Driveway Restoration

Posted on September 18, 2011 by admin

“Driveway restoration?  Whoever heard of such a thing?  I’m telling you, rip this whole section out and replace it.  It’s the only way to do it right.”

I watched my husband’s face carefully as he tried to swallow his response.  His father has been getting angrier and more ornery as he’s aged.  My mother in law passed away five years ago this coming May, and his health has gone downhill pretty fast ever since.  It’s like he’s gotten angrier and angrier that life has gone on without his wife, and somehow he’s felt cheated.  We spend a lot of time over there, bringing him meals, helping him, cleaning, taking care of yard work, and generally trying to convince him that he’s not alone.  Unfortunately, we don’t get a lot of thanks for our efforts.  Instead, he usually ends up yelling at my husband for something or other.  He tried yelling at me once, for not cooking the chicken in the right barbeque sauce, but my husband put a stop to that immediately.  We didn’t return for two weeks, at which point my father-in-law was more than grateful for my food and has been gracious to me ever since.

But, my husband takes the ugliness directed at him.  He feels so badly for his father, and it hurts him to see him this way, so he takes it and makes an even greater effort to help him.

This morning, we got a call from his father asking us to rush over there as soon as we got home from work.  We did, and the big emergency was he wanted to get rid of the stain on his driveway.  There are some rust stains and some water deposit stains, and his solution was to have us rent a jackhammer and take that concrete square out and have it replaced.  My husband was concerned about his father’s finances, and suggested instead that he call Allstate Stain Removal to have driveway restoration done instead.

My father-in-law, bless his heart, did not like being contradicted, especially with something he’d never heard of before.  “Driveway restoration?” he spat.

“Dad,” my husband said a little too calmly, “Driveway restoration is where they come in and get rid of the ugly stains on the concrete driveway.  You won’t have to pay big bucks to replace it.”

There was silence as my father-in-law glared at his patient son.  I fell in love with my husband all over again as I looked at his stern but loving face.  He was so concerned for his father’s welfare, and would do anything to make sure his father was looked after properly, even if it meant his father would argue.

Incredibly, my father-in-law finally saw the love and concern in his son’s face.  His own face showed pride.  “You know what?  Go ahead and call for driveway restoration.  You’re probably right.”  It was the closest he’d come to praising his son over the last five years.

 

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Retaining Wall Restoration

Posted on September 17, 2011 by admin

Orville is the best mail carrier on the planet, and he’s the one who told me about retaining wall restoration.  Before Orville, I never really thought about postmen or mail carriers, other than to be grateful that they did their job.  They were decent people who worked hard at their job, bringing our mail to us and picking up whatever we needed mailed.  I’d smile and wave if I happened to be outside when they came by, and sometimes I’d even notice if we had a new mail carrier, and I’d leave a holiday gift for them at Christmastime, but I never really gave it much thought beyond that.

Then, Orville got our route.  I noticed he was new and waved to him one afternoon as he walked up to the house across the street.  By the time he made it to my home, he actually stopped to say hi and introduce himself.  He quickly moved on to the next house, because he was also concerned about keeping up with his route.  The next day, his route took him by my house while I was out gardening, and he actually walked the mail up to me, remembered my name, and moved on.

We quickly struck up a friendship, built around two or three-minute conversations when I was home from work and he wasn’t rushed.  I learned the name of his wife and adult children, and he remembered the names of my wife and children.  It was obvious that this man loved his job.  He loved to work hard, get out and walk, and get a chance to meet people.

One Saturday, I was out working in the yard.  I’d put up a retaining wall a few years back, and the stones were terribly stained.  I’d set up the sprinkler system so that the water would hit the flowers I had growing in and around the rocks in the retaining wall, but the water was slowly staining the rocks I’d personally selected and put into place.  I had tried to scrub the stains off, but it just wasn’t working, and I was almost ready to resign myself to the fact that those rocks that were supposed to match the façade on my house would just have to be dirty and stained.

Just then, Orville came by with our mail.  He asked me what I was working on when he noticed how frustrated I was, and then he laughed.  He told me that he’d had the same problem, but he’d found out that Allstate Stain Removal did retaining wall restoration.  Apparently, he’d also shared this information with some of the other people on his route, because their retaining walls looked pristine even though they used the same irrigation water I did in our sprinkler system.

Orville’s one-of-a-kind.  Not only is he great at his job, friendly, and believes a person can work hard and have fun at the same time, but he helped me get our retaining wall restored.  He’s inspired me to do a better job at work, and taught me how to enjoy it more.

