Water, water everywhere

Who knew plumbing would be such a hassle?

We did some optional plumbing work back in October (or was it November?). The neighbour in the adjoining house had a flood because his drain pipes were full of tree roots, so we decided to have our drain pipes replaced, to try to head off any future problems. We plopped down a sizeable amount of cash to have it done and were satisfied that it was a good decision we made. We even redirected our downspout in the backyard because it was originally connected to the drain pipes under the house, which is generally bad for the sewer systems since it can cause the sewers to overflow in heavy rain.

Everything was fine and we thought we were all done, so we took off on vacation about a month later. When we got back, we discovered that the city had shut off our water supply. It turned out our connection to the water main had cracked and was spraying water under the porch into the front of the house. Lucky for us, our basement walls are reinforced with an extra layer of concrete on the inside, but not so lucky for our neighbours. They have old brick blocks with crumbling mortar between them, so they had another flood, thanks to our water.

So, we had to get the plumbers in again to replace the connection between the water main and our house, but nothing is ever as simple as it should be. Our house had a weird y-connection between the water main and the shut off valve on the inside of the house. The extra pipe from the y-connection ran across the basement floor to the opposite corner where there was an additional shut off valve. The plumbers couldn't believe this was possible since it was a highly unusual thing to do, so they had to excavate to find out what was going on. When they exposed the y-connection, it looked nothing like they had ever seen before (my husband said it looked like someone had bit off the pipe and hacked another piece on).

The plumbers replaced all the pipe from the water main to the house, gave us a new shut off valve (a nice quarter-turn one rather than the crummy faucet-style one we had), and created a new t-conenction to get the pipe across the basement to the former location of the other shut-off valve (this time running it above ground, under the basement ceiling joists). Everything they replaced was originally lead, and was replaced with copper, so we were happy about that. We just weren't so happy with the amount of money we had spent!

Now all I have to do is get the city to install a proper water meter...

Running's not as much fun as swimming

So, Georges and I have started a running program that's supposed to get us up to 5K in 9 weeks:

http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml

We're part way into the third week, but I still can't imagine what it'll be like to run 5K. I can just barely do one lap at the track, which is a quarter mile (just under half a km).

I hope we can keep it up!

Maybe once we are able to run 5K comfortably, I can go swimming because that's so much more fun! Plus, the improved cardio will finally allow me to finish a lap at the pool without drowning!!! :D

No more neon green!

I finally got sick of looking at the neon green bathroom and painted it.

At first, I was going to paint it a powdery pink (it's a powder room, after all), but I chickened out and picked beige instead. Actually, the new colour is called "Barrister White". I don't know if that's supposed to mean something.

Anyway, it's no longer shocking to enter the bathroom, which is probably good. Here's what the new colour looks like (go to this post if you want to see what the old colour looked like):



I also replaced the double faucets (which separated the hot and the cold water, see above) with a single faucet. A friend once commented on the old faucets that he had to toss the water together like a salad in order to make the water tolerable for washing his hands - thank goodness that's no longer an issue! Here's the new faucet:



And here's a close-up with the water running:



I thought it might look out of place in this bathroom because it's so modern, but it turned out to be OK and I'm starting to really like it. Plus, the little joystick handle is cool!

New eavestroughs

We finally got someone to come in and replace the eavestroughs in front of the house, and to fix the chewed up trim near the roof. Here's what the front of the house looks like now (it needs a new coat of paint -- anyone have some colour suggestions?):



We had the two front downspouts combined into one. Here's what it used to look like (the two downspouts were side-by-side and went under the gas meter):



So the downspout from the roof now drains into the eavestrough above the porch,



which has a single downspout into the garden:







Here's what the chewed up trim looked like:



Here's a picture of the repaired trim:



Now all we have to do is finish the rest of the house! :D

Nature Challenge

I recently joined the David Suzuki Foundation's Nature Challenge, so I decided to switch the incandescent light bulbs in my house to compact fluorescents. Here's a photo of all the bulbs I replaced. I had no idea I had so many!

 

I also decided I should replace the stupid chandelier in the bathroom with a more normal light fixture. That cuts the fixture down from 3 bulbs to just 1!

Now all we have to do is repaint the bathroom (I hate that neon green), replace the sink (it has one of those old-fashioned sinks with separate hot and cold faucets), and finish the rest of the house! :'O

Flower garden, 2007

Last fall, I added more tulip bulbs to the garden because I thought there wasn't enough colour. The new bulbs ended up flowering later than the existing ones, so the flowers came in phases.

At the beginning of May, 2007, the garden looked like this:



Then, the garden filled with mostly yellow tulips (I didn't get a photo of it).

And now, in June, 2007, it looks like this (I planted the purple alliums in the middle the year before):



But I think the garden looks nicer photographed from the side:

Reupholstering chairs

As usual, I took forever to post something new on my blog.

I don't think Blogging is for me. But anyway, I decided to post pictures of one of the dining room chairs I reupholstered.

Georges originally bought them used and they were in good shape, except for the fabric.

We'd been putting up with the dirty seats for a long time, but I finally got around to changing the fabric this past April. I think it's an improvement. Let's just hope they last a while with their new "clothes"! We haven't really used the chairs yet, so I don't know if the fabric is too lose or too tight (or if our bums are too big)! :D

BEFORE:


AFTER:

The flower garden continues to grow

I never posted photos of the tulips that I planted in the fall of 2005.

Here are the cream ones:



And here are the purple and white ones (which actually look more pink than purple):



The astilbe didn't grow (the seedlings all died from some kind of fungal disease which is very common for seedlings), but I bought a couple of established astilbe plants and planted them. I don't seem to have a photo of those anywhere. I also added a fern and a lily. The fern can be seen in the photo below, but I don't have a picture of the lily.

I also couldn't locate any photos of the alliums. They grew, but they weren't as spectacular as I'd hope they'd be. Oh well.

In early December of this year, I also planted multi-coloured tulips (the picture on the package shows pastel pinks, purples and yellows), on either side of the euonymous. I found that the tulips I had planted the previous year were not colourful enough. I hope these help add a little more interest to the garden!