Installing a Deck?

Kathy's been thinking of putting a deck in the back yard. (that is, getting me to put a deck in the back yard.)

The past weekend, we got our air conditioner condenser moved from the back yard into an ideal sheltered spot in the front, so we've freed up a good size chunk of space in the back. The backyard is a nice, regular shape that would easily fit a nice deck. I wonder how much of the yard I should cover with the deck?

The only thing that worries me a bit is how stable the ground is in the backyard. It tends to be a bit on the muddy side, to be honest, the drainage there isn't that great. Our patio stones there shift pretty drastically in the winter time and spring time. I've been wondering about how I can improve the way the water drains away from our backyard, and it looks like we will probably have to cut away part of the widened driveway to do it, since that's the direction the water wants to go in. We never really had any problem with the drainage until we widened the driveway, and it looks like that is the culprit. I wonder if it's something I can do myself, or if I'll have to hire someone to do it.

Kitchen Backsplash

This weekend past, we decided to put up a kitchen backsplash. I went to the local Home Depot and picked out some tiles and supplies, which cost less than I'd thought, and started working on it on Sunday morning.

This is how it started off - I moved things out of the way, laid down some newspaper, and sandpapered the wall a bit to let the wall give a bit more grip for the mortar adhesive backing.

I have a cement mixer attachment for my drill, that I'd originally bought to mix tar for my driveway. It made short work of mixing the mortar, and the actual process of attaching everything to the wall went pretty smoothly.

Here's the tile cutter - I had to get pretty handy with it to cut 3/16th inch strips of tile for the top edge of the backsplash. I had hoped that the tile would fit exactly after allowing for the spacing, but no such luck.

I had to clip a few tiles so that it would fit around the power sockets and phone socket. This nipper tool was actually more difficult to get the hang of than the tile cutter. I ended up cheating a bit - instead of cutting L-shaped pieces, I cut 2 rectangles instead. Not really too noticeable.

All the tiles are up at this point - I used the extras to extend the backsplash down a bit on the back of the stove - I didn't go all the way down since, well, it's not a part of the wall that we ever see.

After the tiles had some time to set, I mixed up the grout and applied it. These pictures are after it's been applied and the excess had been wiped off with a wet sponge. The lighting is a little bad, it was late and I had forgotten to turn the flash on.

Once the grout had some time to start drying, I applied caulk to the outside edges at the right end and the area behind the stove.

Here is the finished result, as per the top of the post. :D


It was kind of a tiring job, especially since the space I could work in was rather limited. I whacked my head on the range hood a couple of times pretty hard as well, but oh well. The results are pretty decent for something we suddenly decided on, on the weekend. 4 hours for the tile cutting and setting in the daytime, and an hour for the grouting in the evening, and a little more time for caulking and putting everything back together before the day was over. The only part I'd not thought of was the power sockets becoming inset on the wall after the tile was added, but all I had to do was remount the sockets and it turned out all right.

Only thing left to do is to put a sealant on the grout in a few days, and it'll be complete.

Cheers,

Allen.

Living Room Changes

I picked up a wall mounting system for my LCD television. I'd always meant to, ever since we got the LCD, but I've always balked at the $300-$400 price tag on the nice swingarm mounting systems from Future Shop or Best Buy. However recently I picked up a Costco membership, and I saw the swingarms on sale there for less than $150. I snapped one up the instant I saw it.

There were a ton of parts that I didn't need in the kit, meant for every TV mount under the sun - I lucked out and ended up only needing the basic parts, none of the extensions were required. It was pretty straightforward, the parts were easy to assemble, and I have a ultrasonic stud finder to locate the wooden sections of the wall I had to drill into. There were plastic tubes that could stick to the wall to hold the cables running to the TV, which was very convenient. The only challenge was measuring out how high on the wall to mount the bracket, to make it the same height as before.

This wall bracket freed up an incredible amount of space in our living room. During the time Kathy was away in China, I had replaced the old TV stand with a full sized table for convenience. I used it to hold both the TV and a computer setup. Having the table space meant I used it as a table, so it was always a bit of a mess. And the space under the table was often used as storage, which was also not very pleasing to the eye. The TV was also offset to the right of centre compared to the couch. The worst part of this temporary arrangement was that it became temporarily permanent, and stayed that way for over a year and a half since the time I put it in.

You can see it in the picture below.

Functionality: Good - Asthetics and Space: Bad

So after I had the wall mount in place, a whole bunch of things had to go. First the big table. Then all the bits of stuff that had been stored under the desk. Even the small computer monitor went, since I rarely use both the computer and the TV at the same time.

Now my oil-PC computer is in a spot where it can be showed off a little, rather than hidden away behind all the monitors. It's great for some light websurfing or Youtube. I rearranged the shelves on the cabinet unit for the electronics and moved it to the right side where it was much less in the way - I'm still a little surprised at how I managed to fit all of the wiring and a UPS behind the cabinet. I can now finally reach the couple of light switches on the wall without having to reach around behind the cabinet. The staircase is much less blocked away now too.

This is looking a heck of a lot better.

Another angle - you can see the bracket behind the TV.

So this should probably be the way things are for a while. I've thought about trying to put the electronics cabinet into the wall to free up even more space, but it would be a much larger project to consider at a later date.

The only problem with this setup is - where the heck am I going to sit when I want to play some games on the computer?

Allen.

Front yard fixup

More of a a shabby bit of dirt than an actual yard, we've neglected the front yard of our house for years. I mean, we mow it when it gets too long, and but we don't water it, and haven't really watered it since we started having watering restrictions a few years ago - the lawn mostly withered from lack of water and we stopped caring about it at that point. Looking out at it last week, it just looked really sorry, so Kathy and I decided to do something about it. We scraped away the mostly dead grass with a rake, and removed what was left of the back third to make a flower bed.

I went by one of those places that sell patio stones and various other concrete bits, and picked up about $70 worth of driveway curbing to use as the edge around the flower bed. It took 2 trips to pick it all up with our little car, but it wasn't too far away so it was all right I suppose.


After we laid down the concrete, we filled the flower bed with soil. We have a giant cube of soil in the back yard that we used while reseeding the back lawn, so I carted the soil over to the front with a hand truck and a garbage can. Since the distance was around the whole townhouse block, about 10 homes, it worked better than a wheelbarrow with a single wheel.


We also put a good amount of soil down on the remaining grass as well and reseeded the area. Kathy says she wants to plant some shrubs, and I think it should look pretty decent once it's all done.



Edit May 13 - a week later the grass is starting to grow back through the soil, and we planted some perennial plants:



Allen.