On a whim, have you ever bought a fixer upper 5,700 sq ft house without recently inspecting it, with 3.15 acres of overgrown woods/yard, cistern hand dug into the bedrock, a 50-foot-deep hand dug well, with a creek, a bridge, and a pond that won't hold water?  I did and yes it was an unplanned purchase that happened on a whim.  Here is the story of what has now become a long-term investment, historic restoration, estate, homestead, outdoor, garden, creek, and pond project.

Lots of pictures and details to come.  I will put the backstory in another post after some of the pictures.  It will be a wall of text so feel free to ignore it or if you are bored or interested you can read it.  It describes how I ended up with the property, the details of the property, problems I found so far, and the various projects that are ongoing.

Part of the house dates back to 1789.  It has been added on numerous times and then neglected.  I've owned the house for 10 months now and other than repairing some serious issues I have really just been evaluating everything about the house.  Trying to understand when parts were built, how they were built, when they were upgraded, and problems it might currently have.

Now that I have a pretty good understanding of the situation I got myself in, the days are longer and the weather is warmer I have started project after project.  If I didn't start this thread now I would be too far down the rabbit hole to ever catch up on everything that happened.

TLDR Backstory: A great property that I always liked but figured I would never have the chance to buy nor would I be able to afford it if it did end up for sale ended up being auctioned.  I found out with about 2 weeks notice, managed to put together cash for a purchase, bid and won.  Part of the house dates back to 1789, addition after addition and even a whole other house, built in 1812, was added in as an addition to the property.  The property is 3 blocks from downtown in town but has 3.15 acres,  it is the last remaining structure of the man who founded the town,  the largest natural spring in Kentucky flows through the back yard, lots of huge trees, and a failed pond depression.  The property was preserved but time and rodents have taken a toll.  Shady contractors cut a lot of corners and a lot of their work will need to be redone.  As to the price, I basically got a good deal on the land and the 5,700 sq ft house was free; that is the type of deal I managed to get.  The estimated time to clean up, fix up, and make things nice is in the thousands of hours.  That is any major renovations or additions on my part either.  That is just fix up, clean up, and restoration of what is already there.

A big table is the plan. The definition of giant dinning room table is open for interpretation though.  

When I think of giant my mind goes to something like this.

 


or this




I don't have slabs long enough to make anything like those tables and I don't have a single slab wide enough to make the table below.  However, I do have slabs where I can take the bottom of one slab and flip it to the top, trim the middle, put it together with the other slab to get close to a mirror image.  If done right it could look close.  I don't think the slabs are long enough to get close to the 10' table you would need to comfortably put 4 chairs on the side.  I have about 8 feet of good wood.




This table is a closer fit to the materials that I have on hand.  The ends of the table have about a 6" piece that goes across the two slabs.  I could do something like that, although it takes away from the slab look, and get closer to a 10' table.  I don't like the heavy stain of this table and would go with something lighter like the table above.  The construction of the table will work with the materials I have.






I also have multiple slabs from a smaller diameter cherry and they have some cracks and decay in them.  I could to a more modern approach of using colored epoxy to fill the cracks and decay and then coat the table with clear epoxy for something like this.  I have enough material that I could do both.

The logs are all cut.

Taking down the sawmill.



Sawmill all packed up.




Lots of sawdust.  I fill four of the 42 gallon contract garbage bags with walnut dust and shavings and had 7 wheelbarrows full of cherry sawdust.




All cleaned up, except for moving the slabs to a location where I can stick them and let them dry.





I have some 1x6 walnut boards about 14' long and an 8"x8" piece of cherry which will most likely be used for the table legs/supports.




All the slabs except for one which is too wet and heavy to easily move.  

You'll want to seal that end grain to reduce splitting.

That was just a temporary spot and they were sitting on pressure treated 4x4s.  I have moved them to a spot where they are off the ground and will be out of the way to air dry.  I don't have a great picture of the stacked so I hadn't posted any but since you asked I will.  

This is the permanent location, the metal covering them temporary and the debris seen is a pile waiting to go on the bank of the creek once I get the clutch on my tractor replaced.  

For reference the logs on the bottom are about 16 inches in diameter.  The top of the stack of wood is almost 7 feet.  The 4 cherry slabs in the middle are just about 11 feet long.  The ends are decayed and solid wood is closer to 8 ft.  The bottom slabs are about 14 feet long.

