Day 56:
My onions went from looking like this (on day 11):
To looking like this (on day 56):
WHAT you say? - the seed packet I bought in February didn’t say anything about this anomalous transformation…. Fascinating -
I decided to put them here:
- where they’ll probably end up like this:
Chad and his crew DID end up swinging back by one afternoon to stain the deck.
On the quality scale, I rate his operation about a “flaming-bag-oh-pooh”, just one one step ahead of “flaming-bag-oh-dog-pooh”, which everyone knows is far worse.
On the short list of complaints -
- Count - No actual count of how many gallons they utilized - could have been 5, could have been 15 - who knows.
- Thouroughness - Didn’t remove all of the masking tape.
- Price - Tried to overcharge me by $100 even though he wrote a ‘price guarantee’ on his original quote. (I must have overlooked the word “minimum”).
- Quality - Oversprayed onto the slide, and swings, then asked
“Do you have any gasoline to clean this up?”
“Yes, it’s in the garage”, I replied.
“Good, it’ll come right off with that,” they responded, before jumping in their pickup and leaving.
But, on the bright side, I didn’t have to do it myself, it’s done, the deck DOES look a little better and I didn’t have to do it myself. Here are some before & after shots:
Before______________________________ After
So we ended up hiring Chad from something something something deck staining company. When Chad came out to do his estimate, he seemed trustworthy enough & assurred me that my deck would look basically brand new by the time he was done with it. We chose to go with a natural cedar colored wood stain/protectant from his color wheel.
On the estimate, the work to be performed consisted of (word for word from the quote)
A) Powerwashing the entire deck (top, bottom, rails, lattice, surfaces & posts), and use a cleaning agent to kill mold, fungus.
B) Use Cedar Tone Natural dp-533 Behr 5 year guarantee (10 gallons est.) - leftover would be given to me for future use.
C) Labor to spray/apply protectant on all surfaces and top of lattice, as well as to cover all bushes/shrubs from any overspray.
He came out on March 8th to powerwash our deck (while I was replacing the 6 stair boards). I thought it might be a good idea to also go ahead and get the swing set and fort refinished as well (figure our little guy is going to be spending some time out there this summer). So, Chad says he can get it done for an extra $200.
Hmmmm… Seemed a bit much for a simple play set, but realizing that I really don’t want to mess with it, I gave the green light.
While powerwashing my deck to remove the dirt and old layer of worn out protectant, Chad comments that the “old stain really doesn’t want to come off”. He then shows me by setting his power washer to it’s most intense setting (apparently only used to clean concrete), and sprays a small section of a floor board. Sure enough - the worn out (reddish color) stain only comes off when the spray nozel gets inches from the deck. “Okaaaay?” I’m thinking…
Chad then suggests I use a darker color stain because “the darker color will help to mask the variances in the wood color that can’t be cleaned out by the power washer”. However, he didn’t have his color wheel with him this time to compare colors. Since the “natural wood color” (including the variances) is what I was hoping the deck would look like in the first place, I decide I’ll take my chances with the original stain that I picked out. To which Chad responds - he “has no problem with using whatever color you want, but that it just might not look as good as a darker color”.
What? Excuses before the job even starts?
Likewise, I didn’t notice Chad using a specific “cleaning agent” to kill fungus & mold. And, after inspecting the fort about a week later, I notice the same greenish color on the play set. Maybe the unspecified “cleaning agent” is that special dihydrogen monoxide stuff I’ve been hearing so much about?
Then again - maybe it was just ‘really tough mold that refused to come off with the normal washing’?
So here we are, over a week and a half later, and no word back from Chad as to when he plans on coming back and doing the job that he started. More to come…
So we’ve decided to refinish our deck. We plan on hiring a company to come out and do the work for us. I’ll be sure to report progress and provide my opinion as to the quality of work.
In the mean time, I’ve taken a few photo’s for the first half of the “Before & After” shots.
I also ripped up the boards on the steps today. They were pretty worn down/cracked. During the process I found a broken hammer under my deck and a bunch of unused (and by now unusable) boards. After getting 1 and a half screws put into the first replacement board, my drill battery died. Guess I’ll get to the rest tomorrow - weather and motivation permitting.
After 11 days, I’m seeing the beginnings of little onions.
We’re not quite out of the cold weather season yet, & there’s a good chance it’ll freeze again, so I hope they grow slow for now. I should probably start thinking about where I’m actually going to plant them after they’ve outgrown the planters.
Looking forward to spring….
In the spirit of getting back into the blog thing (I have the site, might as well utilize it), I thought I might as well start posting again. This time, it’s the Onion Project.
No, it’s not some secret code name for a thought provoking topic. If you’re going to spam me, just give up - nobody’s reading it anyway.
I’m preparing for my garden this year a bit earlier than usual. Last year I tried to plant onions in June, only to discover that they take about 4 months to harvest. Needless to say, we didn’t eat a single one that I attempted to grow. This time I’m starting on time (in hopes that I’ll save a whopping $3 per bag at the supermarket).
I bought the plater trays ($9 at Lowes) & 4 packs of seeds (about a buck and a half each). Making my total investment thus far $15. I better get at least 5 bags worth of onions out of this.
For those that don’t know, onion seeds are about 1/8th the size of a pepper corn.
Began by placing potting soil into the empty trays about half way, wetting down the dirt, and putting one, two, or however many fell out of my fingers into each cup.
Next, I covered up the seeds, & watered. (germination should happen in about 10 days).
In total, one single pack of seeds was more than enough to fill up 216 starter pods - leaving me with 3 packs of seeds that I have no idea what I’m going to do with. When the little guys start poking up through the soil, depending on the weather, I’m going to transplant them into my garden. Total time to harvest is about 170 days (according to the package), which means we’ll be cooking with fresh onions by about mid-August. Stay tuned for the next exhilarating installment.
Or not.