It was nice to have the long weekend for house projects. In an effort to paint the hallway (it's the grossest thing left in the house...well next to the upstairs) I filled in all the holes and attempted to repair the drywall that had all been knocked off the corners, too bad it still isn't dry enough to sand yet.
I also continued my back door experiment. My first coat was 1/2 alcohol 1/2 shellac, it went on great looked great marvelous stuff to work with. Thanks Gary at This Old crack House for extolling its virtues. My second coat was a complete disaster. I wanted to go darker so I added some alanine dye, the results were a streaky blochy mess that also dissolved the caulking from around the window and just looked terrible. Time to sand it all down and try again. This time I think I'll probably use stain as opposed to the dye.
Eric took a go with the shoddy electrical in the house and installed a motion sensor light for the front drive way. I don't think it was as bad as the kitchen, which leaves hope for the rest of the wiring in the house. I want to get one of the solar motion detector combo thingies for the back since there's no power that runs out that way.
Lastly, we fixed the gutter system on the house. I figure it's better to do now, then once the winter rains really set in. I just wish I'd taken some pictures. Out front, what we did was dig a foot deep trench going away from the house. Put little extender guys on the bottom of the downspout then attached one of these green flexie things then connected some of the black drainage pipe to the end. The home inspector said that the gutters had to drain 5 feet from the house, which I don't think is correct looking at every one elses gutters that drain a couple feet from their foundations, but since this one was on an inside corner and next to the sidewalk, I figured longer was better. Once the drainage contraption was in place we buried the pipe end in pea gravel to act as a drainage field then filled the rest in with dirt. It was a great success, I can't wait till it rains. On the side of the house we did the same thing but we had to replace the whole downspout and only used the green flexie thing. Eric also streightened out the gutter so now it should be right as rain (hehe). There is still one missing downspout, but I'm saving it for when the side yard gets turned into a garden and I'm going to use it to fill a rain barrel. I've been reading through Casa Decrepit and really enjoy their tales of Urban Farming and I think I'd like to try my hand at it come spring.
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