More Trees

I talked a bit at the end of 2022 about our trees. Today we added two new trees to the side yard: a red maple (Acer rubrum) and a bald cypress (Taxodium distichum). The maple is an October Glory cultivator, which is supposed to have really nice red–orange foliage in the autumn. They were delivered and planted by Casey Trees (for free!) as part of a city program to help increase Hyattsville's tree canopy. Both trees are pretty substantial, 8 feet or taller, and we're looking forward to seeing them grow.

When the arborist came out in the autumn to consult on possible species and placement, I asked him about getting a sassafras (Sassafras albidum) and while Casey used to grow them apparently they didn't have much luck with them in an urban context so they didn't offer them. He did, however, identify a spot where I could put one if I could source one. That guy (a more affordable 4-foot tree) arrived in December and I got it into the ground then. I've been worried that it didn't make it through the winter, but the arborist who came to help plant the new trees took a look at it and said it looked like it was still alive, so I should keep watering and see what happens. 🤞🏻

The maple is in the foreground, the sassafras to the right, and the cypress in the back. Behind it, near the fence are three pawpaws (Asimina triloba), one of which was translated as a little seedling from a neighbor.

All three of the new trees are now protected with cages to help ward off nibbling deer (we don't get those too often, except for when the apples are out, but better safe than sorry) and they just need to get watered weekly (twice weekly come summer).

Small Things

The linear drain we put in the basement bathroom looks great, but the spacers used to keep the cover positioned in the trench were just free-floating little plastic rectangles. They could block some of the waterflow and, if you tried to clean the filter basket while the shower was in use they could float around or even end up in the drain.

I recently found these grate risers as a replacement. They clip to the cover, keeping them stable, while positioning it properly in the trench without affecting waterflow. Sometimes small things can make a real difference.

Thinking of small things, in mid-December we had a bit of excitement when we awoke to the sound of the water alarm under the kitchen sink. The Grohe Blue system takes up a lot of space in there with the chilling unit, CO₂ tank, and water filter. The filter head uses an unusual push-to-connect fitting for the outflow from the filter to the chiller.

As can be seen in the photo, the plastic sheared apart, letting water spray from the filter into the kitchen cabinet (and down through the bathroom ceiling below. It was easy enough to shut off the cold water to the sink and then a surprising amount of mopping things up given that it wasn't spraying for too long.

The problem was then finding a new piece. Once it was late enough for the Home Depot to open, I headed over there. They had similar fittings, but nothing that was female-to-female with European threading. Driving a bit further, I tried Lowes with no luck, and then both Ace and True Value Hardware shops. Nothing.

A pain, but not the end of the world. I figured we could last through the weekend and I could try a plumbing supply store on Monday morning. (We did find out, thanks to the water alarm again, that using just the hot water also caused some leakage thanks to water backflowing into the filter, so the sink and dishwasher were out of commission until we could get a new part.)

Monday morning, early o'clock, I visited three area plumbing supply stores with no luck.

Next step was to call Grohe and after a few false starts I had the exact part numbers needed ... but it wasn't something they could provide. Searching around online wasn't giving me too much confidence in finding the right piece event with the Grohe-supplied parts number.

I thought I'd ID'd the right piece at McMaster-Carr, but I called them to make sure. After a bit of back and forth, the best we were able to figure out was to replace it with a female-to-female (British threading) coupler and then a male-to-female push-to-connect fitting. It made for a slightly longer piece, but not so long that it wouldn't still fit under the sink.

I hit submit order on the website while still on the phone with McMaster-Carr, which was good because the sales person was able to change the order to ship the pieces diectly to me. Otherwise, it would have meant driving to somewhere near Trenton, N.J., to pick them up. (Although, because UPS was so busy with pre-Christmas packages, it might have been less frustrating if I had made the drive; the UPS app showed that the driver was just a few blocks away for about four hours before he finally dropped off the package. At one point, I took Lucy for a walk and saw him resorting boxes in the back of the very crowded van trying to make the deliveries more efficient.)

What Paint Where?

So after 23-⁵⁄₁₂ years in this house it's no surprise we have a bunch of partial cans of paint in the basement. I was looking this morning to touch up a few things (and looking ahead to a patch job that I need to deal with in our bedroom) and the first white I tried doesn't match what's in the kitchen ceiling. I looked back in the blog and while I made sure to note the color on the walls, I did a poor job of recording what's on the trim and ceiling.

I spent some time going through them all, finding a few that need to go to hazardous waste disposal and trying to figure out where the others have been used. It's a mix of Behr, Benjamin Moore, Sherman-Williams, and Glidden paints. I think the Glidden ones may be from before we bought the house ...

