What a summer it was...Part 1.

Not that we did anything real exciting, but actual progress was made on several home projects. There was a price to be paid of course, and that price was the loss of a week or more of laying by a pool, eating and drinking too much. It was a fair trade however, because my lovely bride is quite happy with the progress, and our home is looking that much nicer.

Repainted porch. First do over.

There is so much to write about, I'm going to have to this in at least two parts. When I last blogged, I wrote about First Brother-In-Law Randy showing up and creating a whirlwind of brush clean up and grass planting. Little did I know that he set the pace for projects through the summer. First on the list was repainting of the porch floor, the first redo of any projects. The floor had become worn and chipped, especially near the door and on the steps. I hope this is due to the poor condition of it when I first painted, and not a job I'll have to do every three years. I hope this coat lasts longer.

Nifty location of outlet and transformer.
Looking at this reminds me to stow those
wires properly. 

Next was a major project was something I had put off for over a year. As a house "Christmas Present", we purchased outdoor lighting. I was dragging my feet on this one for a couple reasons, first was that I have no outdoor power outlets at the house. Upon reading the instructions, they want you to plug the system into a GFI outlet. When we purchased the house, we had an electrician check every outlet, and bypass the old knob and tube wiring. For reasons that are unclear to me, they also installed a GFI outlet in the basement, I think to compensate for a lack of grounded outlets through the house. Anyway, the first step was to tap into that outlet, and run power outside the house.

This brings us to the other reason why I put off the job.

Back garden lights.

Having a house with masonry construction is both a blessing and a curse. One foot thick concrete walls are definitely a curse when you are looking for was to install things outside the house. I finally decided to drill through the frame of one of the basement windows and install the outlet on the casement. This will prevent the window from opening, but I don't care.

Side house lights

Next I had to install the transformer, a rather large box that converts the power and controls the lights by timer and sensor. After that, it was time to position the lights and run the power cord. Immediately adjacent to the driveway is a concrete walk the abuts the house. Luckily there was a small gap between the house and the walk with just enough room to run the cabling. The first cable runs to the back of the house, lighting the driveway and flower bed out to the little storage area. If we ever fix the other flower bed, I left enough cable to go further.

Front walk lights and spot for flag

The other line ran down the driveway to the front of the house. We purchased these narrow little lights that I managed to install at the seams in the sidewalk, right next to the house. Further down, I dug a trench and installed two more standard lamps along the walk to the street. We also purchased a spotlight to illuminate our flag at night. This will replace the solar powered spotlight that actually worked pretty well, but didn't hold up in the long, dark winter nights.

That's it for now. The next blog will document a moment of insanity, leading to my biggest project ever.