Thread: Getting to be an expensive week

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Better get back to work, sounds like you need a break!!!!!!!

You were jumping up and down on a rotted out septic tank!!! You're NUTS !

Sean

Originally Posted by sgo70

You were jumping up and down on a rotted out septic tank!!! You're NUTS !

Sean

When I read that I thought if I had tried that I would have hit a weak spot!!!

53 Chevy5
I hated to do it but I prepaid on a credit card 2,400 gallons just under $2.00 per gallon plus 7% tax. I was afraid if I didn't propane could be over $3.00 per gallon tough call. That is for the house and garage, I just hope I can be up to getting some of the old cars fixed up enough to make a buck or two.

Richard

Sounds like my time off! I spend a third of my days off keeping the house and yard alive for one more year! Our house was built in 1858, and is 100% wood. So if I skip any maintenance like sanding and painting window sashes, the repair bill for replacement, reminds me what a little provention is worth!
IC2 I'd misss the 30x45 pole barn too!
But not the 7 acre mowing!
New septic is not glamerous, but well worth the trouble! I also like the killing two birds with one stone approach!
I hope that the economy takes a turn for the better very soon. On the news yesterday the rate of forclosures on retired people is climbing. It makes me so sad to see people work so hard their whole lives and then get devastated in retirement.

We moved to a new house in 1999 to get a single level for my wife's knee problems (and then fixed up the upstairs after her second successful double knee operation) and the ground around the house was graded by a guy on a tractor with a blade; it seemed innocent enough. Then two years ago without any known cause the lid of the septic tank collapsed, probably cracked by the grading tractor. Well our cat was attracted by the odor and FELL IN! Then the cat got out somehow and wanted to come into the house!!!! Fortunately I lassoed him with some clothesline and tied him to a fence post while I played a garden hose over him. Of course he doesn't like water so he would take two mighty steps with the small slack in the line, leap forward and fly through the air with the rope bringing him back. We had to get a complete new tank since the sides were also cracked and we drenched the cat with liquid soap several times and finally brought him in and tied him to a faucet in a bathtup and lathered him up some more. The tank had to be dug out and buried in a hole in our woods and replaced by a new tank which we now guard carefully against tree trimming trucks and the crane that came in to remove the two pine trees that fell on our roof during Huricane Isabel several years ago. Fortunately we have enough wilderness forest area on our lot for the burial of the old septic tank. Strangely our tank is in the front yard due to a better slope there and for whatever reason the grass is not greener over the tank; maybe there is only a few inches of dirt over the lid because the grass does poorly over the lid! Here is a picture at Easter last year, some 18 months ago, when we really only had that one late snowfall. Although the house is relatively new it is getting to be the time for the first repaint that I am not looking forward to. Maybe I can put it off till next Spring.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Don what a beautiful place!

Thanks Stovens. We really wanted a one-level ranch home but I mentioned to the builder that I wanted a small office upstairs. We hired a one-at-a-time contractor and he had his own architect who whipped up what is pretty standard in this area as a "Williamsburg Style" home and even the brick is labeled Williamsburg Red. We were amazed at the room upstairs and the attic was tall enough so I could have put a basketball backboard up there but my wife said absolutely no bouncing dribbling upstairs so we recently finished it off with a combination of my amateur carpentry with help from a local jack-of-all-trades guy and we told the county it is a "Game Room" with a 1/2 size pool table but it has a small bathroom and can serve as a guest room for the grandkids when they visit. The point is that in Virginia there are a LOT of brick style buildings and I guess we have a prototype of the restored homes in Williamsburg. Where I grew up in Eastern Penna. field stone was the material of choice for "class" but in Virginia almost everything is either frame (faux frame as plastic siding) or brick as is our home. Still, very few homes in Virginia have basements as compared to where I grew up in Penna in which almost every home has a basement and usually a shop down there, so I had to get a small garage for a workshop. In my opinion the most desireable setup is where there is a driveway down to a basement garage but that depends a lot of the slope of a given plot of land and is the exception in this area. You know our house is paid for except that our county taxes are high and we leveraged our way through three homes buying and selling at appropriate times using the little blue mortgage book and ARITHMETIC. Even Einstein was amazed at the power of compound interest. I saw other folks buying houses they could barely afford including a neighbor who lost their home and had many go-around discussions with my wife regarding "moving up" against my better arithmetic judgement so regarding the housing crisis I have to wonder whether arithmetic is a lost art (due perhaps to use of optical scanners at the checkout counter and credit cards)? My mother was a book keeper for a plumbing business and they would keep her even when salesman were laid off because she could balance the books to the penny every month. Surely there must be some balance between aspirations and financial reality? Anyway our present house is roughly a medium priced home in a county which has many other bigger houses and the county taxes are annoying but our only form of "rent" at present. My wife is also a book keeper/secretary and heaven help me if I buy car parts that exceed what our previous monthly mortgage payment was so I have to space out parts purchases! Stovens, on one of my book shelves I have two of those small metal models, one is a '32 Ford 3W Coupe and the other is a '48 F100 in the original green and black paint scheme. Does your F100 have a flathead? I still have a 4" Merc crank in my shed waiting for some needy flathead and I will let it go for much less than a new crank from Speedway! I would like to see it go to someone who knows what to do with it!

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder