Christmas 2009

Furry visitors/Funeral...

Well as far as i can tell the lads are all dead and gone... noise free nights for the past week, put down poision in the attic and traps... removed three dead mice, found another so full in the dogs nut bag that he could not move ;) poor devil, no poision has been eaten in the last week either.
So went blocking and sealing all holes around waste pipes into the house with spray foam and mortar,hopefully the house is now vermen proof.
Also we seemed to have lots of spiders appearing were coming in around the pipes of the rads, sealed up all those holes the weekend too, some massively crazy spiders, the wolf spider, hopefully this solves all the problems, the other half has now purchased two gadgets... i dunno if they work or not, but the few flies that were in the house lost all ability to fly after about 5 hours... concidence???

Visitor's in the house...

Was lying in bed saturday night, and heard scratching in the ceiling above me.... :( Could not sleep for the night, was home alone too had to switch bedrooms to get away from the noise!!! Following morning i put poision in the attic space and a few hours later it was all gone, put down some more and set a few traps nothing got yet, but had a silent scratch free night last night. Just hoping its mice and not the bigger furry variety, must put some poision down around outside too...

Patiently awaiting germination...

Well the seed to the front lawn was set last wednesday and saturday, should hopefully be seeing signs of growth soon. So how much did it cost, and was there a lot of work involved...??
Compared to the quote of €2,950 from the landscaper, as outlined below in another post. We have spent, €240 for bob cat with soil crumbler and stone raker for the weekend (this leveled the site and made it the cake crumb consistency that you are supposed to have, on hindsight the harrow would have done the same job and saved €240), 3 bags 25kg nr 2 grass seed at €60 each, the lawn was harrowed for free, tracks machine to level the place one saturday 8hrs at €40 an hour, after that it was all free labour and very much appreciated :) Took 5 people nearly 5 days to pick stones rake it, seed it and roll it, the water filled roller cost €32 for the week.

Total cost €772

Mishap with front gate

The house across the passage from us up on a hill, was gettin footpaths in they had a dumper outside the front door, handbrake gave way and came down towards our place and across the passage through the front gate. Im currently waiting on the builder to fix it up he claims the gate is on order for the past two months...

Finishing up is the worst part .... :(

Seems like there are people just crawling out of the woodwork lately looking for extra money, or increasing prices that had previously been agreed. Maybe it's to do with the down turn in the economy, but people are getting seriously pushy about it too, i guess we have all come on tough times in the last few months here is hoping the interest rates remain low for another while to come....

Pics for garden plans Ireland...

Landscaping progress

As a follow up to my earlier post where we had prices got from landscapers to do the work, we had agreed with the guy doing it for €2,200 as he was a friend of herself, i had presumed that weedkilling was part of his price when i met him recently he told me he wanted €150 extra for each weed kill he had done, €450 and his price was gone up from €2,200 to €2,500, making it €2,950 in total. Even though the €450 for weedkilling was completely outrageous i paid him and told him to get lost if he thought he was getting more work.
With the way the weather has been lately it was very hard to get any work done, so last weekend i got the tracks machine in and we levelled the whole garden, i raised the level of the septic tank and the AJ box for the percolation, and the lawn is now drying out ready to be rotavated before the end of this week weather permitting.We are tackling the lawn ourselves now, so ill keep an eye on cost and see how it compares to "our friendly" landscaper. Herselfs uncle is going to rotavate it and then we are going to have a stone picking party and my uncle is going to spread the seeds and roll it for us.

Link to a great irish gardening website that i have been using, very helpful there.

http://www.gardenplansireland.com/forum/

Blogger Choice Awards 2009!!!!!!!!!!

If anybody would like to vote please do ;) You can find it under the education blog section, it works in order of votes, and then alpabetical order, so far i have 1 vote... ill leave the rest to ye ;)
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Thanks

Kerbing and Landscaping

In order to try and make the house look a little more presentable on the outside myself, dad and youngest brother have started at the kerbs 150 0f them in all, cost €4.10 each. We had toyed with the idea of using sleepers but went with the concrete kerb, nearly done with them now, waiting for the lawn to dry up a bit so we can actually work on it. Have two prices from landscapers for it one was €2,950 the other €1,600 both to do the same job rotivate it level it and pick the stones, set the seed.

Stairs with glass

Stairs

Stair pics