Friday

 

New manifold installed this morning. 

Second manifold installed. Our sprinkler system is mostly up-to-date. There are a few sprinkler heads that need adjustment and cleaning, and maybe one with a leak, but they're all low priority. I'll get to them.

After we walked Toby this morning, we drove to Ace to pick out paint chips for the exterior of the house.

The new roof will probably be metal painted "stone white," as seen above. It's actually light gray.

After lunch, we headed back to Ace (with Toby) to get paint samples of our favorite four. Here are the paint choices in no particular order:

Watercolor Blue (our darkest color; we agreed to eliminate this one)

Watercolor Blue

Swiss Chalet (our lightest color; it's probably too light, but it's very pretty in certain light)

Swiss Chalet

Swiss Chalet

Swiss Chalet at night

Swiss Chalet at night

San Francisco Blue

San Francisco Blue

San Francisco Blue

Antartica

Antartica

Antartica

Antartica on the left and San Francisco on the right at night

Ignore the color, this just shows where the paint will go. The frame around the garage and the garage door would be white.

Same here. The frame, border, and decorative low wall will be white.

Same. The window frames, border, low wall will be white.

The doors, window frames and borders, columns and pedestals, low wall, and decorative element above the door will be white. Only the walls will be painted blue. The point is: there will still be lots of white.

We have neighbors sending us their paint color that we both like. It's sort of in between San Francisco and Antartica.

Thursday

 

Early morning walk with Toby in the neighborhood 

Our contractor arrived this morning to remove the wall A/C unit and patch the hole in the wall. We had told him that snakes were getting into the house through the unit and he seemed skeptical. But a black snack came out of the unit and bit him while he was attempting to remove the unit. 

He eventually got the snake and the unit out of the wall. 

The contractor found the hole in the bottom of the unit where the snakes and lizards were getting in.

Next week, the contractor will be back with insulation and wall board to finish up the inside. He will do the inside wall texture.

He framed the hole and covered it in plywood so that the stucco guy could apply a coat to the outside. 

While the contractor was working, we had two roofing companies to look at our roof and give us quotes. Our three quotes are within $500 of each other. 

Wednesday

I set about investigating how our mailbox works with the idea of replacing it while John pruned around the old A/C unit to help our contractor who's coming Thursday to begin removing the unit and re-building the wall.

I undid a couple of screws on the back.

And a bolt on the front. Then I slipped the entire mailbox and post off of a 4 x4 wooden post that was in the ground. It was not in concrete, just rocks and dirt. It was rotten, covered in carpenter ants or termites, slowly disintegrating. With that information, I headed to Ace, Lowes, and Home Depot trying to find a suitable replacement. I found it to be more complicated than it should be. We will need to dig out the old wooden post and replace it with a post embedded in concrete. Then we can slip the new metal sleeve over the new 4 x 4 post. Then attach a bracket to the post, then the box to the bracket, then the numbers to the box. Since I didn't find anything I liked locally, I'll shop online and have it delivered. When that is done, then I can pick up concrete mix and a 4 x4 post.

After hitting the big box stores, I came home and had lunch. Afterwards, John went jogging and I went to Weaver park to exercise.

It warmed up to 72 while I was there. The high temperature for the day was 78 degrees.

Later in the afternoon, I pruned the dead blooms and leaves on the bird of paradise bush. Soon, I'd like to take a shovel to it and cut the root ball, about a 1/3 of it. We need to get the plant further away from the house. The best time for major surgery is late January/early February before spring.

John and I filled up 3 bins with yard debris. The gardenia bush had to be over 30 years old. The trunk is huge. I removed two brackets from under the A/C unit. They weren't touching the unit; apparently, they were for a previous unit. 

Then the sprinkler guy called and asked if he could drop by this afternoon instead of Thursday morning, which is great because we have a lot going on Thursday.

He pronounced our valves and solenoids as ancient, some of them leaking, which is the same thing our lawn service said. The equipment is so old that it would be foolish to replace only the valves and solenoids. The best thing to do is to rebuild the entire manifold, which is everything you see in the box: pipes, valves, and solenoids. He says the parts used in our manifold, like the compression rings at the bottom, are not used anymore and those particular valves are obsolete. The manifold above services stations 3, 4, 5, and 6 (both side yards and back yard).

Same for the front box which contains stations 1 & 2 (services the front beds and lawn). He said the equipment was not leaking, but one of the solenoids was cracked. It's just a matter of time before it fails. We decided to replace them all. That way, they will all be the same and up-to-date. He said he could do it Friday. So, we said yes.

Stations 1 & 2

In addition to the contractor, two roofing companies are coming on Thursday to give us a quote on our roof, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. That will give us three bids to choose from.

Tuesday

 

We walked Toby in the neighborhood before sunrise and then rode our bikes out to the Dunedin Causeway to walk.

It was 70 degrees with a light breeze.

Lots of pretty clouds.

We spent some time out in the yard this afternoon. John pulled up plants and I put them in the bin.

We have a sprinkler person coming later this week to inspect our underground valves and solenoids. 

We're clearing out the beds.

We left the large and colorful bushes.

We filled up a large yard bin.

Our contractor sent us his proposal to remove the A/C unit, seal it up, and switch out the electrical outlet. He will begin tomorrow or Thursday; the stucco guy is coming Saturday. We will try to clear out more room for them to work here at the southeast corner of the house.

Monday

 

We left for Clearwater Beach at 7:30 this morning, after walking Toby during sunrise in the neighborhood. 

John jogged while I did stretching.

It was mostly cloudy but a comfortable 78 degrees.

There was a mist hanging over downtown Clearwater as we headed back to the mainland.

Sunny, looking south from the tidal bridge east of Clearwater Beach. John dropped me off at Weaver park in Dunedin for strength training before I headed home for lunch.

After lunch, I disassembled the rain sensor from the gutter. It hasn't functioned for at least as long as we've lived here.

I was able to pull the wire from the inside of the garage, through the attic, over to the soffit, and out to the gutter.

I cleaned up the outside of the electrical panel.

And tidied up a bit. This area is always a mess because there's always something going on. I'm waiting on Amazon for our surge protector for the new sprinkler controller. Then I'll zip tie the loose cords to keep them from getting snagged on something.

I tested all six zones of our sprinkler system again, and this time I took pictures (see above) while each zone was operating so that I could enter them here in the app. I also named each zone to help me remember which sprinkler heads were in each zone.

A thunderstorm was on the way, so we loaded up Toby in the golf cart and drove to Stirling Park before dinner.

We could feel the cool breeze ahead of the rain even though the weather station said it was 82 degrees.

We made it home after just a few sprinkles, but then we got the full fury.

Late delivery at 7:45 p.m.

All hooked up and cords managed

small but powerful