I had the bright idea to do one substantial project for the house each month. So far it’s looked like this:
January: Re-arrange the living room so the TV could be on an adjacent wall. This involved installing a new wall outlet and re-wiring the cable in the basement. We got it done in one day but it required extra trips to Home Depot to buy a mammoth drill bit and matching wall plates.
February: New faucet for the bathroom sink. I can’t say this one was fun. More trips to Lowes as the new pipes didn’t fit the old pipes and the bloody thing kept leaking. We went over into March but it works.
March: Get the killer thorn bushes out of the yard. The one was a well-established (read: bignormous) bush used to keep people out of the previous owners bedroom. Some folks plant a Garden. They planted a Guardian. It never really bloomed, hurt like hell if you got near it and was an ugly brown all winter so we decided to take it out. The others were the standard “sticker bushes” that you get if you don’t weed for a few years. We’re both perforated but most of the bushes are gone. The big one still has it’s root structure but we’ll hopefully be getting rid of those soon too.
April: Not sure yet. Paint the den? Build a new bathroom in the basement? Finally have that yardsale with which we’ve been threatening the neighbors? Whatever it is I can promise this: It wont make me bleed as much as those damn bushes did!
Ha! Jay’s rule of thumb was that no matter how much planning you do, any plumbing job will require a minimum of three trips to the hardware store.
On the roots, wait and see if new shoots come up. If they do, hit them with Roundup while they’re growing. That will kill the roots and you won’t have to dig them out.
(Note: Do it while Heather isn’t looking. She will immediately cringe at the idea of “poison”, but of all the possibilities, Roundup is the least harmful. It breaks down rapidly. If you do attempt to dig out the roots without killing them first, any tiny bits left alive in the ground could regenerate.)
I vote for the bathroom. With tub. Deep one. House warming gift.