The best kind of motivation comes from friends and family. Last weekend, Mike and I were lucky enough to have both groups at our home spurring us on to continue with some much needed yard work. As we’ve previously posted, Mike has been steadily ripping down the old rotted red fencing around the backyard, creating large piles in various corners of the lot. With all the extra hands we had available last weekend, we were finally able to move some of these to the dump!

Exhibit A. This was the fence removal in progress, as you can see Mike would move all posts to one location for removal later.

Our lucky helpers were Chris and Tara, who you’ve met previously in Let’s Pull Out Some Trees!, and my parents, Gary and Cindy, who were introduced in Family and the Washer/Dryer.

The morning started with a quick run to a friend’s house to pick up some items, mostly old furniture, that they asked us to take to the dump in one of our many anticipated loads. Winnie was very excited about sniffing these new treasures.

Just as a side note, Mike and I did have a brief discussion about keeping this chair that was destined for the dump, simply because we thought Winnie was attached. The chair did not stay, and Winnie has gotten over the loss.

This was the first load of fencing, notice how rotten most if it was. GROSS.

Mike’s happy place. There is something about Verlo men, and their love of the dump. I wish I could explain it, but after 7 years I’m still baffled. I’m sure it has to do with the curiosity of seeing what other people throw away. The rule is, NOTHING can come back from the dump.

After the fencing was cleared, Mike was able to get the big truck backed into the yard for the real exciting projects of the day: Stump Removal!

This was victim 1, an overgrown bush that we cut back last summer.

Going…

Going…

Gone!

Man is triumphant.

The offending stump.

See it now in motion:

Victim #2

This next removal was the first of our overgrown evergreens to go. Eventually we’ll be removing all 4 from the back of the lot, as they no longer are healthy, and could even be considered a fire hazard considering how dry they’ve become.

Attempt to pull out #1. Didn’t budge an inch.

Chris decides that we should be pulling from a higher location on the stump, so he creates a notch in the back for the pull cable to hook onto.

This fooled no one, he just wanted to use his chainsaw one last time that day. The notch did nothing.

Attempt #2 to pull. This didn’t work either. We ended up having to pull from another angle, and re-position the tow cable twice. Eventually the guys were able to get ‘er out.

Man is victorious once again.

Winnie gets lots of attention on project days.

The Other-Other Yard-related project of the day… the south side of the house.

I didn’t know we had hosta’s on that side of the house until this spring!

This was the area that Mom and I focused on for the afternoon. This side of the house was previously featured in Let’s Pull Out Some Trees! This was the side of the house that contained the ENORMOUS Bush, which was finally dug out with the help of my brother, David and our good friend, Eric. This was the “Before”:

Mike and Eric working to get the ENORMOUS stump out. You can see that we were still also working on fence removal.

Hard to believe, but this is progress. Slowly but surely our yard is emerging out from behind 30 years of shade.

After a long day of hard work we sat on our back porch and enjoyed a beer while watching the sun set behind the remaining back fence wall.

Thanks again for reading!

-Sara
          

The Twin Cities just had the 2nd wettest April on record, much of it falling as rain in the past few days.  This saturated the groundwater and has caused sump pumps to fail all over the area.  The Verlo home was in this failing category, as we discovered the other night as we went down to start a load of laundry in the sub-basement.

Luckily, we have a drain where most of the water was able to go, but not all of the basement is graded properly, so the back corner in this picture has standing water (note the wet boxes in the corner).

The water was coming up from the sump pump pit. Our first thought was that perhaps a breaker had blown and the sump pump wasn’t running. However, just standing in the basement we could hear the pump gurgling, thus eliminating the loss of power hypothesis. So Mike and I stood for a minute gawking at each other in shock, questioning what to do next, since neither of us had any experience with this sort of thing. We finally determined that we weren’t going to figure out the problem just staring at each other (and the covered sump), so while Sara started moving soaking loads upstairs onto dry towels, I decided to unplug the pump and tackle removing the bolts from the lid.  After a few panicked runs to the garage for different wrenches, the lid came off and this is what I found:

We’re in luck. It was just a disconnected pipe! I’ll just reconnect the hose.

So simple.  All I needed was a screwdriver to tighten the metal clamp.

We plugged back in the sump pump and the pit drained in about a minute.  As I’m working on fixing the problem, Sara was busy cleaning the mess.

This was a wonderful opportunity to show the husband that semi-expensive, slightly silly looking Hunter rain boots, that sorta make Sara look like she should be working on a fishing boat, were totally worth the purchase.

Rather than waste a half hour mopping up the water, I went and grabbed our wet/dry vac from the garage.  My father-in-law got it for us at a garage sale a long time ago and it didn’t come with the correct fittings for the filter you’re supposed to use when vacuuming water.  So I improvised:

I’m holding the “dry vac” filter. The “wet vac” filter is on the inside of the upside-down vacuum and I used a piece of cardboard to keep it in place as we sucked up 5+ gallons of water from the floor. Just call me MacGyver.

The cap fits back in place and we’re feeling good about another do-it-yourself triumph as homeowners, at least for a moment.

Our celebration was short lived, as water was again coming out of the top of the pit the next morning.  Frustrated, I opened the pit back up, and found a different part of the pipe was loose, this time at one of the PVC 90 degree joints.  It was at this point that the issues were becoming comical, so obviously I had to take video:

Much more uncertain about what to do this time (since I’ve never worked with PVC), I headed down to the local Menards to find someone who could at least listen to my story of defeat. Luckily a patient gentleman was available to guide me in the right direction, and recommend some PVC cement.

The guy at Menards assured me all I would need was the Pcement, but not wanting to go back if it wasn’t enough, I also got a few extras that I can always return.

All I had to do to apply it was dry both ends of the PVC, coat them, and let it set for about an hour before testing the sump pump. Pretty straight forward instructions.

Two days later and the pipes are all still sealed and we haven’t had any further problems! What a beaut’!

Mike: 1, Sump Pump: 0