A few weeks of good weather and things start to shape up...

I started building the new front steps on Kearny Street about three or four weeks ago. I was able to build about two steps every day after work.

I took a weekend at the end of March and moved our front door. Our house previously faced 20th Street but now it will face Kearny Street. We have always identified more with our neighbors on Kearny. This will allow us to build the new staircase from the basement to the first floor.

The new siding is so clean compared to the old stuff, it looks pretty funny. But it will keep the rain out for the time being, until we re-side the whole house.


Two weeks ago we took delivery of 30 yards of leaf mulch.


One of the benefits of living in the world's largest deciduous forest is there is always plenty of good compost to be had.

We tilled the mulch about 6" into our clay soil, and saw an immediate improvement in drainage.

















The tiller would dig up chunks of concrete, which had to be collected. Yes, the same concrete from the basement. Don't be fooled by this picture. Yes, it's our senior t-shirt worn by an asian woman, but it's not Hun. This is Hun's cousin, Marie. She helped out that afternoon, walking behind Joel and pulling out rocks.

You will only see her in this picture and the next because she wasn't actually "helping" for that long. A neighbor walked past admiring our leaf mulch and we started talking. The next thing we knew, she was offering us tickets to the Washington Capitols Game!


















A little bit menacing, I suppose.


After we tilled in all the mulch, we went to work on the stumps in front of the house.


We managed to bash and muscle one of them out of the ground, but the larger wouldn't budge. I even drove the Trooper up into the yard and chained it to the stump. No luck.

Our neighbor, Tony, who is a member of the Metro Transit Police Bomb Squad, failed to return my call asking if he had any spare explosives. I don't know why.

Finally, this last weekend, we were ready to really start to make a difference. On Saturday morning, Hun and I ran a bunch of errands. Then around 10:00 two pallets of Kentuckee Blue Grass sod showed up at our house. The sod waited most of the day, while our good friend Nicholas helped me dig fence post holes.

At around 5:00, we started on the sod. By 7:00 we were pretty much done. (Sorry the pictures are out of focus. There's a new camera on it's way.)

As you can see, the diseased evergreen trees are gone from the north side of the house. The grass is down, and some of the fence posts are in.

This was as far as we got on Saturday. Sunday was a complete wash-out with over 4" of rain in 36 hours. When the ground dries out and firms up a bit, I'll clean up my post holes and set some more posts.

After I finish up the basement and get us moved down there, the next project will be the porch. New posts, new roof, new steps from the yard and new decking. We'll see when I get around to it. I may take the summer off.