Nice saw milling there SWIRE.

I don't know how close Chambers is to you in Georgetown, but a cabinet shop I worked for about 20 years ago is near there on Midland.

Wood Concepts.

No idea if they still have the same equipment or not but at one time there was a sliding table saw that could make 8' rips or 4' crosscuts on 4x8 sheets.

I applied AIR-8 and RGS to the flower beds.  I can already tell a difference with the moderate clay level.  Those clumps when walked on or hit with a shovel just fall apart now.  The deeper dense clay clumps do not show any real change.

This is a moderate clay clump that easily broke apart with the shovel.








As for the garden itself it is slowly starting to take shape.  I've mentioned in previous years that I was trying to push the garden forward and move the back wall to create more space on the back side of it.  Every time I run a line and decide where I want the back to wall to I end up changing my mind and want to push the back wall even further forward.  

On the left side there is a green T-post with a white top.  That  point is where I want to move the back wall to now.  Everything behind it, including 30 bulbs/plants I put in this spring will need to be relocated forward.  There is still plenty of room as that is about 1/5th the space available for the gardens even with moving the back wall forward..  

Thanks for the info. I will require someone that handle joining big slabs and trying to make it look as seamless as possible.  Do you know anyone that has a large planer or sander?  I would be talking 48" minimum width and 8 feet long.  My hope/plan is to bookmatch top.  Taking the bottom of one slab and the top of another should do that.  Then cut a straight line off of one side of each, join them, and then run that through a huge planer to get the top perfectly flat.

I do have that greenhouse but I did not get it put up this year. It is still in the box and sitting in the yard.  I could still get a month benefit from it, so there is still a chance that I get bored and decide to set it up.  If not it will have to wait until next March before I do that.

The soil was mechanically aerated down to 16 inches.  So I'm hoping that helps.  

I bought the Ortho hose end sprayer was shooting for the 9 ounces per 1000 sq ft but I know I ended up putting it on heavier than that.  It got dark and 3 days of rain was in the forecast after that, so I rushed.

I wish I knew of any shop with a 4-5' wide belt sander but the only one I can think off at this moment is the same shop.  If I recall correctly, it is a 36" wide belt.

The temperatures dropped last week and I applied a second round of AIR-8 and RGS.  The AIR-8 definitely works to break down clay. On some of the clay chunks on the surface I can run my hand over them and they crumble and spread like regular dirt.  When I dig in the beds it is rare that anything sticks to shovel.  It might not sound like much but not having to constantly scrape the shovel clean is a huge time saver.  

I also have a temporary solution of getting water from the creek for the gardens.  Right now it involves using my generator to power a well pump that pushes water all the way to the cistern by the house.  Then a different pump on a timer waters the gardens every morning.  The cistern needs filling about once a week.  I'm working on a more permanent solution but that might now happen this year.

Is there enough difference in the water height at the stream compared to the cistern to make a siphon feasible?
If so a buried line would keep the cistern at the same level as the creek.
It's hard to tell what elevation differences there might be from your photos.
Your projects are looking good.
I'd love to get my hands on a decent bunch of walnut and cherry for projects.
It's expensive as hell to get shipped into Maine.

The house is about 40 feet above the level of the creek.  One of the water hammer type pumps can theoretically push water 7 to 10 feet up for every foot drop.  On the best day I have only about a 2 foot drop at the waterfall.  

I do have plenty of solar panels but my solar well pump I used last year didn't want to start up this year.  I have a pump at the cistern but it is loud and being right next to the house it isn't ideal.  What I would like to do is figure out some way to put in a spring house near the creek, that way the water is filtered a little bit and pump/lines would be low enough and enclosed that they wouldn't freeze in the winter.  Then any pump noise would be away from the hosue and I would have unlimited water for the yard and gardens.  That will be a longer term project though.

I've had a bunch of other things going on the last month and I've only been doing minimal maintenance type work.  I do have some small updates.

The best news is about the fox.  I haven't seen him in 2 months and was starting to think something had happened to him.  Tonight he finally showed back up.  It's not the best picture because it was a cellphone and dark but he is still around and friendly.  At one point I approach him, about 30 feet away, and kneeled down so I wouldn't spook him.  He stopped eating, walked about 10 feet closer to me, sat down and looked at me.  I wish I had video of that as it was pretty cool.