A few have varying degrees of helpful notes written on the lid, but others are a total crap shoot. I can say for sure that our bedroom is Behr Silverware (#3B45-2) in a Ultra Pure White interior eggshell base; Q's room is Benjamin Moore Blue Orchid (#2096-50) in Ultra Spec 500 interior flat base; the upstairs bathroom is Ralph Lauren Seven Seas (#SS38) in a neutral tinting base (#RL 1393); and the basement bathroom and hall are Behr Lunar Surface (#N460-3) in an interior eggshell enamel medium base. The kitchen is Benjamin Moore Wales Gray (#1585) in an eggshell finish base, and I think the living room is Benjamin Moore Offshore Mist (#PPU13-16) in a Premium Plus Flat White base.

For outside, we just used Benjamin Moore Aura Exterior Semi-Gloss, white, on the porch, and the retaining wall was painted with Sherwin-Williams Rock Garden (#6195) in an exterior acrylic latex Ultradeep base.

That leaves a Benjamin Moore #N539-01 Ultra Spec 500 Interior Semi Gloss that's marked as "Trim Living Room Hall & Stairs", a Benjamin Moore Premium Semi-Gloss Interior marked "Dec o/White", and a few cans of Benjamin Moore Intense White (#OC-51) that says "Hall & Stairs" ... I'm guessing that last one might be the ceilings, so I'll have to try a discrete spot to see how it looks.

UPDATE: Yeah, OC-51 is not the ceiling...

Just Needs Some Caulk

 

Things are looking good here. There's still a little bit of caulking I need to do and then touching up the paint, but most of our summer of exterior work is now done. After the roof work was complete, we were able to get the porch work finished up. (I also scrubbed the siding, removing most of the green algae that had built up over the years.)

The braces added to the columns were a nice touch that Evelin thought up. She'd seen another house in the area that had something similar, then did some digging and discovered these Ekena Millwork Thornton knee braces. We went with the smooth finish western red cedar ones and they really do look good.

We also moved the house numbers from one the short porch column (where they were hard to see, but not blocked by the camelia or the flag (or the now-moved crepe myrtle) to the lightpost. It's not perfect, but it'll do until we decide to try something else.

Drainage Solutions

 It's been a dry end to the summer, but when it has rained, it's tended to be aggressive with a lot of water falling in a fairly short amount of time. That's exactly the sort of rainfall that was giving us grief. The good news ^{(knock on wood)} that the new gutters and the adjustments made in how they connect to the house seem to be working. We've had heavy rain (at one point last night, it was falling at almost 3 inches per hour), but none of overflowing of gutters and sheeting down the side of the house.

Despite that good news, I was still worried about water backing up in the walk-out basement well and potentially flowing under the basement door. There's a small drain there with a cast-iron pipe headed out into the yard. I've never really known how that works. It might lead over to the retaining wall, but it doesn't seem to be connected to any of the weep holes in the wall.

When we first moved in, I cleared a lot of dirt out of the drainage hole, which had been blocking the pipe. More recently, I picked up a Drain King H34 hose attachment that jets water down the pipe. The idea is that the bladder swells to keep water from flowing back down the pipe and it forces out whatever is clogging things. I did manage to make a little progress with that, but it also led to water just bubbling up in the yard about 12 feet from the drain.

Concerned that I was going to cause a sinkhole if I kept forcing water down the pipe and into the yard, I eventually called in a professional.

A go at snaking it came back with just a hunk of the local clay indicating that (as expected) the pipe either had broken/collapsed or it did actually just dead-end into dirt (clay). After some discussion of options it was decided to just put in a new pipe, but angled like the gutter drain to flow into the side yard. There's a good change of elevation that direction, which made it easy to ensure the pipe would be emptying out. It took a few hours of work (interrupted by a crazy thunderstorm), but it's now complete. 

Re-Roofed

 And after a quick visit this morning to put on the last two downspouts, the roof and gutters are done.

We need a good rain (and, of course, the leaves to come down the fall and oak silks in the spring) to see how well it all works, but it looks good. The bigger gutters and the band of 2×8 around the top give a little heft to the look of the roof, which looks pretty good. (left before; right after)

  

There's still some caulking and touch-up paint/carpentry that needs to be done on the porch, and I need to see if pressure washing or something will clean up the old siding, but it's good to have the work done. (Next, at some point, replace the siding and replace or remove the faux shutters on the first floor, and paint/replace the door, and ...)

New Roof

Yesterday was a hive of activity with the shingles and old gutters being ripped off and new shingles going on. Lucy was not a fan of the noise, particularly when things being thrown off the roof passed by windows she was looking out. I have to admit all the banging and hammering and feeling like we couldn't leave the house for fear of falling debris did start to weigh as the day went on.

But the bulk of the work is done ... there was more damage than expected on the porch roof, so that wasn't finished by the time the crew reached the end of their day, but the roof is done (including adding the new venting for the bathroom fan) and the course of 2×8 that were put as a ring around the top of the house for the new roof and gutters to connect to is in place.

The siding modifications needed to accommodate that are done, so all that's left is to add the metal cap over that course and then the gutters. Plus finish the porch roof. (And once the porch roof is done, the handyman can come back and finish up that work.)

Today some rain and thunderstorms are expected, so they won't be back to finish things up until Friday, but we should be good and weather tight until then.