 

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Door Restoration

Posted on September 16, 2011 by admin

“You just need door restoration from Allstate Stain Removal.  You don’t need me to re-stain the door.” I looked at my brother-in-law like he was crazy.  He saw the look on my face and laughed.  “Door restoration.  It’s where they come out and use this special spray to clean the stains off your door.”

My brother-in-law is a house painter who has branched out to staining cabinets, doors, floors and pretty much anything in a home.  He has a special process and stain that he uses to make cheap wood look like expensive wood, and even MDF doors or cabinets look like they’re made out of cherry or walnut.  It’s pretty amazing, and it’s a good thing he does it.  In this economy, the need for house painters has really gone down.  When he does get a call, he has to try to beat out the lowest bide, and usually doesn’t get the job because he prefers to use high-quality paints and a more professional process instead of just doing a cheap and quick job.  He was so well-known for his process and beautiful work that he mostly got calls from high-end builders who wanted to set their expensive homes apart.  Unfortunately, when the economy turned bad, high-end homes aren’t as much in demand.  Even the high-end builders have to use cheaper painters just to make their bottom line better.

All that has meant that my brother-in-law has had to branch out to make sure he could make ends meet for his family.  He won’t lower his standard and hire cheap labor and use inferior quality materials, so instead, he created a niche for himself.  Not as many people can afford to replace their cabinets or buy a new front door, so he re-stains them in such a way that they look brand new and like a completely different kind of wood.  It’s cheaper for the homeowner and they still get the new look they want.

We thought we’d throw some work his way, too, so when the stains on our front door were just more than we could stand, we called him.  He came over, looked at it, and flat-out told us we should go with door restoration instead of having him re-stain it.  We liked the color and look of our front-door, but the stains were awful.  He told us how Allstate Stain Removal could do the door restoration for us, removing the stains without damaging the current paint job.  He said he’d repaint the door for us if we really wanted him to, but we could save money and get the same effect just by having door restoration done.

How many people can say their brother-in-law is that trustworthy?  He actually turned us down to save us money.  We had the door restoration done by Allstate, but when it came time to re-do our kitchen, we hired him to take care of our cabinets for us.

 

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Foundation Restoration

Posted on September 15, 2011 by admin

Since we had Allstate Stain Removal take care of our foundation restoration, I notice homes that need it everywhere I go.  One of my most favorite, and cheap, pastimes is to take long drives and explore neighborhoods I’ve never seen before.  Fortunately, my family’s on board.  We hop in the car, grab some junk food, argue about what music we’ll listen to, and start driving.  We don’t know where we’ll end up, but we always try to choose the roads that we haven’t driven before.  Sometimes we find ourselves in a new part of town, or discover a fun destination we didn’t know existed, or stop at a store that looks intriguing.  Sometimes we just wind up in a neighborhood, and we drive around looking at the houses, getting landscaping ideas or speculating about what the homeowners are like.  We’ll make up stories about their lives, guessing how many children they have, what their hobbies are, what jobs they have, etc.  Then, we drive on, seeking some out-of-the-way restaurant to try out before we find our way back home.

It’s a fun, easy, and inexpensive family outing.  It brings our family closer together, because we’re talking, laughing and sharing.  A lot of times, we end up talking about a concern one of our children has, or something going on at school, or what my husband or I are working on.  Always, it puts our own lives and worries into perspective.  We are not the only ones who have struggles and successes.  Our way of living life is not the only way to do it.  I hope it gives our children an appreciation for what they have in life, what they might aspire to, and a love for other people and their way of life.

Our own home had started looking kind of dingy on the outside, thanks to some ugly stains on the parts of the concrete foundation that could be seen from the street.  Mineral deposits from the sprinkler system had dried on the concrete, giving it a dingy, dirty, ugly color over time.  Fortunately, I already knew about Allstate Stain Removal, so I just called them and had them come out and take care of the foundation restoration.  It was like an instant and inexpensive face-lift for our home, and it looks so much better as we drive up the driveway.  The change was so dramatic that I definitely notice other homes as we explore neighborhoods on our little family outings.  It’s easy to pick out the houses that could really use foundation restoration.  Most of them would be such pretty or cute homes if only they’d get rid of the rust or sprinkler overspray stains on their foundation.  Foundation restoration is definitely an easy way to make a house look fresh and beautiful again.