I have some summer flowers in bloom.  They will all need to be relocated so that I can move the back wall of the garden forward.





On the juglone resistant tomatoes we had the first weather cycle that stresses out the plants.  That is a warm wet growing period, a week of dry warmer weather, and then followed by rain.  For some reason it isn't until the second rain comes that the stress shows.  I put 3 different varieties of standard tomatoes in the garden to see how they react. So far they are doing ok, very few blossoms though and I remove what do grow in order to avoid any type of crossing with my line of tomatoes.  

My line of tomatoes all show signs of stress, the top leaves are all folded on all the plants.  Other than that most seem to be doing ok.  I have several plants showing severe wilt. Generally if they show that this early the plant does not make it through the summer.  

This plant is in the exact same location that first plant to wilt and then die last year was located in.  It actually had 2 or more tomatoes on it, larger than ping pong ball but smaller than a racquetball.  




The wilting plant is the 3rd from the right in this picture.  As you can see I haven't pruned the plants or weeded the garden.  I put the cages up about a month ago and haven't had time to work on them since.  

Lots of tomato plants are wilting this year in the juglone soil.  The big question is will they struggle through it and recover or will they die off.  

I put out 8 different lines of seed.  All but one has at least 1 plant that has wilted.  The line that hasn't wilted yet is from the sucker that I pruned from a plant last year and just stuck in the dirt where the first plant that died from juglone was.  

The wilting plants below are in the same spot as the plant that succumb to the juglone last year.  The other wilting plants are in areas that did fine last year.  I'm not sure why that is.  Weather plays a huge factor in how the juglone takes down a tomato plant.  There needs to be about a week long hot dry spell followed by a good rain to trigger the effects.  Prior to they look fine.

Can't offer any advice on the tomatoes... but when you give up on them, I can attest that Daylilies seem to do just fine with juglone.  Wife has several in a small bed at our entrance and the "mulch" is essentially walnut husks from the overhanging trees.  

There is a project that I have been working on for a year and it is taking much longer than expected.  My wife was given a swimming pool and wanted it put up.  The only problem is the entire back yard is on a hill surrounded by trees.  It's not a project that I wanted but here we are.


I took down several trees last year and trimmed branches back on others to create an area that gets sun.  I also started moving dirt, cutting out one part of the hill and placing it on the down slope side to create a level spot.  A retaining wall would be needed but not necessarily immediately.   I got a point where I thought the pool was ready to go up and everything was in place.  Before I could get it perfectly round and the liner in the wind blew the wall down. It was put back up and was blown down again and again and again.  Then the bottom rail was all bent the pool was not even close to being round.


 

A huge tree branch that I had just dropped out of a massive hackberry tree.  That's a 50' lift that I'm up in.



The pool area.  




This is what it looked like before the whole thing got blown over and I rolled the wall back up.

Since the pool is still down I decided to dig out the foundation for the retaining wall.  In doing so I managed to move a bunch of the patio blocks were perfectly level for the pool supports and will need to redo those as well.  For the retaining wall I'm look at using the Versa-Lok blocks.  They are solid blocks that get pinned together instead of hollow blocks with a lip or that would need to be core filled.  Around 350 of the 80lb blocks will be needed for the wall.  

There is a big walnut tree between the house and pool  It is older and drops limbs every every.  I left it due to the size of it and the shade.  It just seems wrong to cut down a large old tree just because the walnuts and leaves are a nuisance.  

However that changed the day when came out to find this.  That is a 2 1/2 inch thick concrete table.  That table is where we have spent most of the time sitting.  There was no wind, just some rain.  No other trees lost any branches at all.  Once the pool is up this area would be the main sitting area for everyone.  I think it is time for this tree to go.  

Can anyone explain what is going on my trees?  They are putting out branches with very few leaves.  Last year at this time they had healthy fully canopies.  

This is a different walnut tree leaning over the house.




This picture has the large walnut from behind the house coming in at the top left, a sycamore tree that looks very sick, and on the right is another walnut where the bottom 3 or 4 branches are dead.

Any of your dirt work near their roots?

Not for those, they are at the front and front side of the house.  All my dirt work is in the back yard.  I haven't made any type of changes up there or even applied any type of weed killer.  

