I can comment on the uneven lawn. I would mow your grass as low as possible to get an idea of the terrain. Order a truckload of sand and spread that out, filling in the low spots. Couple of things to keep in mind when doing this. Don't put down too much sand that it suffocates the lawn underneath. So if it's a very low spot, you'll have to gradually bring it up. Also, you want water to flow away from foundation of house, so don't raise a low stop if it causes water to go towards the house. In that case you would have to remove soil from the high spots. The swales on the side of your house typically should slope towards the street to send water that way. Again here, you need to add/remove soil to redirect water away from house towards end of yard/street. If your house sits on the highest point on the lot, then this is easy as all you'll have to do is go downhill. But if where you want the water to go is uphill and you can't direct it anywhere else, you would need to install something like a sump pump to force water away. Good luck.

Based on my own experience, I would say that unless there is something uniquely compelling to you about this house, I would walk away. I think it is a fair bet that the money you spend on the repairs will not translate into commensurate equity. In other words, if you spend X on the house and Y on the repairs, when you are done, you will NOT have a house that you could sell for (X + Y). You'd be better served buying a house worth (X + Y) that needs no repairs. Also, keep in mind that any estimates you get from inspectors, structural engineers, or whomever, are just that -- estimates -- NOT contracts to actually do the work. When we bought our home, we had a long list of defects and remediation estimates from our inspection. The actual cost of fixing these defects turned out to be at least 3-4 times the inspector's estimates. And that doesn't even count all the things that the inspector did not find. We love our old house, but financially it has been a disaster. In hindsight, I wish we had walked away when we got the inspector's report (which was not even as bad as yours.)

Good! First, send a soil test ($25) in to Logan Labs in Ohio, post the results here, and morpheuspa will read it for you. He'll tell you what to apply, how to apply, how much, when, and where to buy it. Logan has the best soil tests and morph is the best at reading them. Next, and you can do this immediately, STOP WATERING FOR A FEW DAYS. Was I shouting?? OMG, you'll never have a great yard by over watering it. You are SO close to the ocean, I mean, seriously! Stop watering. I was in Phoenix a few weeks ago and visited with a former GW member I've been writing to for years. He waters once a week...in PHOENIX, with temps around 115 every day. Having said that you have to know how much to water when you do. Put out some cat food or tuna cans and time how long it takes your sprinklers to fill all the cans. It might be exactly 2.5 hours or it might be 8 hours. Every sprinkler is different. My neighbor's takes 20 minutes. And having said all that, you cannot go cold turkey with northern grasses. You'll have to wean your lawn off of frequent watering into infrequent watering. So start by watering 1/2-inch, twice a week for a few weeks. Then back off to one inch, once a week. By then the temps should be in the 70s for you. Keep backing off until you're watering once every 3 weeks. ONCE. Every 3 weeks. That's for temps in the 70s. When the temp drops back into the 60s, back off to once every 4 weeks. What that does is grows much deeper roots which can get nutrients from much deeper in the soil. Those roots will be more drought tolerant in the summer. Furthermore by withholding water in the spring you will not be sprouting weed seeds. Mulch mow at the mower's highest setting. Are you interested in an inexpensive approach to organic fertilizer? Way back when I introduced the idea of using grains from the feed store to fertilize the lawn. The idea has caught on and most all the lawn gurus are doing some form of it. Basically you get a bag of corn meal, soybean meal, cottonseed meal, or alfalfa pellets (rabbit chow) and apply at a rate of 15 to 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. Those ingredients are the main ingredients in the better organic fertilizers. You can get them at the feed store and save about 5/6 off the cost of fertilizer. There are many advantages to organics, but I'll wait to see if you're interested before blasting into that essay. Don't do anything else to the lawn. Don't aerate, dethatch, top dress, compost, dig holes, or anything without getting the pros and cons from the members here. Don't just do stuff because your parents did or you neighbor is doing it. In fact even if your county ag agent tells you, please ask here for our thoughts. If you want the yard of the month, you could really screw it up by jumping off the wrong cliff. The cost to have the yard of the month is not really much more than the weeds of the month. You just need to be doing it right. Here's a motivational picture. Planetary yard of the epoch. It's KBG in eastern PA. Thanks to morph for having the best lawn around. Pic was taken in July a few years ago. The neighbors water like you do. Morph waters once a week. Morph is organic (mostly). The rest are unknown.

The first thing to realize with any flowering house plant is that these need a lot more light than foliage house plants will get by on. Otherwise the main thing with an epiphytic bromeliad such as yours is to keep the spaces at the bases of the leaves filled with suitable water at all times, without fail - the roots of these plants are mostly just a means to grip branches or rocks in the wild, don't even need to be in soil. So although your specimen is apparently doing well enough so far it might be desirable to pop it out of that bigger pot filled with what looks to consist at least partly of natural soil out of the ground, go back to growing it only in its original container. Or if it seems needed then move it on now to a single bigger pot, one that is not buried inside another pot filled with soil. Using instead a coarse potting mix, one that provides a lot of aeration. With another flower spike coming on now presumably the original one has faded because its time is past. If as the new tuft(s) develops and flowers later the older foliage collapses into a heap this is usual for these plants. In nature the rootstock slowly creeps across the supporting branch or other surface, producing and discarding a whole series of leaf rosettes and flower spikes, year after year. So that it is possible that when your previous plant "died" it was just doing this. However if it was in fact demonstrating its natural cycle it should have had plenty of new growth coming on at the same time that the original clump shriveled.