 

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Vinyl Fence Restoration

Posted on September 14, 2011 by admin

It was amazing to me how easy it was to make my house look nice again, with a simple thing like vinyl fence restoration.  We’ve lived in this home for years, but since my husband got sick, we haven’t spent much time outdoors.  Between working long hours at my job, running all the errands, taking care of all the household chores and nursing my husband, I’ve either been gone from home or inside taking care of things.  I have to keep my job so we can maintain our health insurance, and my husband has been too weak to help out around the house.  It’s so hard on him, because he’s usually so active, and both of us have been slowly sliding into depression and exhaustion.

But, this last spring, things really started to turn around.  My husband really responded to the most recent treatment the doctors gave him, and he wasn’t so thoroughly exhausted all the time.  He got really excited one evening when I suggested he sit outside and enjoy the weather while I barbequed.  After work, we’d spend more and more time sitting outside, and it was the best spring of my life, seeing my husband’s health improving.

The more time we spent outside, though, the more I realized how neglected our yard was, and how sad our house looked.  The most I’d been able to do was set the sprinkler system and pay my neighbor’s teenage daughter to mow our lawn.  But the worst part was the disgusting orangey-brown stain all over our vinyl fence.  I assumed correctly it was from sprinkler overspray leaving mineral deposits behind, but I had no idea what to do with it.  My husband really enjoyed sitting outside in the evenings, and I wanted him to have beautiful things to look at.  I started looking into replacing the fence altogether, but the cost was much more than I could afford.

I mentioned this over coffee one morning at work, and one of my co-workers suggested I look into vinyl fence restoration.  I’d never heard of vinyl fence restoration.  I’d always thought that I’d have to replace the fence entirely when it got too bad, but apparently there’s a great company called Allstate Stain Removal that will do vinyl fence restoration, and get the fence looking its original color again.

Within a week, I had someone come out and give me a quote, and I set up the appointment on the spot.  Now, when my husband and I go out to our yard to enjoy a quiet evening together, we’re not focusing on ugliness.  The vinyl fence restoration worked so well that we’re able to relax and talk and not worry about difficult things.  We both look forward to our evenings together as the best moment of each day.

 

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Stucco Restoration

Posted on September 13, 2011 by admin

Although my home desperately needs stucco restoration, my neighbors don’t seem to mind too terribly much.  I have fantastic neighbors.  The neighborhood’s changed over the last few years, and gotten younger, which has been great for my small kids.  They now have a lot more friends to play with than they used to.  We have neighborhood block parties from time to time, watch each other’s homes when someone goes on vacation, help each other move furniture or take a tree down, and our children all play together.

I’ve been increasingly embarrassed about the growing stain on my home’s stucco, especially as we’ve had more and more kids and their parents coming over to our house.  Last summer, several of the neighbor kids were at my house, helping me pick green beans from my garden and popping vine-ripened cherry tomatoes in their mouths as they worked.  I had to smile to myself as I answered their questions about growing plants, which plants were weeds and needed to be removed, or looked at a cool bug one of them found.  Some of their parents came over to help and chat and sit in the shade, and I suddenly noticed just how badly stained the stucco was on the side of my house.  I knew the sprinklers hit it, and that’s why it was getting stained, but I’d never really seen it from a neighbor’s perspective until then.

I was horrified, and the spontaneous neighborhood gathering in my backyard turned from a beautiful, sunny, summer afternoon to an awkward embarrassment for me as I tried to ignore my home’s need for stucco restoration and focus only on the fun at hand.

The next day, I spent trying various chemicals on the stain, but nothing worked.  After three hours, I stepped back with my sore arm and sighed as only a very small part of the stain had been cleaned.  It was more than depressing.

Fortunately, one of my neighbors happened to be out walking his dog at that time, and stopped by to chat briefly.  He told me emphatically that I didn’t have to waste my time trying to clean it off myself, because it wouldn’t work very well.  And, I wouldn’t have to replace the stucco.  He told me about Allstate Stain Removal and how they have a special chemical solution and lots of experience restoring stucco.  Plus, it wouldn’t cost me nearly as much as replacing stucco, and I wouldn’t have to waste hours and hours of my time.  They’d take care of it for me.

This summer, thanks to stucco restoration, I’ve been able to just enjoy my time out in the garden and the neighborhood children who come over to play with my kids and help me pick vegetables.  When their parents come over, I’m not focused on stucco restoration or any ugly stains, I can just focus on their friendship and the beautiful summer day.