More tree fun...

In addition to the walnuts the property is also over run with Tree-of-heaven (Ailanthus altissima).  It is a Chinese invasive species that grows very quickly in any type of soil condition and puts out millions of seed pods.  For some reason they rot and go hollow in the middle, which is in addition to being very brittle due to their rapid growth.  

My power went out and this is what I found.  You can see the left half of the tree is gone, it fell a couple years back.  






Two factors contributed to the branch coming down, a hollow center and seed pods getting wet during a heavy down pour.  Not much material holding that branch on.




Add the weight of all these seed pods getting soaked.  Those seed pods are from just a couple smaller branches.  The chainsaw is a 170 with a 16" bar for reference.  




This picture summarizes everything you need to know about the "tree of heaven" hollow, brittle, and seed pods.




This is the remainder of that tree.  Everything that is red/orange are the seed pods.  Look at the density of the seed pods in the picture with the chainsaw and now cover a 50 foot tree canopy with them.  These trees will grow 1 foot every month from late March to November.  Right now I have new 4 foot tall trees in areas I haven't mowed this year.  I will 6 inch trees in the yard every time I mow.  

Back to the walnut branch that fell and broke my concrete table.  Someone had asked about a cross section of the branch.  It looks like there a bit of deterioration in one spot but nothing that looks like it would have compromised the branch.  The bark is darker on the bottom side and it looks like it has decayed a bit but the wood still looked solid.

On the trees that seem to be dying, I have three that seem to be affected.  Two are walnuts and one is a sycamore.  The second walnut is the one behind the house that just lost a branch.  I put my drone up to get a better look at it and one main branch looks like the walnut that is dying with only a small amount of leaves on it.

This picture is from May 2019.  All the trees have a full canopy and are looking great.  The areas in yellow are the trees that now have very few leaves.




Now in 2021




Sycamore, left side of the picture above. Also look behind it, more orange/red.  That is another cluster of the tree of heaven that I need to remove.




Walnut, right side of the top picture.



Walnut that is behind the house.  The backside looked ok but the front side in the middle of the picture you can see dead branches and lighter green smaller leaves.

The most frustrating aspect of my project house is that the house is where my time and effort is needed but it is the trees and grounds that take up most of it.  I would just like to have a back yard that is nice to look at and I could relax in.  Not one swarmed by mosquitoes, invasive honeysuckle and tree of heaven everywhere,  branches falling and busting a 2 1/2" thick concrete table that I usually sit at, walnut trees killing off everything else, a creek eating away at trees and bridge...etc.  

I am making a lot of progress and there are rare times where I actually get to enjoy the yard now.  The progress is very slow going at least for what I had hoped for.  Every time I get one task done I seem to end up with 2 more on my list.  

It seems to me that God has clearly shown you where you need to be focusing your time and energy.  Might as well get it over with whether it is your primary area of interest or not.  

Thanks for taking the time and effort to share your journey btw.

I did look at the link.  So far I haven't seen the signs of the beetle or the disease but I haven't gotten up into the walnut tree that is dying off.  The pictures of trees with the disease match but I'm assuming any walnut tree dying off is going to look like that.  I plan to contact my local extension office and let them know.  

I was able to get on my roof and use a pole saw to cut a couple branches.  I'm not seeing any signs of cankers but I will take them to the extension office to have them look at it.  I have a branch with some odd holes into the bark but they are too big to be the beetle.  The second picture has some type of damage, it could be old cankers but I didn't see any that were new.  The last picture is splitting bark but walnuts sort of that type of bark so maybe it is normal.

What is interesting is the walnut branches with the small deformed leaves those leaves look exactly like the deformed leaves on a tomato plant in heavy juglone soil.  In both cases something is cutting off water and nutrients to the leaves.  

Exactly what I was thinking.

I dropped the branches off with the horticulturalist at the extension office.  She looked at my pictures and didn't think it was thousand cankers but will send the branches off to the lab at UK for testing.  It will take a couple of weeks to get the results from the lab.  She saw a picture I had of a cross section of a smaller branch with a black center.  I thought maybe that was just the darker color wood that walnuts have but she said it is a sign of the branch dying.

