Sanford and Son meets the Beverly Hillbilies

This is what was hidden behind that wooden section of fence you see from the front yard. I know it’s a mess. There’s the cheap tin shed, our gardening tools, the trash cans, branches from a tree we pruned ourselves, a piece of plywood we have nailed to the side of the house to cover up the previous owners doggie door, (if a dog can get out a raccoon can get in!), and last but not least the worst “no, no” of all… firewood stacked on the deck up against the house. All of this stuff has since been removed and it is now the site of a very nice dog run. The plywood has been removed from the side of the house and is now been properly mended and painted, and there's no more litter in the yard just two dog houses. By the way, the dark brown section of wood planking, in the upper right hand corner, is our neighbor’s idea of a good fence.

A $3000 Lesson

The guys who built the shed did such a good job we asked them to build us a carport as well. We were so excited to have something to keep the pinecones, sap and other debris from hitting our cars. We had it painted the same color as the house and shed so it matched and I put a beautiful green wreath on the front of it with some classy numbers. It really added to the property and it was functional. We had it for two years and when they resurfaced the street the county cited us for not having a permit and it being 3 ft on the easement, and they made us take it down. If it would have been even with the trunk of the pine tree they probably wouldn't have bothered us at all. It made us so mad! It’s not like we live in the city. We live in a very rural area in the middle of a national forest we will probably never have sidewalks. It was an expensive $3000 lesson.

New Septic System

On October 16, 2003 we called Drain Patrol out to unstop a couple of backed up drains. It cost us $450.00 to have them snake it and degrease them. He ran into a slight snag when he couldn't pull the snake back out of the pipe because it was caught on something. It turned out to be a huge clump of hair but he was concerned because it had dirt and some small roots in it as well. Eeew! That was just the beginning of the nightmare. He also told us that we needed to replace a gate valve - whatever that was - because it was worn out and leaking, and on top of that we needed to have some repairs done under both sinks. Repairing the bathroom sink resulted in him cutting a hole in the wall. Thankfully it was under the sink and you couldn't see it now it's covered with a piece of drywall. When we told him that the toilet wasn't flushing properly as well as the problems we were having with the sinks, he reccomended that we have the main line looked at with a camera to see what the problem was. It was a special kind of camera that could snake down the pipes and you could see what was going on. At one point he couldn't get the camera to go forward any more because there was a blockage, and he said they'd have to dig out to where the pipe connected to the holding tank to find out what was blocking the line. It cost us 825.00 for the camera thingy. While they were here I asked him to check out the plumbing to the washer as well because there wasn't any cold water coming out of it. That's when he told us that we needed the cold water line connected to the faucet for the washing machine. What was happening was that every time I did the laundry it was using up all the hot water in our tank, which explains why we couldn't get any hot water for showers after I did the laundry. Evidently it was never plumbed over to the cold water line that was under the house, and when he went under to do this repair that was when he discovered that the drain in the laundry room wasn't connected to anything and just ran out under the house. It cost us $250.00 to connect the line, and on top of that the shower stems in the shower needed to be replaced, and that cost us another $150.00, and left us with bill to repair the tile that was broken out in order for him get to the shower stems. So up to that point the total was $1225.00. While they (I say they because now we had a "team" of plumbers working on our house) were replacing the stems in the shower they discovered that the shower head still leaked and that led to them discovering that the body needed to be replaced, and that cost $450.00, and resulted in more broken tile. All during that time we couldn't take showers because there was no place for the gray water to drain because the pipe that connected to the holding tank was completely broken off. Fortunately our neighbors, Derran and Linda, opened their house to us and we took showers over there. After the plumbers used their camera thing they discovered that 30 feet of the mainline was damaged and needed to be replaced, (that is the skinny pipe in the picture to your right.) It was at this point that they stopped calling it a job and now referred to it as a "house package" because there was so much wrong with the system it needed a complete overhaul. The repair for the main line cost $950.00. The final blow came when they told us that besides the recent repairs the leach line and leach field needed to be replaced as well, and that cost us $1280.00 more. The crew told us that the septic tank needed to be pumped out before they could make the repairs. I was furious about that because the tank should have been pumped out before we closed escrow, and that was only a year ago. Normally you wouldn't have to have it pumped out for at least 5 years, ten with only two people using it. So, I went to my real estate agent and told him of our problems and after doing some footwork he discovered that the guy who was supposed to pump out the septic tank lied . He didn't do the work and charged us for it just the same. Naturally, the septic guy wasn't expecting us to have to do all this plumbing work, so he offered to do it for free this time! So all total the plumbing repairs came to $5580.00 plus tax. The whole mess took over three weeks to complete. Because they had to bring in a backhoe to dig out the pit for the leach field they killed every plant in the yard when they did it, and when they were through they used a dump truck to back fill the hole which left me with this huge slope in the yard. Great...now I have a landscaping nightmare to deal with too. Later we got an estimate on what it would cost to replace the broken tile in the shower...$750.00 plus the cost of the tile.

Obviously there were problems with the septic system before we bought the house, and that was never disclosed to us that might explain why they wanted to sell the house as is, because they knew about all these problems when they sold it to us. So we ended up biting the bullet and had to put it on a credit. Rather than paying the sky rocketing interest on the credit card we refinanced the house and got out enough money to pay all the credit cards off and put up a chain link fence. So much for our move in ready house, huh?

Keeping Up With The Neighbors

At this point I'm ashamed to say that our yard didn't look any better than the next door neighbors, but ours was temporary, not so for next door. This is what the side yard looked like right after we had the chain link put up. We didn’t have any proper wood stackers, which we have since remedied, and so we piled the wood along the fence. Since then we added another section of fence (about where the blue tarp is)and a gate to make a rectangular dog run. We set aside ten feet in the back corner to stack our wood in.

An Unsightly View...

This is a view of the front yard on the left side. There is the piece of log that was never removed. What an eyesore! The tree is another Silver Maple (Acer saccharinum). This area is a gentle slope of about 3 to 3 ½ feet. I am considering planting some evergreen trees or shrubs there to hide the nasty view. The house next door is a rental and the landlord (slumlord actually) never does any repairs or maintenance on the place. How do you like the blue and green tarp covered leanto?

Some people are like slinkies...

Not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you see one stumble down the stairs. (Unknown)

And believe me we did our share of stumbling last winter so that is why I made this first attempt at making easy to walk down stairs. This also is a view of the parking pad and retaining wall. As you can see when we had the parking pad made it pretty much denuded the area of any plant life, except a wild hydrangea bush and a couple of irises. In front of the car you can see what remains of the stump from the oak tree that was felled and left in the yard by a previous owner. The river rocks were brought in by the people we bought the house from. At the top of the stairs you can still see a portion of what used to be the driveway.

A Path That Leads to Nowhere...

This is a view of the lower yard near the front door. It was mostly covered by asphalt when we moved in. I had to place a berm where the rocks are to keep the rainwater from washing away the yard. Just below the propane tank the dirt poured out onto a lovely set of steps and a pathway made out of rocks that led to the backyard. There was another large tree in the corner just opposite or the propane tank that one of the previous owners had cut down to a stump. The ground, shown in the lower right hand corner, is about 3 feet higher than the pathway and is held in place by a rock wall. The other side of the path is bordered by another, lower, rock wall and there is vinca planted all over there; it’s also where the maple and evergreen trees are planted.