the spring and we were only second in line on their schedule at the start.
At this rate, by the time they get here the logs of the house will be so faded they will match the weathered boards of the deck.
Maybe we should aim for the antique gray color of dried-out neglected wood for our house.
I do like a weathered look.
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p.s. Happy Birthday, Elysa! (you are weathering nicely, too!) [Oh, Dad…]
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Waiting Games
My patience has been tested the last few weeks, waiting for three different contractors to make appearances on our property. Unfortunately, nature isn’t going to delay the onset of winter just because my projects weren’t completed. Completed seems like a humorous concept, since I can’t even get people here to start. They all claim the reason they can’t make it is that they are too busy and behind schedule.
Yesterday, I received a token visit from landscapers who will put in drain tile to route water around the paddocks, in hopes of keeping them from becoming such mud pits. It was “landscapers” plural, because the first one was so over-busy through the end of the year he needed to contract it out to a friend. They took some final measurements and said work should be able to start next week. I can only hope.
It felt a bit like the experience I often have in a visit to the doctor. I check in to let them know I arrived at the time of my appointment, and take my place in the waiting area. After what seems like way too long to be waiting, I start getting agitated. When that feeling starts to morph into anger, a nurse pops out and calls my name.
That resets my angst, and I am happy my turn has finally arrived. Except, it hasn’t. I eventually discover that all they have done is move me from the outer waiting area to an exam room to continue waiting. It’s a great system, because I tolerate a lot more waiting when it is broken up by little moments of faux progress. It would have been an intolerable wait, had I spent the entire time in the outer chairs. Broken into two stages —the second one feeling like actual progress— helped me accept the overall total wait-time without making a fuss.
It feels like the landscape contractors finally made an appearance yesterday to reset my angst and make me feel good about them telling me the work should be able to start next week sometime.
Once again, it works wonders for me. My previous anxieties have been reset. I’m happy with their latest promise.
Here’s hoping they are able to live up to it.
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Finally, Progress
The hardest thing I have faced since becoming a full-time ranch manager has been getting contractors to bid jobs we need done. In the last few days I have successfully communicated with three of them. Two actually showed up in person. The other has already been here. Even though no work has actually begun, just getting them to see and discuss the situation, and estimate a time when they hope to actually do some work, is rewarding enough to fuel my dwindling supply of hope to get improvements in place before winter arrives in full force.
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It’s a bit like seeing signs of the sun preparing to make its appearance over the eastern horizon.
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With that bit of inspiration, I found myself drawn toward a chore I have been neglecting all summer long. One of our main trails through the woods had been left untended since the snow melted and it had become overgrown to the point of being difficult to discern.
I was pleased to see how much growth had occurred in volunteer trees, most of them butternuts. Too bad they were growing in a path where they wouldn’t be able to remain. I used the power trimmer to do the bulk of the clearing, then made a few passes with a pole saw and my ratcheted pruner. There is much left to be done —I only went as far as one tank of gas on the trimmer allowed— but the part I did complete looks wonderful and inviting.
After dinner, where I devoured fresh-picked ears of gourmet sweet corn that Cyndie picked up on her way home, we took Delilah for a walk down that trail. It was a treat to experience all the “oohs” and “aahs” from Cyndie as she marveled over how great it looked. Then we arrived at the stretch where I had cut down trees on Monday to widen the southern leg of the trail. They still lay where they fell, all over the trail, in stark contrast to the section I had just trimmed.
It’s a work in progress. But, alas, there is finally some progress!
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Relative Something 