Keeping It On the Level

Early in the spring we went to a local home show. We were given tickets by our roofer, who had a booth there. It was your typical home show with all kinds of contractors who could build you a patio, replace your roof, do your landscaping, repair your gutters, etc.

We walked away with two contacts that I thought would be very useful. The first was for somebody who does energy audits. We haven't followed up with him yet. The second contact was with a company called Raise-Rite.

This winter we had some freak thunderstorms and these caused a lot of water to leak into the basement. One of the many things we can do to help stop the leaking is to pitch the ground away from the house.

Yesterday, Raise-Rite came out, raised, leveled and pitched our sidewalk on the north and west side of the house. They raised the sidewalk an inch or two. There were only two very minor issues. First was that one cracked section of sidewalk cracked more. The second is that we need to raise our gate on our fence to the backyard as it drags on the sidewalk now. Overall, I'm very pleased with the results and if this keeps the water flowing away from the house, it was $400 well spent.

I'm taking Friday off for a long, glorious, four day weekend. The in-laws will be here, so it will be good fun. I'm looking forward to time outside and getting a few loose ends tied up. I started a firewood shed over the weekend and it just needs a few more boards nailed on before it's done.

Finally, as I was sifting through all the satellite pictures of our place, I came across this one.







Which has bothered me. The building to the north is the garage and extending east of that is the driveway. The long white line in the middle is the sidewalk to the front door. The gray bit on the west side is our roof, obscured by tree cover. What the heck is that round thing on the front lawn, south of the sidewalk? There are no marks on our yard right now, so whatever it was either didn't kill the grass, or it's grown back. And there's definitely no round thing there now. I found out this weekend what it was from Ms. Huis, who talked to the neighbors. Anyone else care to take a guess? I'll post the answer in a few days.