 

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Concrete Restoration

Posted on September 12, 2011 by admin

Concrete restoration was not on my mind when I got my new job as artistic director for the city’s amphitheater.  I was elated to land this job so soon after moving here.  Granted, I have excellent experience with fundraising and teaching at an arts academy in the last city I lived.  I’m used to raising money to put on shows, deciding which shows will be lined up for a season, and working with directors, musicians and artists.  While this job wouldn’t pay a huge salary by any stretch of the imagination, I was happy to get hired.  The night before my first day on the job, which would include numerous meetings and training, I couldn’t sleep.  I was too busy planning out an ideal summer line-up of shows to draw big crowds to the city’s amphitheater.  I dreamed up fundraisers to get enough money to hire the best actors, the best conductors and draw big-name talent to play on my stage.

But, when I showed up for my first meeting the following day, I was brought back down to earth.  Looking at the amphitheater from my new perspective, it was a mess.  The concrete walkways, steps and even the concrete supporting the stage was all stained with a dismal brown and yellow color.  Chairs were broken.  Lights were missing.  The place really needed to be transformed back into its original glory if I had any hope of drawing crowds.  Instantly, my mind flipped from deciding which musical to stage the following summer to concrete restoration.

During my second meeting of the day, which was with the city financial manager, I was hit over the head with a severely limited budget.  How was I going to take care of things like broken chairs and missing lights and concrete restoration and have anything left over for just one show this summer?

When I was finally led to my new office and left to myself for a bit that first day, I was sorely depressed.  I was going to have to throw some serious fundraiser events if the city was going to get anything of artistic value at my venue.  But, as I always do, I squared my shoulders and went into fix-it mode.  I decided to actually look into costs, put a budget together and find out what I had left over.  Then, I could go to the next round of decisions.

I was certain that concrete restoration had to be done before I could hold any event of any kind, and I was also certain concrete restoration would be the most expensive.  I called Allstate Stain Removal first for a quote, and met with one of their employees, ready to hear the awful news.  I couldn’t believe the price when he told me!  It was shockingly lower than I’d expected.  I didn’t have to replace any of the concrete.  The solution they use to remove stains would restore the concrete to its original color, and it only cost a tiny fraction of what I’d feared.  I actually had enough left over to replace most of the chairs and start planning the summer line-up.  My first day wasn’t such a dismal failure after all, thanks to Allstate Stain Removal.

 

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Foundation Cleaning

Posted on September 11, 2011 by admin

I assumed that ripping out all the ugly evergreen bushes that the former owner had tucked up against the house would reveal a few things, but I didn’t expect to have to do foundation cleaning.

I love this house, but I knew there were several things that just had to get changed after I moved in.  It was built back in the early eighties, and I don’t think the former owner realized they could or should update anything.  The kitchen had ugly tile that had been discontinued twenty-five years ago.  The oven, although it looked like it had rarely been used, was sorely out of date.  The carpet was pink.  Yes, pink.  And, the landscaping was outdated, too.  The previous owner had put in some sharp-needled low-growing evergreen bushes right up against the house, and had failed to keep them pruned properly.  Once I updated the inside of the house as I wanted to, it was time to look at the outside.

I figured it would be difficult to remove those bushes, and I was absolutely right.  The branches were tangled, twisted and thick, and even the long gloves I wore didn’t keep me from getting severely scratched.  As expected, the dense undergrowth housed several little creatures that scampered, hopped or slithered away each time I chopped off another branch.  Those kinds of things don’t bother me so much, but I was glad I wore work boots, and I was even more relieved they weren’t going to live right up against my home anymore.

Finally, after hours of grueling work, arms that were scratched and bleeding, and several choice words, I stepped back to survey my work.  The ugly bushes had been cleared out, only to reveal a disgustingly stained foundation.  I needed foundation cleaning done before I could even hope to put in a nice plant area with some lovely flowers and butterfly bushes.

At first, I attacked the foundation cleaning myself.  I was on a roll, and had dedicated the entire weekend to getting this one area ready to plant.  I went to work on the foundation cleaning, trying to scrub, spray and even chip away at the ugly stains that were older than I was.  No luck.  I was starting to get frustrated.  I really wanted to be done with this area by the end of the weekend, and this was taking a very long time.

During a water break, as I cooled off inside, I decided to check online to see if there was anything I could do to clean the foundation.  I came across Allstate Stain Removal’s site, and started reading.  They had a process that could clean the foundation more thoroughly and more efficiently than anything I could do.  Grateful, I called them and arranged for someone to come out for foundation cleaning the following week.  Then, I got to spend the rest of the weekend digging out roots, weeding and mulching.  By the end of the weekend, I was ready to get the plants of my choice in that area, just as soon as Allstate Stain Removal took care of the foundation cleaning for me.

