New Joint Venture Blog!!!

For a few years now the Paisley and I have had our very own blogs chronicling different things in our lives.

I believe hers is way more organised than mine, however.

That kind of leads me to our joint venture. Organisation.

The Pais has been reading a lot of blog lately about minimalisation and we have been clearing our home of unnecessary clutter for a few months now.

I'd have to say we have done a good job in getting rid of things in our life that we just don't need anymore.

I won't go into detail here. That  is the purpose of the new blog. The new one is simply titled: Enuff Stuff: Confessions of our Possessions. I had actually wanted it to read: "Enuff Stuff: True confessions of possession whores" but the Paisley wasn't having any of that!! Not that she is opposed to the word whore (since we freely throw it around in reference to my ex), she was just looking for something that conveyed we are consumer hogs in a more professional sounding manner.

Please take the time to click on over and have a read. This is where you can watch us transform our home and our lives to be more independent of consumerism that we as Americans are driven to believe we need to be.

We will still maintain and continue to write on our seperate blogs. Don't worry. There will always be material to read from your favourite Kilted Agent.

Happy Reading!

Deck Build: Coming to a halt?

It seems that one of my neighbours has taken issue with our deck. The funny part is that we don't know what that issue is. She won't say.

Even in her email to our property management rep she didn't specify.

Here's her email to our representative at the property management company that oversees our condo.


Good morning S and M

cc V


Yesterday K inadvertently told me she was helping the T's build their deck.......
.......and we had a little more mild conversation with me saying they cannot do
that and K saying oh they have permission.....and so on...


So! I am pretty sure I know the answer to this but my question to both of you is
if you remember any conversation etc about this in the past. K seemed to think
it must have been approved by a "previous board". And that their "stack" was fine with
it.


Well, I am not fine with it!!


We simply cannot let this happen.


And I am gathering info I may need to stop it.......help me!


I have spoken with V. She is out of office until about 2pm today, but I will get back with her then.
And I will go around and see what I see....and let you know more when I do.


Thanks, D

It all sounds so urgent yet when I pick through this email I find nothing to back up her urgency in stopping us from builing our deck.

Let me point out that our "stack" she is refering to are the residents that can actually see our yard from their condos. D is not one of them. She lives at the opposite end of the building. In fact the only way for her to see our yard is to leave her unit and actually walk her nosey arse into the backyard and walk all the way down to our end and stand in it.

All of our neighbours that can see the yard have no issue with a small deck being built there and quite often we do have neighbours down to socialise and enjoy our yard in the summer months.

This is the same woman who demands that the animal owners in our condo take their pets off property to do their business. By animal owners she is refering to the DOG owners. As a cat owner she has no problem in letting her bundle of fur outside to piss wherever it pleases.

She also suggested that we ask the landscaping company to use all electric equipement instead of gas powered tools when mowing our grounds and blowing leaves into a containment area becuase for the the 6 hours a month that they are there (every two weeks for 3 hours) she is bothered by the smell of gas and the noise their equipment makes.

My neighbour and I recently fixed some latches on both the garbage kiosks at our condo. Guess who complained about the repair?

YOU GOT IT!!! D!!! She didn't like that one of the four bolts replaced was not uniform to the others.

REALLY??!!

What I can't believe is that she has to be the only Democrat that is encouraging a nanny state living situation for everyone in our complex.
I will keep the good thoughts that this will blow over and that the rest of the board will see that our deck not only enhances the yard, but that it will somehow increase our property value since where we are placing it can't grow grass. It's a shaded area and all the water run off from the yard in the winter months runs right into that corner causing moss to grow where grass should be growing.

Here's to hoping that this ends well for us.

Deck Project Pt II

Spent a bit of time yesterday in all my busy-ness working on the area that will soon be our deck.

Our neighbour came down and helped pull out the rest of the moss and sod and root systems.

Once that was finished we graaded and leveled it was stamped down to pack it into place.

Graded and leveled. Ready for the next stage.

Next was the trip to Home Depot where we picked up 500 pounds of sand and some heavy duty visqueen.

We turned my neighbours Honda into a lowrider with all that sand.

I had a little fun at the Paisley's suggestion:

A temporary zen rock garden !!! Fun to do until I get the lumber.

Building A Deck: Pt I

So we have a resident in one of the other buildings in our condo that had permission from our former HOA president to have her common area yard pulled apart and professionally landscaped.

Well that just opened up a the Paisley's brain and together we started thinking that we really need to do something to make our backyard our a little personal and make it fit our needs/wants.

We have done some landscaping and trimmed back (severely) a hedge that the landscaping service can't seem to trim on a regular basis.

So now it's time to get someplace to socialise. Let's face it, a 6' X 8' concrete patio just doesn't have enough room to have people gather in nice weather. It's time to build a deck.

The SW corner of the yard is graded for water runoff/drainage and is completely shaded with trees. What this means is that where there should be grass there is only moss. This is a huge turn off to me since I like my grass and I like it trim and green.

The other nite I came home got on the working in the yard clothes and the gloves and started to pull out the moss/sod and pull out root systems and rocks. I still need to finish the clean up and break up the dirt and and then level and grade the area. That should happen today or tomorrw.

Here is the progress to this point:

The start of digging out moss and sod

With all the moss and sod gone and most of the rocks and root systems pulled out.