June 2005

June 28, 2005: Well, it's officially Summer at Brickman House, and the usual harbingers of the season have arrived.

One of the interesting things about chronicling the renovation of our house (and tangentially, our lives) on the web, is that over the last few years, we've begun to see the patterns and cycles of the seasons. There are certain things that just seem to happen around us with each passing season: We moved in to this house in March 2002, and the crocuses greeted us. Every year since, the crocuses have braved the late February snows to peek back around, the forsythias follow getting ready to bloom, and the Dumpsters arrive with regularity.

Summers at Brickman House are heralded with the trees in full leaf, the opening of the pool, and the unannounced arrival of Bobcat Guy:

Who, you may remember, arrived mid-May a couple years back just in time to help us excavate our pool deck, and has just contined to, well... arrive, every year since.

Like we've said before, Bobcat Guy is an absolute artist with his machine-- a beat up HunkO'Metal that he starts up with a screwdriver and handles like a surgeon's tweezers, picking up and moving 20 foot fallen trees and itty bitty 6-inch clods of dirt with equal ease and precision, all for a price so cheap you keep begging him to take a few extra bills at the end of the day, and he Just. Won't. Bobcat Guy's a legend around these parts, no doubt, but like we explained last year, he operates on his own timetable, and apparently, we'd not been falling in line.

We'd been calling since mid-April or so, trying to pin him down for a weekend day to do some clearing on the property, with no luck. Sometimes we'd get no answer, sometimes we'd get Bobcat Guy's wife taking a message (of course he has no answering machine), sometimes we'd get Bobcat Guy telling us he'd get up with us just as soon as he was done his current two-week job, sometimes we'd catch Sunday lunch with friends who'd say they'd chatted with Bobcat Guy a few days ago and he said he was heading over to our place in a week or so. We just had no love from Bobcat Guy this Spring.

But lo and behold, this past Sunday morning, we were awakened by the arrival of Bobcat Guy coming up our driveway with a huge ol' FarmAll tractor, hollering "Hey... Wake Up! I've got a free day-- you guys got anything you want to do?"

Uh... whaaa'? Oh, errmm...Okay. Well... Oh f*** it... Hell YEAH! Seeing as how the FarmAll you've parked on our back step has a brush attachment right behind it, and your Bobcat's only half mile up the road.

And since Geoge Lucas finally closed the 30-year Star Wars cycle this year with the release of Revenge of the Sith, it's somehow fitting that we finally were able, with Bobcat Guy's help, to vanquish our own version of Mordor-- which, as you may recall from last spring's adventures in landscaping, was the last unclaimed, impenetrable corner of our property, and Sauron's summer home.

Bobcat Guy sure does pretty work. Roll your mouse over the photo below for a view of what it looked like when we finally gave up our attack last season...

Nice stuff. After three years or so, the grounds are starting to look like someone actually lives here.

We also asked Bobcat Guy to do some subtle regrading of the slope between our western property line on the other side of the pasture and our neighbors, which we cleared and rough graded last May. We like our neighbors a lot, and we hope they like us too, but apparently they weren't as amused as we were by us gearing up the lawn tractor every other week during mowing last summer, shouting "Baaaann...Zai!", catapulting down this hill, and catching air at the bottom...

Only to crash 15 feet into their front yard.

We thought it was fun. Really, we did-- mowing the western border of the property was a highlight of our summer weekends.

On the other hand, we admit that repairing the tractor divots in their yard every other week got to be a bit of a drag, and our poor neighbors, after putting up with us and our endless projects and odd bits of entertainment over three years, finally hinted gently that we should do a bit more to make the slope more user-friendly for both sides of the line..

So we asked Bobcat Guy if he would move some dirt here, and put some dirt there, and then all of a sudden we had a perfectly civilized, gentle slope to mow up and down. We threw down a bit of grass seed and some straw to hold everything on the slope, and ended up with this:

Once again, roll your mouse of the photo above for direct before and after views...

Bobcat Guy did a terrific job-- we will be able to guide our lawn tractor at a civilized 3 1/2 miles per hour, up and down our bucolic border for years to come, and we fully appreciate it.

But, well... PPffffftt. How dreadfully Boring.

No worries, though. We're quite sure adventure awaits somewhere else along our 3+ acres, and we're even more sure we'll find it.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

The slogging on the hall bathroom continues. It's not that it's going badly, and it's certainly not that it isn't coming out well-- it absolutely is.

The problem is that it's all going on in a Perfectly Average Pace. We're dealing with the difficulties that come up all in good time, and if we have some time to work on the bathroom that's fine... otherwise, there are friends to have beer and burgers with. Nothing much interesting has happened with the project (which is good, we suppose).

Anyway, we're almost done, which is going to be a huge relief, and then we can finally get to painting the outside of the house, now that the summer's half over.

Here's a teaser pic of where we are now:

Tile's done, rough plumbing's done, painting's done. This week we'll be working on the floor treatment, installing the fixtures, and putting on the final touches, of which there are always 15,632.

We're going to finish up this weekend, if everything goes well, and we'll post finished pics and details on next weekend's entry.

return to journal index / continue to next month

home / about us / gallery / journal / links / mail