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The Great Big Outdoor Drainage & Landscaping Project

Last week, I talked about upgrading the landscaping and curb appeal of BHH. Granted, just by the nature of its architecture, BHH draws a lot of positive attention from passersby. All hail! Hale Navy.

Benjamin Moore Hale Navy
Benjamin Moore Hale Navy

However, because we neglected the exterior to focus on the interior, things are starting to look a little shabby around here.

Andy and I are working from a master list of exterior projects, and it turns out that many of our outdoor projects relate to one another. In other words, it is going to be an expensive summer. The timing for each project is crucial to the completion of subsequent projects.

Andy and I were sitting on the porch over the weekend, and I turned to him and asked, “Do you ever think about how much money we would have if we did not own Blake Hill House?”

“Yes,” he replied with a far off look in his eye. Then, we discussed the total we have spent so far and considered how many vacations we could have taken for that amount. I won’t bore you with the details, but it was a lot of vacations.

No matter. We are committed, and owning BHH is a labor of love even as we lose the death grip on our wallets.

Iris in bloom

 

The Exterior Project List

  1. Gutters
  2. Tear out stumps and landscaping
  3. Trench and lay pipe: Phase I
  4. Add fill dirt
  5. Replant grass and new landscaping: Phase I
  6. Finish exterior painting
  7. Prune and add to existing landscaping (Last week’s post)
  8. Seal the driveway

Gutters & Trenching (1 & 3)

To explain about the gutters, I need to back up a bit. I will attempt to make it brief. When we bought BHH, there were gutters around the perimeter of the upper roof and the lower porch/garage area.

After the ice dam debacle of 2015, we got a new roof. At that time, the roofers removed the gutters. The original plan was that they would come back to redo the gutters. However, long story short, I was done with the roofers, and I did not want them to come back. We did not pay them for gutters, and they never called to schedule the install. We backed slowly away from each other, and that was that. No harm, no foul.

We gave it a lot of thought, and Andy and I decided to leave the gutters off and see how the roof fared during the subsequent winter. We were understandably twitchy at the thought of more ice dams. I kept close tabs on the basement, and the summer of 2015, it stayed nice and dry, but we also had very little rain.

The winter of 2015-16 was very mild by comparison, and there were no ice dams. However, at the end of summer 2016, we got tons of rain, and without gutters, the foundation began to leak, and we started to get water in the basement. 2017 has been the same, and our basement is staying damp. (In the next post, I will talk more about our stone foundation. It was designed to allow some water flow, but how much is a complicated answer.)

The past two years, I researched gutters, no gutters, french drains, other types of drains, grading, etc… all to make the best choice for BHH. After collecting bids and planning out many different scenarios, we decided on a combo of gutters, downspouts, trenching, and an underground pipe to divert the water into our woods.

Please excuse the old photo below. I still have not taken a new picture of this particular view of BHH.

Mouse over the pic for the details.

Tear out Stumps and Landscaping & Add Fill Dirt (2 & 4)

I shared this picture last week:

The new drain pipe will run under that flowerbed, across the lawn, and meet up with a trench in the woods. That trench joins with a broad drainage between our property and the property behind us, one street over.

The contractor will bring in his big machine to dig out the stumps and tear out the rest of the weeds and pachysandra. Once he installs the new drain pipe, he will add topsoil to this entire bed. We will reseed the front half with grass, and the back half of the bed near the house will be a perennial flower bed.

Replant Grass and New Landscaping: Phase I (5)

Because the new topsoil will need to settle, we may not be able to do any replanting this season. It is possible that we can reseed the grass this year, but it is unlikely that there will be enough of a summer left to plant perennials in the new flowerbed. That is not necessarily a bad thing. We will have all winter to plan what we want to plant.

This trenching and landscape upgrade is phase I because we have a separate drainage issue on the back side of the house, which we will address in phase II. However, that’s a post for another day. We will probably have to wait until next year for phase II.

Finish Exterior Painting

The company that painted our house the past two summers is a gem. They used top notch, Benjamin Moore paint, and their work was high quality. This morning, the owner gave me a bid for the remainder of the house, and he delivered some terrible news. After this summer, he will no longer paint houses the size of ours. He and I have a good rapport, and I managed to squeak out, “Not even mine?” Ha! His answer was a firm no.

Fortunately, this summer is the last big push, and BHH will have a full coat of fresh paint. If we need touch-ups, it will be easier to find new painters, or we can do them ourselves.

Prune and Add to Existing Landscaping (7)

I wrote most of the details about this last week, so today, I will just share some beautiful photos of the flowers outside right now, courtesy of my 16-year-old.

Geraniums
Lily of the Valley
Vibrant Pink Rhododendron

He is stepping up his photography game these days.

Seal the Driveway (8)

I am currently collecting bids for this job. Because the big digger might mark up the driveway, we are waiting until the trenching is finished before we seal the driveway. It will probably be August before we get to that.

That’s our great big outdoor drainage and landscaping project for 2017. The projected cost for everything on this list is around $20,000. Yes, I wrote $20,000. We could get a lot of time on the beach for that much.