If they find anything I will post it here.  So far it is only walnuts right around the house.  There is another large walnut right next to the 2/3 dead one and the branches intertwine but it seems fine this year.  Where I dug a trench for the solar conduit goes between both trees.  The arborist at the extension office thought might be a cause but I doubt it.  The trench goes next to the house and away from tree that is dying, so there would have been very little root damage.  The tree that is alive had a lot more potential for root damage.  I have at least 20 walnut trees on the property.  I'm already have a long list of trees that need to be removed and really hope those do not get added to it.

Still no word from the extension office on any tree disease.  The few leaves that were on the Sycamore tree have turned from green to mostly brown.  It has been dry for several weeks here but that shouldn't kill off a tree.

 Sycamore dying off.



Meanwhile I have a huge Zinnia patch in my garden which I water occasionally. I took this pictures yesterday with my cellphone.  Amazing was a phone can now capture.






Zinnia patch with a small patch of Rudbeckia on the right.  Both came from seeds that I previously harvested from the garden.





If anyone is looking for work I need someone to weed the gardens.  The landscaping and lawncare work on the property is easily a 20 hour a week job.

This is where I last left off on the retaining wall in the back yard.  

Since this picture I finished digging out the foundation for the wall, compacted the dirt, added 4 inches of gravel in two 2 inch lifts and compacted it.  I ordered the retaining wall blocks and had them delivered.  I added about 2 more inches of loose gravel and installed the base layer of blocks all the way around.  Added a second row of blocks, installed filter fabric and drainage tile, filed that with gravel, and installed a 3rd row of blocks.  

The blocks are 80lb versa-lok blocks and while I have no problem picking them up, carrying them and manhandling them to get them installed is a major pain. I am not conditioned for that type of work and it is taking me a lot longer than I think it should. I thought a couple good weekends and a few hours every night would have the job done.  Instead about a month in I'm about 1/3 the way done.  The rest should go quicker but I'm sure it will still take 4x longer than I think it will.



Compacted Base Gravel




My favorite picture angle, roof top.




Blocks arrived.  That's half of what is being used.



I installed the first section as it got dark and used a level go from block to block.  When I checked it the next morning with a string line I found using just a level is not good enough.  The string line shows how far off I was about 25 feet down the line.  All those blocks had to be pulled out and reset costing me a day of work.



Still working on the base layer.  This is after I corrected the level and ran a proper string line.




Made it to the corner and put in a second string line for the side wall.  Prior to this I didn't put much stake in string lines but building this wall has changed my opinion on that.  



Then I double checked the angle of the once I had a few blocks in place.  I didn't like the angle and changed the angle of the side wall a bit.  Thankfully most of the blocks just needed to be pushed back a couple inches and only 1 of them needed to be reset.




How I was checking to make sure the wall the both level and square. I made sure to leave a slight gap between the block and string line so that the blocks wouldn't be pushing the line and changing the angle/level.



When it comes to cutting blocks for the corners, the Milwaukee M18 cut-off saw has enough power to easily cut the blocks.  The saw does go through batteries quick.  A 12 amp battery can only cut 4-5 blocks.  The blade is a 9 inch blade and can only cut about 3 1/2 inches.  The blocks are 6 inches tall so they have to be flipped to finish the cut.



Base layer of blocks finally in.




Second row of blocks in, filter fabric installed, drainage tile installed, and some gravel put in place to hold the drainage tile.




Third row of blocks installed and backfilled with gravel.




Pile of gravel that I am working from.

Looking great!

Once the base row is leveled up, the rest is gravy.  I hate leveling up them 80 #ers.

Yeah, leveling an 80# block within 1/16 of an inch while basing it on 3/4" stone is interesting.  It is a skill and takes a good eye.  Now that I'm done I've gotten pretty good at it, which is how most my skills go.  Also having the correct size deadblow hammer would have been useful.  The largest size the stores carry is just under 4 pounds and the recommended size was an 8 pound hammer.  

We used those same blocks for a wall at my dad's place. A few hands definitely help speed things up. It would have taken much longer with one person so I feel for you

We ended up filling them with concrete. Do you plan on doing that?

Around here defoliated walnut trees are usually attributed to bagworms. Not sure if you all get those, but they love walnut and persimmon.
I have a tree that was covered in them last year, that has hardly any leaves at all this year.

Maybe some other type of caterpillar?