"VOHE", "VOL" and then "VOHI" explained

Well as I said last week I would explain these acronyms this week. They are in order Victory over house exterior, Victory over landscaping and finally Victory over house interior. Of course then my brother had to come up with another one. His was when will you have SPOG, which is Solar panels on Garage. He knows that I will seriously look at this in the future as I had them installed on my previous house as well. But that will come down the road some day.

So what did we do this week well here it is. On Sunday I first reinstalled all the downspouts that I had removed from the garage to install my siding. I then placed 3 coats of Thompson Waterseal on 5 fir boards I had that would be used for frieze boards. After spending some time at Mom's and doing my weekly laundry I came home and proceeded to dig out the trench between my side porch and the front deck stair slabs in preparation for some Wall stone edging between the driveway and the side of the house. Here is a picture of that trench. It is setup so that about 4in of gravel will be tamped down and then 1/2in of Limestone screenings will go on top of that before the stone work is installed. The stones are 4in thick by 12in long by 8in deep.

On Monday night after work I spread out the gravel in the trench shown above so it was all ready for the stone work after being picked up Tuesday morning.

Then came Tuesday. Well the first thing I had to do was go to Brock Ford in Niagara Falls to have my truck worked on. For the last few weeks I've been having blue wrenches show up on my dash as well as the check engine light. So there is a Ford mechanic who lives in the area that is a good friend of the Brother in law and he prepared the shop for my coming in when the lights came on again. Well Tuesday morning after going for coffee with some other locals on came the lights. So after picking up my stone at Penner Lumber off to the Ford dealer I went. Luckily I was able to get the truck in the shop right away. Unluckily it needed a new throttle body which after install cost me almost 700$ as well they advised me that I would need to replace my VCT's soon and that will also cost me the better part of 800$. Oh well these will be the first big repairs on my 6yr old truck so we'll get it down. And by 11am I was back at home with new Throttle body and a smooth running truck. So in the afternoon. I installed all the stone work edging and even managed to level the dirt off and tamp it down in preparation for the fabric and gravel. Here is a picture of the finished stone work in the trench from the previous picture.

On Wednesday I started off by installing all the Frieze boards on the west wall and finishing off all the work on that wall. I started by reinstalling the blocks I had installed prior to the Mason's doing their work. Turns out most of the blocks were not secured tightly against the house so reinstalled them. As well the blocks are only 3.5in thick and turns out the brickwork ended up being about 4.25in away from the house so I needed to install another piece of 3/4in filler strip prior to putting up the frieze board. Once these repairs were down I installed all the trim and caulked up the expansion joint in the stone work that the masons had cut out. After this was done I moved over to the other side and did the same thing here between the side porch and the front deck. I once the trim was installed I laid down some landscape fabric and proceeded to shovel over a few wheelbarrow loads of red gravel to lay on top of the landscape fabric. Here are a couple of pictures first showing the blocks with the filler strips being installed and then two pictures showing the completed west wall. All that is left is landscaping along this wall. The last picture shows the area with the gravel installed between front and side porch. As you can see I was two wheelbarrow loads short of covering all the fabric.

On Thursday night I dug out the trench that will be used for the edging from the front porch to the road. 

Saturday morning after having breakfast with some of my coworkers we proceeded to start working on the front edging. First we installed the gravel and tamped it down. Then we installed some limestone screenings and slowly started out laying down the first course of stone. Once this layer was installed we installed the capstone layer with some specialty stone glue. Once this layer was installed we leveled off some driveway gravel along one side and backfilled the other side with some leftover dirt. Once all that was done we had a situation like the picture below.

We are now almost ready to start spreading out the topsoil for the front lawn. All that's left to do is install the stone edging in front of the deck and along the west side of the house. The stone along the west side is to allow me to hide some of the exposed water proofing material and provide a smooth line for the swale I need to install between me and the neighbour. This swale will direct all the water from that side of the house and from my rear downspouts out to the ditch along the road. This will take some time and may not be down before I head off for Carpal Tunnel surgery in Sept. We'll see how it goes and you'll just have to follow along. The last thing I did today was dig the trench out beside the garage for the stone wall edging that will be between my sidewalk gravel and the lawn going towards my shed. Here is a photo showing that trench.

Well that's it for now. Hopefully next week we'll have another good work week and be able to pass on more info on how it is going on the Mulder homestead.

All the best, Harold