Wednesday, August 20, 2008

The Joys of Home Ownership

I feel like Scott and I can finally say we're grown-ups because we own our house and all it's little quirks, like a leaky toilet that only flushes on every other flush, like a crawlspace that floods with every rainfall, and like windows that are painted shut, just to name a few.

Here's Scott putting up fascia board in preparation for our gutters (to prevent the crawlspace flooding). Isn't he the greatest? Unfortunately the project has been put on hold because Home Depot (yay! We have a Home Depot here) has been out of the downspouts and gutter joints since we moved here. Another catch to our gutter project is a tree growing into the roofline of our house:

We realize that the tree (or at least this branch) needs to go because it's causing roof damage and preventing us from putting up gutters, but it's a little beyond our budget to have it cut right now. Do you think it's okay to wait until next summer to cut it? Does anyone know how fast maple trees grow?

1 comment:

Jamie and Julie said...

Welcome to the moneypit, er I mean home ownership. I'm just kidding, looks like you have a few projects to do around the house.

About waiting to cut the tree down, if you wait will there be more potential damage to your home from moisture if you wait? If you don't have time to do it before winter sets in you might be able to wait if there is no more potential harm to your home.

You asked how fast does a maple grow, well it depends on the type of maple tree. My father-in-law put in Silver maple trees and they grow really fast, like 10 feet taller in a year. We had a Fairview maple and it maybe grew 3-4 feet in a year. To get the low-down on maple tree growth here's a link

If you have contact with the Platt's they could probably tell you what kind of maple tree you have if you sent them a picture. Otherwise a local nursery should be able to identify your maple tree.