 

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Vinyl Fence Cleaning

Posted on September 10, 2011 by admin

According to my six year-old son, vinyl fence cleaning helped save the world.  My son loves to pretend he’s a super hero.  He doesn’t have a favorite.  He rotates between pretending he’s one of the more well-known super heroes to making up his own.  He spends time plotting out all of his super hero’s abilities, strengths and weaknesses.  Then, he dreams up a villain to battle, with a whole different set of strengths, weaknesses and super powers.  He’ll draw pictures of both and label them as well as a six year-old can, and then tell me all about his super hero character so I can help dress him up in the appropriate super hero costume.

When he’s all ready, he heads out into the backyard to act out his battles.  Since he’s an only child, I’m thrilled that he’s come up with such an involved game.  We could only have one child, and since both my husband and I are from big families, we always worried that our son would have to face more difficult challenges as an only child.  Perhaps we overcompensated, but we got him involved in sports, preschool and other groups early on so he would get as much social interaction as possible with other children his age.  Now, he entertains himself extremely well, but he also involves some of the other neighbor children in his play.  They love to come over, get their own super hero assignment, and join with him as he battles his made-up villains.

It surprised me, though, when I looked out the window to watch him raising his super-power-laser-sword again and again to our fence.  He usually ran all over the yard during his battles with evil villains.  So, to see him stabbing and shooting again and again at the same spot on the fence piqued my curiosity.  I went outside and asked him which villain he was fighting, and he looked at me like I was nuts.  He pointed at the fence and said, “Dark Shadow Man, Mom,” like I should have just known.

I tried to look at the fence from his eyes, and it dawned on me that he was pointing at the ugly stain caused by the overspray from our sprinkler system.  It had always kind of bothered me, but over time, I guess I just got used to seeing it.  If my six year-old son had noticed it to the point where he was battling the evil villain, it was time to get some vinyl fence cleaning done, and soon.

I contacted Allstate Stain Removal.  They’d taken care of a stain on our concrete foundation a while ago, so I wondered if they did vinyl fence cleaning, too.  Sure enough, they could take care of the vinyl fence cleaning for me.  My son would have to go back to fighting imaginary villains, since the vinyl fence cleaning had permanently removed Dark Shadow Man.

 

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Stucco Cleaning

Posted on September 9, 2011 by admin

There are some stains that are so bad that you don’t think anything will clean them off, even a professional stucco cleaning company might have to give up.  That’s before I had Allstate Stain Removal come out to my house to attempt the stucco cleaning.  I was so happy with the results that I have to tell all my neighbors, and some of them have already called the company to get their stucco cleaned, too.

Our stucco was filthy.  It wasn’t just normal wear-and-tear.  The builder had cut a lot of corners when he put up our home, which we didn’t find out about until much later.  By then, the builder had gone out of business (no surprise there), and we couldn’t get him to come out and repair the damage.

I won’t go into all the details here, but with such a half-baked job, our house ended up with rust stains making ugly reddish-brown lines all the way down the stucco from the roof to the foundation.  Nothing I did got rid of those rust stains, and they just got worse and worse as time went on.

Add to that, the fact that our home got attacked by a couple of woodpeckers this year.  These birds feasted on our raspberry bushes and blueberry bushes, and then sat on our wall and tap-tap-tapped holes everywhere.  Of course, we could tell exactly where they liked to perch.  Not only were the holes a tell-tale sign, but the streaks of reddish-bluish bird excrement staining our stucco were just about as ugly as it gets.  Between the rust stains and the woodpecker poop, I was certain we’d end up replacing all of the stucco, instead of just repairing a few woodpecker holes.

I didn’t want to fix or replace anything, though, until we took care of the problems at hand.  Getting rid of the woodpeckers was step one.  Then, we had to figure out what was causing the rust stains.  It turned out not everything was covered or waterproofed as it should have been.  So, we finally took care of that.  Then, it was time to look into replacing the stucco, since I didn’t believe stucco cleaning would thoroughly do the job.

Fortunately, before I spent the money replacing the stucco altogether, one of my friends mentioned Allstate Stain Removal.  She said they did a great job cleaning the stucco stains at their house, and I should give them a try.  I thought it’d be worth a shot, so I set up an appointment, but I didn’t have any high hopes.  I was amazed.  Their stucco cleaning methods completely worked, and they got rid of all the stains.  Saved me so much money.  Now, no rust stains, no signs of woodpeckers, and I can go back to enjoying my home.

 

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