This week was a bit of a let down (which at the very least balances out last week!). We were lucky enough to get some rain, but then it rained almost the entire week which prevented me from getting out into the backyard very much! The biggest project on the go is to finish cleaning and staining the deck and fence. However I need a stretch of nice warm days to get that done, which unfortunately didn’t happen this week. Another reason I didn’t get to go out into the yard much this week was because we had the yard sprayed to kill the horrendous amount of weeds we get back there. I explain some of the reasons why in the video below but ultimately I decided this was one job that was best left to the professionals. These guys did an awesome job!

One thing I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet is our giant dirt pile. When we purchased this home, the grading along the outside of the house had been significantly washed away. We had some dirt brought in so we could help restore the grading, however we got a little bit more than we bargained for and we have been trying to use it up. All of this rain highlighted one area on the front portion of the house that needed a bit of help since it was directly underneath a downspout. The water was coming out of the downspout and pooling along our foundation, which is big trouble! I found this article through Pinterest that talked a bit about splash blocks, and I decided to DIY the project using some of the large rocks from our dirt pile. I think this will have to be a temporary solution, but for now it will do.

Lastly I tried to tackle a project I initially thought would only take me a couple minutes, but ended up taking much longer. One of the boards along the driveway was almost completely broken off, but under a bit of inspection I discovered that the screws weren’t simply missing, they were broken and lodged inside! This article from Lowes gave me some simple solutions to get it out, but also used some tools that I didn’t have available. The drill we own also is not the most powerful tool, which was quite the hindrance in this project. Because the tip of the screw was nearly flush, and the replacement screws location didn’t matter too much, I decided to just leave the broken screw in place. However I still ran into more problems when trying to get the replacement screw flush, and was unfortunately not able to succeed as any further attempts were simply stripping the new screw, creating an even bigger problem. This is probably the first ‘fail’ that I’ve encountered thus far. It wasn’t a great note to end the week on, however the weather for this upcoming week looks much nicer, so hopefully the future will be filled with more successes!