whew. we’ve been working on the house so much that there isn’t any free time left over on sunday night for a blog post.

here’s a typical tuesday evening for us: ben comes home from work and finds me digging an exploratory trench across the back yard. i’m trying to trace some electrical cables as they leave the garage and re-enter the house, and figure out how they connect, if they connect, what we can re-use or what needs to be scrapped and replaced. while chasing cable and bits of conduit, i trench my way past this ugly metal post that just stands in the back yard. i get curious about whether it is set in concrete piling or just stuck in the ground, and start digging. ben arrives and grabs another shovel. we keep digging. and digging. 2 hours later, with the help of the our neighbor, our neighbor’s sledgehammer, and some cleverly placed lumber left over from the demolition of scary shed, we’ve pulled the post, and the 3′ deep concrete piling*, out of the earth. this also means we’ve dug a 4′ deep pit in the middle of the back yard. it’s after dark, we’re staving, and have no plan for dinner.**

later that night the pit filled with rainwater, so the following morning it looked like nothing but another backyard puddle. we began to think of it as our very own tiger trap, though the chances of capturing a drowned rat were much higher than the chances of catching a tiger.

later that week the pit was integrated with the trench we dug across the yard in preparation for running power from the house to the garage.

after talking to the internet, a fellow stage electrician, reviewing a book, and talking to some actual licensed electricians, we decided that it was better to let a professional run the power instead of risking that we do it wrong and electrocute someone or burn the garage down. as ben puts it, he knows “just enough to be dangerous” when it comes to all things electrical.

then we determined that the trench was in the wrong place. filled it in, dug another one.

it took a month, but eventually we dug the trench in the right place, a very competent (and licensed) electrician came out and ran the cable and conduit. hooray, garage power!***

our backyard WWI-reenactments completed, we filled in the trench yesterday. today it poured rain for a short time in the afternoon, which gave us a chance to reevaluate our backyard drainage situation.

it’s not pretty:

this is the view from the back door:

i know technical directors (the guys who make scenery for the theatre, that is) who would kill for a rain curtain that nice. actually, ben created that rain curtain by drilling holes in the gutter. why would he do that? well, because before that, the gutter was backing up and overflowing backwards straight INTO THE WALL and coming out the inside of the enclosed back stairs. hence the black mold (or mold-that-is-colored-black-but-is-not-the-black-mold) it was the far lesser of two evils to flood the back yard than to flood the back stairwell.

and flood the backyard it did. actually, what was worse was that since we re-leveled much of the yard through all our recent trenching activity, there was a steady stream of water racing across the back yard and disappearing underneath the concrete slab of the neighbor’s building, presumably headed straight for their basement. we hastily tried to dam up the flood with paving stones, but i can’t say it was terribly useful. our plan is to deny, deny, deny. and wait for the gutter guy to come out on the 22nd.

one of the challenges in this, and all project management, is determining what projects we CAN do ourselves, and what projects we SHOULD do ourselves. i try to think about it in terms of the level of danger. if we do this ourselves, and do it wrong, will it hurt someone? will it damage the house worse than it was before we did the repair? can we reasonably research the technique or skills through the internet or an acquaintance? can we buy, or borrow, the necessary tools?

for example, i’ve spent a few hours on the plumbing forums of DIY websites recently, figuring out how to hook up a water line to our fridge and how to replace the missing water valve inside the fridge. this is low risk: if i eff this up, chances are that the damage won’t be too great. water will spill on the floor and we (still) won’t have ice. this is a project that i can take on.

on the other hand, the new gutter we need. proper installation requires peeling back the edge of the (brand new) roof, installing the gutter, leveling it, resealing the roof, and ensuring that rain water can’t get inside the wall behind the gutter. all conducted 30 feet in the air. if we do this wrong, one of us could fall off the roof, or we could make it leak (more) inside the back stairwell, or we won’t solve any of our backyard drainage problems. high risk, therefore, this is a good thing for a professional to do.

next comes assigning priority, evaluated roughly in this order:

are we obligated to our rent-paying tenants to address this issue?
how much does it cost?
will completing this project improve our quality of life?
will it add enough appraisable value to the house before we have to refinance to pay for itself?
will it take 30 minutes, a weekend, or a month of weekends?

these assessment tools are essential because of the problem clowns, of course. it’s so easy to fall down the rabbit hole on a project and look up and realize that you’ve just devoted the entire evening to digging up a steel post. was that post really bothering anyone? no. would you rather have installed shelves so the linen heap can finally become a linen closet? yeah, maybe…okay yes. in the context of home repair, i wish for closet shelves above almost all things. and it is ALWAYS number 2 on the priority list. right behind this week’s problem clown.

*what in god’s name was the previous owner using that post for that the foundation had to be engineered so? as i understand it, the previous owner kept us boat in the back yard. maybe, what with all the drainage issues, he had to keep it tied up and anchored?

**it’s any wonder that we end up having whiskey and fries for dinner sometimes.

***next week we’ll finally replace the garage door motor, and then i can again park the car without fear of the manually-operated garage door guillotining the car on the way in.