Is anyone else in this same kind of pickle? I feel like surely we will reach a set point soon where BHH will not need so many high-cost repairs. I know a house this old will always need something, but we have come close to upgrading nearly all of the high-ticket systems.

One more little note: Because all of this is going to add up this summer, we think we are going to put off rebuilding the chimney until next year. The preliminary bids for the chimney came in around $7000.

14 Comments

  • Anna
    Posted June 6, 2017 at 4:29 pm

    The second flower photo is Lily of the Valley (planted in the shade amongst the Hostas?).

    • Post Author
      Stacy
      Posted June 6, 2017 at 4:30 pm

      Thank you! I’ll update the caption.

  • Ame Jo Hughes
    Posted June 6, 2017 at 9:56 pm

    Drainage is such a complex issue. I find myself now, when admiring houses, wondering if they get water in their basements or crawl spaces with that grading. ?

    And you know, I love a big house. I absolutely wouldn’t trade mine for the world… but a big house is like a big dog. The care-related expenses are a lot heftier than they are for a small one!

    I love your flowers. Especially the lilies of the valley (which, you may or may not know, are invasive and very poisonous – so, you know, don’t eat ’em ;-)), they’re so delicate-looking and gorgeous.

    • Post Author
      Stacy
      Posted June 7, 2017 at 5:46 am

      Amen to all of this! We are lucky that our problems are just starting. Someone did a great deal of work in the basement already.

  • Amanda
    Posted June 7, 2017 at 12:00 pm

    Thanks for being so open about addressing your drainage costs! It is a big ticket item (and it’s a hard pill to swallow because it won’t really improve the aesthetics of the house) but so important for longevity. I’ll be interested in what you have found regarding how much water should actually be able to pass through a house with a stone foundation. In our previous 1870 house, we had issues with water leaking in the foundation around the cellar doors, and we installed a french drain that helped, but never totally fixed the problem. Now we are in a 1920 stone foundation house, and one corner of the basement is consistently wet with heavy rains. The floor was cemented over at some point, and has a drain in that corner, so we like to pretend that it’s okay (it’s totally not okay, LOL). We are hoping to address the issue with grading away from the house, and then will adress the issue from there… eeek.

    • Post Author
      Stacy
      Posted June 8, 2017 at 7:47 am

      I agree with everything you wrote. It is so much more fun to buy new furniture or completely redo a room. Talking about money still feels weird to me, but I think our readers should have an idea about how much things like this cost.

      I am doing some research right now, and I hope to have more reliable information about stone foundations soon. I have had more than one contractor tell me that stone foundations were made to weep a bit of moisture, but I am reaching out to experts for corroboration so that I can set the record straight. Stay tuned.

  • Devyn
    Posted June 7, 2017 at 4:44 pm

    I understand your plight well (really, really, well). It’s hard to spend money on the things that we don’t really see in a tangible way (OK, some of this is very tangible, but nobody will know you did the driveway), but getting them dealt with can offer a good amount of peace of mind. I am sure you will be glad to have the house the same color on all sides. 🙂

    • Post Author
      Stacy
      Posted June 8, 2017 at 7:59 am

      It will be great to have a house that is entirely blue instead of half and half. 😀 Once we have this drainage issue solved, I will feel so much better.

  • Vanessa
    Posted June 10, 2017 at 10:47 pm

    $20 K is brutal to you but important to the house. Ouch – but do it if you can.

    • Post Author
      Stacy
      Posted June 11, 2017 at 7:06 am

      Just writing that number is brutal. 🙂

  • Aileen
    Posted June 14, 2017 at 6:32 am

    Oh wow, that’s a major expenditure, but it will be worth it. Why is it so hard to find a decent gutters contractor? We had new gutters installed when we painted our house in 2013. My husband reported an issue with the gutter slope on one section of our house and they never responded. Then, months later, my daughter called me at work because there were strange men on the roof who told her they were at our house to repair the gutters. I thought they were running a scam and I called 911. The police came and the guys had a valid work order – the contractor my husband had complained to had arranged for them to come and never told us. We were furious and they STILL didn’t fix the gutters properly.

    • Post Author
      Stacy
      Posted June 16, 2017 at 8:08 am

      How frustrating! I cannot believe they did not warn you that they were coming. That’s crazy.

  • mkcubed
    Posted June 16, 2017 at 2:03 pm

    We had to replace our furnace and hot water tank within the first year of owning our home. Spending money on things that aren’t seen is a tough pill to swallow but there is a sense of relief knowing that they are new and won’t have to be “thought” of again for many years. I hope you find the same comfort in the work you’re doing at BHH.

    • Post Author
      Stacy
      Posted June 19, 2017 at 7:08 am

      That must have been quite a blow to your wallets. Our water tank is quite old, and we have some set back in reserves for its inevitable demise. I do get that sense of relief that you mention. I still feel good knowing we have a new roof. The old roof was so terrible, and I worried about leaks before we had it replaced.

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