Weather or not

Note to Mom...

I obviously did not die in the massive tornado swarm the weather guys were predicting a few days back and their doom 'n' gloom predictions regarding the quantity of snow that might fall upon my little Kansas burg last night have come to naught. Unsure what the weather guys are thinking lately. Is their software failing? Their gut instincts? Are they just looking for ratings? We maybe got 3" out of the early spring snowstorm. Probably just enough to damage all the budding plants in my yard.

So what's up in the Heartland today? Laundry. A movie (Wanted-on DVD) I rented last week along with two others. Of course I did not have time to watch all three movies in the week I was allotted. I never do. You'd think I'd learn by now and only rent two instead of having the third one run into an extra week rental. My learning curve must be flat.

I guess my bitch-of-the-day is going to be about my patio. We had a retaining wall and pavestone patio installed off the dining room deck last May-June. It went where our beautiful Clump River Birch was located prior to it's demise in the ice storm of 2004. At that time we had the stairs that leave the deck re-designed to eliminate the steepness that prevented our Lab with the bad hips from climbing those steps.

It really is a beautiful patio, It overlooks the woods and pond (although those in the know know that our pond is not always a pleasant sight). About two months after it was finished (and the job took a while), stones at the bottom edge of the patio started sinking. The soil here is very sandy and my guess is that a combination of that sandy base, poor compaction, and not installing landscape cloth between the wall and the sandy soil (both failings on the part of the contractor) were to blame for the sinking stones. But if I was a landscape contractor, I wouldn't have had to hire someone so what do I know?

The contractor returned and repaired the patio. It once again looked quite beautiful. But then these past couple of months the same stones started sinking again in the same manner. The contractor returned once again for repairs, this time basing an inch of quickrete before resetting and grouting the pavestone. Again, it looks beautiful and good as new but my gut says that all that's going to happen is the sand is still going to erode from underneath and the quickrete will hold the stones until the void underneath becomes so great that they once again sink into that void.

I had several issues with the contractor when he originally did the work. There were days when he did not show up on time (or show at all) causing the job to drag on for longer than necessary. He installed some perforated drain tile under the patio but his termination of the drain elbowed straight up out of the ground leaving a 4" round pipe that would hold gallons of standing water forever creating a great big mosquito breeding ground located two feet from our outdoor living space.

He'd undid two sections of our very expensive fence in order to bring in equipment for the job and promised to stretch the fence back and terminate it so that it looked just like it did before he started. He replaced the corrugated plastic that roofs the dining room deck. When the job was finally complete, he'd forgotten to fix the fence and the plastic he roofed the deck with stuck out 7" beyond the rain gutter which created 80 tiny waterfalls every time it rained. He also left a lot of pavestone grout smeared into the top of the retaining wall.

I called him about the poorly constructed drain, too long roof, unfinished fence, and sloppy grout work. He scheduled a date to return and take care of these items. He did not return on the date promised and to save being eaten alive by mosquitoes I redid the drain myself. I wasn't going to climb up on the deck roof, have no way of stretching and securing the fence, and no intention of removed the excess grout so all these items were left for him and he did return to take care of the fence and deck roof. He wanted to wait to see if a couple of months would weather the grout off and we agreed to that. Needless to say he never checked back about the grout but by then we needed to contact him regarding round one of the sinking stones.

Upon being informed of the first incident of sinking stones he had the cajones to tell me that he couldn't keep coming out to our house for free. Huh? The only thing he's been called out for was to fix things that either weren't done right in the first place or things that were left unfinished. Since I needed him to come out and fix the damn things, I was unable to drive into town to rip his head off and shit down his neck, marking that task for a future date on my mental calendar. Once he came out and saw how bad it was he apologized profusely and he did fix it. And it did last almost 6 months...

So right now the patio looks stunning but only time will tell if it is truly fixed. I was going to post some pictures but uploading them and getting them where I want them to appear on this page is apparently beyond me right now so I'll try that tomorrow when I'm not so effing tired.